Is life really just a play?

Osho, is life really just a play? The idea both clicks and does not. Why?

You will be surprised—at first there will be trouble, certainly. Because all your relationships till now have been with your roles. When you drop the roles, relationships will get disturbed. Your near and dear ones will be upset, because the bonds were made with your masks. You told a woman, “Apart from you, no one is beautiful to me—you alone are my Noor Jahan, my Mumtaz, my everything.” If you drop the play, that too will go—and with it, trouble will begin. Because she built the relationship on that basis. When truth comes, all the houses of cards you built upon falsity will fall in a single gust. You will no longer be able to say such things, because you know you also see beauty in other women. You didn’t say it; you hid it. It’s not that you didn’t see. Anyone who sees beauty in one woman will see…

Osho, you have said: take life as Leela, a divine play. How? And if life is merely Maya, what is the need for this life?

Binding the infatuated with attachment, it ferries him across the mirage to the ocean. To this thousand-formed one I bowed my head and called her Rama-pervaded. Those who know will even bow to Maya—this too is His play. I tell you: don’t discard Maya; it is His shadow as well. The Beloved is dear, and His shadow is dear too. That is why I tell my sannyasin: no renunciation, no flight from the world. If you understand this shadow rightly, through this very shadow you will understand the One of whom it is the shadow. Yet I still say to you: lightly, lightly! Do not become grave and ponderous. For centuries, grave religion has committed great murder upon man. Temples turned gloomy; mosques, temples, churches became like cremation grounds. Do not become a renunciate. God is hidden in enjoyment—seek Him there. When you eat, seek Him somewhere in the taste.…

Remain where you are—every place is the same. Remain where you are; change the way of living. And you will be amazed: it’s only a small shift in manner. And this inner shift need not be visible outside. No one will know; not a whisper. Yet your life will be transformed from the roots. You are a husband—take it as a role. There is no need to run away from your wife. Just take it as acting. Do the husband’s work as skillfully as you can. You are a wife—do the wife’s work skillfully. It is acting—do it skillfully. Do not be smeared. There is no need to tell anyone; no need for anyone to know. Slide within.

Osho, you say: live life as if it were acting. In that case, what more than acting would spiritual practice, religion, and the search for liberation be?

Someone laughs; you may also laugh. But you know there is nothing now truly to laugh at, and nothing now truly to weep about. The world goes on. For you it has become a dream, but that does not make it disappear. Trees will bloom, birds will sing, people will fall in love, deaths will occur, births will occur, bands will play, weddings will be celebrated, the shehnai will sound, someone will die and the chant “Ram naam satya hai” will be recited—this all will continue. For you it has ended. For you it ending means only this: you are no longer possessed by it. For you all has become acting. But everything continues. Where is there to run? What use is running? Because if you run, you again become the doer. That is why Krishna insists: do not run—otherwise running too is doership. And running also means that you…

Osho, this game began unknowingly, in laughter and play. I had no idea it would drown me. Ahead there is darkness, behind a chasm. Nothing can be seen ahead, and going back feels impossible. The day somehow passes—why does this dark night come?

Days of fear, nights of fear—and you call it heaven! No one thinks so in childhood; only in old age do people look back and say, “Ah, how beautiful those days were!” It is a way to console the mind. The same happens to societies on a large scale. They say the golden age is gone—Satya Yuga was in the past; now is Kali Yuga. “Rama-rajya was before!” Was there Rama-rajya even in Rama’s time? What kind? Rama’s own life was full of suffering—let others be. His father deceived him—and at whose behest? An old man married to a young woman—the usual plight of old husbands. They are the most accommodating—obey their youthful wives like slaves. Dasharatha, a slave to his bird-like queen! He exiled a son like Rama for fourteen years—no backbone. And what joy in Rama’s life? Fourteen years wandering; then war with Ravana; he lost his wife;…