According to Osho, awareness belongs only to the single, living moment in your hands; the future is just dream-bread you can never eat. Set it aside during awareness, or you miss today as time flows on. Practice samayik—abiding in the atomic now—because life is always one moment wide; live it, don't think it.
Pay full attention to right now, because tomorrow isn’t real yet and thinking about it makes you miss today.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you often say we should be aware only of the present. But along with that, would you also say that while remaining aware we should not worry about the future? Do you want to exclude it altogether—are you advocating its total banishment?
In truth, my emphasis is on living, not on thinking. And one can live only in the present; you cannot live in the future. My emphasis is on living—just as my emphasis is on eating food. Now if someone says to me, “Shall we eat tomorrow’s bread—do you object?” I would say, first of all, you cannot eat the bread of the future; you can only dream about it. And the great danger in dreaming is that today’s bread may be missed. The real danger of dreaming is this: if you are busy eating the bread of the future, who will eat the bread of the present? And the present does not stop for you even for a moment. Whether you are present or not, it keeps rushing on. You are there or you are not—still the present does not wait. It does not stop for you; it goes on.…
The old man wastes his present in the past, the young man wastes his present engaged in the future. Both exercises are absolutely futile. Not only futile but very harmful, because the present which is, is being wasted for that which is not. Don't think of the future. Live in the present. That's my message to you. Be in the present moment. And if you can be present to the moment you escape from all kinds of stupidities of the old people. If you can be in the present you transcend time. Time consists of past and future, eternity consists only of the present. Eternity is now, always now and never then, always here and never there. And to enter into the now and the here is to enter into God. This has to become your meditation, to come more and more close to the present moment.
And sometimes unawares it happens. Seeing a beautiful sunset and you are not your past. Just the present is so much, the intensity of the present is such, that without your knowing you have slipped out of the past. You have not a single problem in that moment because you don't have any mind in that moment. Mind means the past because mind means the memory. Seeing a beautiful sunset you become so absorbed in the reality of the moment, in the truth of the moment, that there is no observer and no observed. The observer becomes the observed. It is not that you are seeing the sunset, you are the sunset. That merging, that melting, that dissolution into the moment, and you are healed.
Osho, does living moment-to-moment begin the awareness of interdependence?
You have heard of Baital Pachisi (the Vetala tales). You would never suppose it could be a teaching for the wise—yet this land has made unique experiments. It has produced books that can be read on many levels, with layer upon layer of meaning—two, three, four, five meanings running parallel like five roads side by side. Thus whoever you are, there is a way. A small child enjoys it; the supreme knower enjoys it. The seeker finds the path; the arrived recognizes the destination. For one who is neither, it is a diversion—that too is something, a little entertainment. The first story goes like this. Emperor Vikramaditya was in court when a fakir arrived. As custom had it, people came in the morning to offer gifts. The fakir offered a wild-looking fruit. The emperor smiled—why come so far to offer a jungle fruit? But a fakir has nothing else, so…
So whatsoever happens.... Sometimes you forget -- what can you do? There is no point in crying for the spilled milk. That which is gone is gone. If one moment has passed and you were not aware, and later you became alert that this moment has gone and you were not aware, don't waste any moment for it now, because this other moment is passing by. Just be aware of it. And why ask for permanence? One person never gets two mo-ments together. You always get one moment. When that one is gone, another is supplied. So if you can remain alert in one single moment -- enough! Whatsoever time will be coming in front of you, your torch of awareness will be there.