According to Osho, when you relax into your weakness and drop all musts, the very idea of being strong evaporates. In surrender and acceptance you stop fighting the river, become natural, spontaneous, and present. Joined with the Whole/Truth, borrowed strength appears effortlessly; apart, the ego feels weak. In let-go, you are neither weak nor strong; just being, at home, in celebration.
If you stop trying to be strong and just accept yourself, the struggle ends and life carries you, so you feel okay without proving anything.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I am a weakling. Yet I have the feeling that I can, for the first time, relax into my weakness here. Must I be strong and courageous?
But how, by becoming a president, can you be powerful? Deep down you will know that your weakness is there. In fact it will be felt more, even more than before, because now there will be a contrast. On the outside there will be power, and in the inside there will be weakness -- more clear, like a silver lining in a black cloud. That's what happens: inside you feel poor and you start grabbing, you become greedy, you start possessing things, and you go on and on and on, and there is no end to it. And your whole life is wasted in things, in accumulation. But the more you accumulate, the more penetratingly you feel the inner poverty. Against the riches it can be seen very easily. When you see this -- that weakness tries to become strong -- it is absurd. How can weakness become strong? Seeing…
Man is weak and helpless what can he do to find strength?
Imagination has the power to take you somewhere. If you just allow it to go, it will move into the future. It will go to the moon and to planets and to stars and anywhere. This is one dimension of movement: Call it the dimension of time. Ordinarily our imagination travels only in one dimension: the dimension of time. It goes into the future or the past. It moves in time. With observation, there is a change. Imagination begins to move in space not in time. That is the change that observation creates. The arrow of imagination moves from 'there and then' to 'here and now'. Space is always here and now: it has no expansion in time. So imagination has two dimensions to develop in. Without observation, it goes from the past to the future and from the future to the past. With observation, it goes into space. If…
A seeker said to buddha: 'I do not ask for words; I do not ask for silence.' buddha just sat quietly. The seeker said admiringly: 'the compassion of the world-honoured one has opened the clouds of my illusion and has enabled me to enter on the path.' making his salutations, he departed. Ananda then asked buddha: 'what was it this stranger realised that he so praised you?' the world-honoured one replied: 'a high class horse moves even at the shadow of the whip.'
Both are very dangerous qualities. Cleverness is always a barrier. And it is not intelligence -- it is a false substitute. An intelligent person is innocent. You can cheat an intelligent person very easily, but you cannot cheat a clever person because the clever person himself is a cheat. So never think that cleverness is of any value; it is based on fear. The logic behind cleverness is: if you don't cheat others, others will cheat you. So remain clever and always protect yourself, and before somebody attacks you, attack them, because attack is the best defence. This is the logic of cleverness: always pretend that you know, even when you don't. I had a teacher in my university days. He was a professor of indian philosophy. I became aware that he was not very intelligent but just trying to be clever, so I started playing a game. I would…
[A sannyasin who is returning to the West says: I feel vulnerable and somehow strong... I just hope you'll be with me... through all of this turbulence.] Yes, I will be with you. And this is really important, to be vulnerable and strong. There are people who feel strong only when they are not vulnerable; that strength is bogus. It is just a facade, a camouflage; they are weak -- -persons. Then there are people who are vulnerable but they feel weak. These people, who are feeling weak when they are vulnerable, cannot feel vulnerable long: sooner or later that weakness will make them so afraid that they close. So this is the right mind -- to feel vulnerable and strong. Then you can remain vulnerable and each day your strength will grow, and you will become courageous enough to become more and more vulnerable.
Osho, it is said: “Nirbal ke bal Ram” — the strength of the weak is Ram. Is this true?
So what does it mean when we say, “Nirbal ke bal Ram”? Not what you imagine. You think you will go to the temple and say, “O God, I am very weak, now give me strength — run my business well, make my shop prosper, increase my prestige in the market. All right, I admit I am weak; now show your miracles.” That is not the meaning. People have foolishly taken it so: that if we cry and weep, plead, “We are fallen, you are the purifier of the fallen; we are nothing, you are everything; we are the dust of your feet, you are the king; now save us” — then He will come running. These are childish expectations. It means you have co-opted Him into your service. Clever! Your flattery worked. Your prayers are flatteries. That is why prayer is called stuti — praise, eulogy. Your prayers are…