According to Osho, deliberately detaching from life’s pleasures by repressing them backfires: the mind becomes obsessed with whatever is denied, breeding guilt, neurosis and hypocrisy. Renunciation of what is pleasant does not purify; it fixates you. Instead of repression, allow natural joy with awareness; only through conscious, non-clinging enjoyment does the compulsion dissolve.
If you try hard not to enjoy nice things, your mind clings to them more—so notice and enjoy consciously instead of pushing them away.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, although you have been teaching us to enjoy all pleasures of life, and not to be led by some kind of morality or disciplines, my life with you starts to look more like that of a monk -- a life of detachment from the usual kicks of life, and more of simplicity and silence. Is this a natural happening? Or am I creating new disciplines for my life?
But it takes a little time -- a few women in your life, few men in your life -- then you understand that it is the same game. Faces change, bodies change, but the game remains the same -- and a boring game! Not only boring, but if you keep all the lights on, then disgusting too. Strange type of thing.... Just this game of sex is enough proof that no god has created man, because if this is what God has created then he seems to be really a rascal. Some better arrangement could have been made. But this is the arrangement -- that everybody feels ashamed of it, that people go in the dark, turn the light off. I have loved a beautiful story: One couple from the Earth reached another planet, Mars, and of course they met people. The first couple they met, they invited them into…
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, you support the Upanishadic utterance “tena tyaktena bhunjīthāh”—first enjoyment, then renunciation. If one has to renounce anyway, why enjoy? Why bring in enjoyment at all?
But if you get hasty, half-baked, and say, “If one has to renounce, why enjoy?”—then how did it occur to you that you “have to” renounce? The thorn has not pricked you, so why think of removing it? You must have heard the words of one whose foot was pierced by a thorn—one who knew the pain, removed it, and knew the relief—some awakened one. You heard a Paltu, a Kabir, a Nanak, and borrowed their words. The thorn had pricked them, so there was pain; they removed it and found ease. You have not been pricked and you begin to remove a thorn that is not there—what will you remove? You will deceive yourself that there must be a thorn! A sick man takes medicine and becomes well; you, hearing of a sick man’s recovery, buy the medicine—being healthy, you will become ill. And this is what happened here.…
Osho, what is the definition of God?
Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…
Thirty-six streams are rushing toward you! Desire and pleasure and lust.... Play in your imagination with them and they will sweep you away.
POWERFUL STREAMS! THEY FLOW EVERYWHERE. STRONG WINE! IF YOU SEE IT SPRING UP, TAKE CARE! PULL IT OUT BY THE ROOTS. PLEASURES FLOW EVERYWHERE. YOU FLOAT UPON THEM AND ARE CARRIED FROM LIFE TO LIFE. LIKE A HUNTED HARE YOU RUN, THE PURSUER OF DESIRE PURSUED, HARRIED FROM LIFE TO LIFE. O SEEKER! GIVE UP DESIRE. SHAKE OFF YOUR CHAINS. YOU HAVE COME OUT OF THE HOLLOW INTO THE CLEARING. THE CLEARING IS EMPTY. WHY DO YOU RUSH BACK INTO THE HOLLOW? DESIRE IS A HOLLOW AND PEOPLE SAY, "LOOK! HE WAS FREE. BUT NOW HE GIVES UP HIS FREEDOM." Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples that the most important thing is to remember in a dream that "This is a dream." But how to do it? It seems almost impossible. How to remember in a dream that "This is a dream"? But if you practice the Gurdjieffian method,…