According to Osho, vows, rituals, or particular actions are irrelevant; only awareness bears fruit. Whether one is fasting or feasting, worshipping or even stealing, if awareness dawns in the doing, the same transformation arises. The vow-bound and the vowless are equal before consciousness: with awareness, both flower; without it, both are barren. Wake up where you are, and fruition follows.
Rules don’t change you; being fully aware of whatever you’re doing does—and it works the same for people with or without vows.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Will it happen for the one without vows or the one with vows?
Awareness bears fruit. Wherever you are, wake up right there. It is awareness that bears fruit—whatever state you are in. We are always in some situation, bound by certain limits, and doing something or other—someone is running a shop, someone worshipping in a temple, someone building a house, someone having a temple built—we are doing something. Someone is fasting; someone is eating. Whatever we are doing, awareness toward it bears fruit. What you are doing—it doesn’t matter. One man is stealing and another is worshipping—when one awakens to the doing, the fruit begins to come. If the thief becomes aware in his stealing, the same fruit will come.
Question: Second question: What is the value of vows in life? The religion I speak of is not the religion of vows but of awareness. I do not want to break you off from anything. I do want to join you with the divine—but without breaking you anywhere. I want to teach you to use precisely the place where you are. A friend came to me. For many years he has been addicted to cigarettes. “How to quit?” he asked. I said, “You have been quitting for thirty years. Has it not dawned on you that you’ve spent thirty years quitting? Neither able to smoke nor to stop. Drop the committee meeting!” He said, “Then should I just keep smoking?” He was saddened—he has been smoking for thirty years—and seemed annoyed with me: as if I was at fault! He must have heard from saints, “Quit! Quit right now!
A friend has asked: Osho, Gandhi has urged the practice of vows such as ahimsa (nonviolence), satya (truth), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (celibacy), and asangraha/aparigraha (non-possessiveness), and Patanjali too has emphasized them. So is it necessary to cultivate these before samadhi? Or can one reach samadhi without them?
Gandhi used to say continually, “I have no doctrine, no ideology. There is no such thing as Gandhism.” It sounded very humble. In Karachi there was a conference where Gandhi was speaking. Communists waved black flags and shouted, “Down with Gandhism!” Gandhi was at the microphone. Always, whenever anyone spoke of Gandhism, he would say, “There is no such thing.” But that day, when the slogan “Down with Gandhism!” was raised and the black flags waved, it suddenly burst out of his mouth, “Gandhi may die, but Gandhism is immortal!” What was hidden in the unconscious surfaced. It had been pushed down in some inner corner; hard to detect. We are not even aware of the corners of our own minds—what lurks where. It can slip out in an unguarded moment. It is necessary to understand Gandhi’s life very correctly. Gandhi’s life is a great failed experiment—a great experiment, and…
An elderly, very significant and precious person told me—he was my host at his home—I have in my life... He is a follower of Acharya Tulsi, a Terapanthi Jain. And Acharya Tulsi’s business is precisely this: take small vows—anuvrata—swear and renounce... So I asked him, What have you renounced? You are his special follower. He said, What is there to hide from you! I have taken the vow of brahmacharya four times. Four times! For brahmacharya one vow should be enough; why take it again? Then I asked, Why not a fifth time? He said, I am tired; four times I took it and each time I broke it. So I have at least understood this much—that it will not happen of itself; therefore I have not taken it the fifth time. The total result of four vows of brahmacharya was that the man is filled with self-condemnation.
And if you go to a temple or mosque and swear: O Master, bless me, from now on I will always add two and two as four — it is clear you are deranged. And whoever blesses you is further gone than you. Your mind is broken. You suspect you will add two and two as five. To fight that suspicion you are making prior arrangements. You know your inner state that when I add, two and two will become five. 'No-no, swear, arrange in advance!' Then within you, you know two and two will become five, therefore take a vow and create a block so two and two will be four. But this is not knowledge; this is greed. The greedy man becomes vowed; the man of understanding is avratī. This does not mean there is no revolution in his life — only in his life does revolution happen!