According to Osho, time or place won’t help if you secretly keep trying to “improve.” Your very watching for results prevents transformation. Stop measuring progress and drop the project of becoming. Be utterly present in each act—just eating, just walking, just listening—without thoughts interfering. If you truly do nothing with total awareness, transformation happens on its own; otherwise, staying longer is pointless.
If you’re waiting to feel better, you’re still chasing; stop trying to improve, be fully present in whatever you’re doing, and change happens by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
I have been here two years doing nothing to improve myself, just reading, eating, sleeping, drifting. Now I feel as empty and lost as the day I came. Is there any point in staying longer?
I HAVE BEEN HERE TWO YEARS DOING NOTHING. Doing nothing is not so easy. Sambuddha, doing nothing means allowing the whole to do thing, allowing Tao to happen. Doing nothing is the greatest thing in the world. If a man can do nothing then everything happens, then all is possible, because to do nothing means one becomes nothing, nobody, emptiness. And out of that emptiness arises all that is, all that is possible. all that is potential. Out of emptiness opens the lotus of being. NOW I FEEL AS EMPTY AND LOST AS THE DAY I CAME. You have been changing seats but, because you are deaf, you can go to the balcony, you can go to the front seat, you can go to the back and nothing will change. Yes, in two years or two hundred years or two hundred lives, nothing will change. Change comes only when you…
Osho, my condition has become like Trishanku. I can neither return to the past nor see any road ahead. If I am to go, where should I go?
And once the inner resonance becomes audible to you—call it Om, or whatever you like—once you hear that inner sound, then whether you are in the marketplace or at a shop or anywhere, it makes no difference. The veena within goes on playing. It has always been playing. Only you have not cultivated the habit of listening. You have not developed the capacity. You have not found the rhythm with it. So it is good that your condition has become like Trishanku: no path backward—give thanks to God! No way forward—great good fortune! Now sit down. Sit right where you are. Do not look back, nor forward. Close your eyes. There is nowhere to go. Come to yourself. What you seek is hidden within you. Where you are going is where it already resides. In the end it is discovered that what we were searching for was concealed in the…
So it has been a good insight. If you understand it, just do one thing -- and that is nothing like doing -- just be. If you feel like doing a few groups, do, but there is no need to be an achiever. You are not going to achieve anything. If you enjoy them, do them. If you enjoy the meditations, do them. If you don't, then don't do them. If you ask me, I don't see that there is any need for you to improve. You are perfect -- as everyone is perfect. Everybody is perfect, but to recognise that is very difficult because we have been taught ideas of improvement, achievement -- that one has to go somewhere, that one has to rush. Time is short and there are many things to do and life is slipping by.
All that you try to do to make it more perfect is futile, but it takes time to realise it. Now you are feeling stuck. You can do two things. You can change your style of life and then for a few days again you will be on a honeymoon -- hopes and desires and ambitions... and the possibility of tomorrow again becomes alive. But after a few days that tomorrow never comes. Again you are stuck and the whole thing again becomes routine. It is just like when you love a woman. The honeymoon over, the love is over. By the end of the honeymoon you are again seeking and searching for another woman. But you can go on in this way from one honeymoon to another but it is not going to help in any way. You have to realise that there is nothing to achieve in life.
Osho, I am feeling helpless. I don't know what I can do any more. It is as if everything I do won't change this, it only makes things worse. But also doing nothing does not make things better. You say that emptiness is bliss. For me it seems to be dull and boring; it is like being dead. When there is nothing I cannot see any beauty in it. I am fed up with it, I want to get out out. Please answer me, but please don't answer me like this: that taking sannyas would change everything and make everything beautiful. Thank you.
When I say emptiness is bliss I am not saying that emptiness is full of bliss -- don't misunderstand me. "Emptiness is bliss" is simply making you aware of their synonymousness. You can call it empty or you can call it bliss; both the words are synonymous. Emptiness is bliss because there is nothing which can bore you, which can make you feel dull, which can create anxiety, which can make you afraid, which can create anguish. There is nothing at all! Because there is nothing, the whole mind has gone, that state is called bliss. One can call it emptiness, one can call it bliss; these are just two expressions for the same phenomenon. And, Alexander, don't be a coward. You have such a great name -- Alexander -- don't be a coward! But Alexander himself was a coward in this sense. He was told by Diogenes, one of…