According to Osho, yes—worldly happiness attracts precisely because it is transient. The nearness of loss makes passing pleasures feel urgent and precious, pushing the mind to “enjoy now.” Yet this same transience inevitably turns joy into frustration and sorrow; misery follows like a shadow. Religion, therefore, doesn’t preach detachment from impermanence itself but from the suffering that chasing the fleeting always brings.
We want things that don’t last because they might vanish, but chasing them hurts us—so learn from the hurt, not the hurry.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, religions try to make us disinterested in worldly happiness by saying that it is temporary and transient. But is not this very transiency the cause of it attraction?
The awakening of nonattachment is because of misery and anguish. Religion says that you must try to see that the momentary pleasure is followed by unlimited misery. And you also know it very well that whenever you found happiness, misery followed. Whenever you were happy, later on your eyes were full of tears. You fell down whenever you were vain. Bad luck started as soon as you thought that good luck was smiling on you. Religion says that if you want happiness which will not get lost and will not turn into misery then look for the eternal, the immortal, and wake up from this transient world. Time spent in dreams is time lost. Seek the truth. What is the definition of truth? The definition of truth is that which was always, which is always and which will be always. The definition of untruth is that which was not yesterday…
Osho, religions call worldly pleasures unstable and fleeting and thereby try to create dispassion in us. But isn’t it precisely their fleetingness that is also the reason for their attraction?
Certainly, it is so; transience itself is the cause of attraction. And religions do not create dispassion by merely declaring life transient. Religion says: wherever there is transience, suffering will follow like a shadow. Transience is not the cause of dispassion; the suffering that comes in its wake is. Transience attracts, it beckons. The faster life runs away, the more the mind says—Enjoy, quickly! Now it’s here, now it’s gone. Who knows when the curtain will fall? So enjoy as much as you can; live with the utmost urgency. Let not even a single moment go idle—suck it dry. Exhaust the full possibility of each moment. Transience is attraction. Death is approaching; that is precisely why we cling to life. If death did not come, who would cling to life? If pleasures came and never left, who would worry? The cause of attraction is transience. The faster a thing dissolves,…
Osho, in your satsang I am experiencing great joy and life appears to be a celebration. But isn’t the joy of this fleeting life also fleeting?
Naked in each other’s arms! At first they were delighted and rushed to embrace. But when ropes tied them to the post, how long does pleasure remain pleasure? Within a few minutes they began to panic: How to separate now? How to be apart? How to get free? But they remained bound. A few hours passed, and then another disturbance began. Evacuation of excreta and urine happened; filth spread. Each other’s mouths began to stink; sweat; such distress. And they had to remain bound for twenty-four hours. As soon as they were released, the story says, they ran away from each other so fast they never saw each other again. The young man even left the village. This proved a wondrous—yet very psychological—way to end love. You see in the West love is being uprooted, breaking. Why? There is no longer any obstacle between man and woman; therefore love is…
Osho, in the world everything is transient—so, if one must hold on, what is there to hold?
Now, tie a woman to a saint—what greater torment can there be? But the guru is angry: “Be quiet, you fool.” He is indignant. What is it that you want in heaven? If you open the scriptures, you will be astonished—who wrote this? Some sensualists must have. In heaven streams flow with liquor! There are beautiful women; flowers of gold bloom; diamonds and jewels are strewn along the roads. Whose imaginations are these? Whose sick fancies are these? Filled with greed, these people want to abandon the transient and attain the eternal. I am saying something else to you. I am saying: the eternal is not different from this transient. God is not other than nature; he is merged in it, contained in it. Creator and creation are not two. As the dancer is merged in his dance, so the Creator is merged in his creation. The day this becomes…
Osho, on the one hand Doolandas sings of life’s transience, and on the other, after drinking the nectar of love he plunges into carefree ecstasy where time becomes infinite! Please explain this paradox to us.
Narendra! A moment too is a fragment of the eternal—just as the drop belongs to the ocean, the atom to the vast. In a single small leaf the sap of the whole tree is flowing. In a tiny flower the entire existence has poured its beauty, its color, its fragrance—its all. The great poet Tennyson has said: if we could fully understand even a single flower, we would understand the whole of existence. For what appears small from the outside is, by unending pathways, joined to the whole. This flower would have no fragrance if it were not of the earth. It would have no colors if it were not linked with the sun. It would have no life if the breath of air did not move through it. The deeper you inquire, the more you will find the flower has already disappeared; little by little, the whole cosmos has…