According to Osho, life is inherently insecure; seeking safety and luxury dulls awareness. If, as a sannyasin, you live above your means, you flirt with insecurity—let it awaken you rather than trap you in anxiety or status. Choose simplicity and presence over artificial security; live moment to moment. Insecurity, embraced consciously, sharpens intelligence and keeps your heart singing like birds, while comfort-seeking makes consciousness dry and desert-like.
Don’t overspend to feel safe or important; live simply, accept uncertainty, and stay awake to the present.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, the sense of insecurity in the inner life is quite difficult, yet perhaps one can manage it. How can that sense of insecurity be applied in practical or outer life? In business, in a job, in the external life—how can we use the feeling of insecurity?
I understand. In truth the question is not about outside and inside; the question is about knowing this truth that we are insecure. You don’t have to create a feeling of insecurity; it is a fact, simply a fact, that we are insecure. What is secure—outside or inside, anywhere? Are relationships secure? They are not. Is it certain that what was yours yesterday will still be yours today? That what is yours today will be yours tomorrow morning? Nothing is certain. Is respect secure? Not in the least. Yesterday a crowd stood behind someone—today you can’t even tell whether that man is alive or dead. What is secure? Is wealth secure? Insecurity is not a feeling; insecurity is the awareness of the truth that life is insecure. As life is, it is insecure. No guarantee of birth, of youth, of the body—no guarantee of anything. Awareness of this truth—and to…
Osho, why am I afraid of your neo-sannyas? I do not feel even a little afraid of the old-style sannyas.
Does any Jain read the Gita? Could a Jain really understand it? Impossible. He would find himself opposed at every turn; anger would arise at every step. He would find arguments against Krishna immediately. For Krishna tells Arjuna, “Do whatsoever God wills.” The Jain will say, “And if God is making him renounce, why are you making him fight? How can you decide what God wants?” If Arjuna were truly a Jain, he would have thrown down the Gandiva bow and said, “All right. Now I shall do only what God makes me do. God says, ‘Take the peacock-feather whisk and the begging bowl; sit under a tree; do tapas.’ It is the voice of my inner self!” You know this “voice of conscience.” Delhi politicians have popularized—or polluted—the phrase. Whenever they need to come or go, suddenly their “inner voice” is heard! Krishna deluded him—that is how Jains will…
Osho, you say there is nothing to lose here. Then why is it that I still cannot stake everything?
Life can be lived in two ways: a hellish way and a heavenly way. I am teaching you the heavenly way—how to live here and now in a heavenly manner. This earth is heaven for those who know the art of joy. This earth is liberation for those who know the art of freedom. And this earth is hell for those who are skillful at manufacturing hell. Those who live on fear and greed turn life into hell. Those who live in non-greed and fearlessness turn life into heaven. And accept challenges, because only challenges bring to a polish the talent hidden within you; they give you edge. Challenges unify you. They organize you inwardly. You become concentrated. And challenges awaken you—for one whose life has no challenge, he sleeps. He whose life has challenge—how can he sleep? If your house is on fire, can you sleep? However tired you…
So I teach richness, luxury, affluence. And the outer is only a substitute; the inner is the real thing. Those who are lost in the outer and have forgotten the inner are to be pitied; they are simply wasting their lives. They will repent, but then it will be too late. They will repent at the moment that death knocks at their doors but then nothing can be done. It is good to become aware before death comes. It is good to be initiated into some inner journey before death comes and destroys all that you have made. It is good to create something that is beyond the grasp of death. And that's what sannyas is all about: a search for something deathless. It is there. One just has to look for it, thirst for it.
Life is insecurity. Except for the dead, no one is secure, for only the dead cannot die; the rest will die. Insecurity surrounds on all sides. We are in an ocean of insecurity. There is no knowledge of shore or bank, no destination is seen, there is no boat or oars at hand, drowning is certain. Then, closing our eyes, we construct boats of dreams. We close our eyes and make a support out of straws. Catching at straws we think we have found the shore. Such deception, self-deception, happens. Sannyasin means one who has understood this truth: however much you seek security, security does not come. However much you try to escape death, death arrives. However much you may wish not to be effaced, effacement is certain. And when security does not yield security, then the sannyasin says, I consent to insecurity. I am ready now.