According to Osho, if you think, “I’ll lose everything to gain everything,” you cannot truly renounce; the motive to gain corrupts surrender. Humility or loss pursued as a strategy is false. Real renunciation is choiceless; only then does mastery—and the only real ‘gain’—happen as a byproduct. Those intent on gaining cannot let go; those who let go become masters.
If you try to give up just to get something later, it isn’t real giving up—let go without expecting, and the real reward comes by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, but why think of gaining after losing?
Yes—this is not a matter for you to think about. It happens. If you start thinking, you won’t be able to lose at all. If you become humble in order to attain the kingdom of God, then you have not become humble. That which is being said is not a promise; it is a consequence. That “second part” is the result. It is not an assurance for you. Because if someone says, “I am ready to renounce everything in order to get everything,” then how will he renounce? He is renouncing in order to get. He cannot really let go. No, that second part is not an assurance; it is a result. It has been seen that those who have left everything have found everything. But those who wanted to get everything have not been able to leave anything.
Questioner: why should one think of gaining after losing everything?
It is not a question of your thinking; it is so. If you think of losing, you cannot lose. If you try to be humble in order to gain the kingdom of God, you cannot be humble. What Jesus says is not a guarantee to you, it is just a statement of what happens. If someone says that he is ready to give up everything so that he gains everything, he cannot give up really. The last part of the statement is not an assurance, it is a consequence that follows renunciation. It has been found that those who give up everything become their own masters, and that is everything there is to gain. And it is also true that those who desire to gain everything cannot give up a thing.
Osho, I don’t know what my eyes keep searching for; in the heap of ashes there is neither flame nor spark. There is much in life, and yet by winning I gained nothing, nothing remained. The very thing I keep hoping for—why does it slip away again and again?
Mulla Nasruddin went to an eye doctor. His eyesight had begun to dim. The doctor said he would need glasses. The glasses were made; Mulla went to collect them. He asked the doctor, “Once the glasses are on my eyes, I will be able to read and write, right?” “Certainly,” said the doctor. “That is why they were made. You will read and write perfectly.” Mulla said, “That truly would be a miracle—because I don’t know how to read or write.” If you don’t know how to read and write, will spectacles make you literate? Even if the courtyard were perfectly square, every corner a neat ninety degrees, what would that do if you don’t know how to dance? You may have the most beautiful veena, and not know how to play it! Even if I were to give you Krishna’s very flute, what would you do with it? Krishna’s…
Another friend, yet another friend has asked: Does renunciation mean to gain, or to give up?
Ordinarily, the very word “renunciation” makes us think we must give something up. To drop something is renunciation—that is the echo in the word, the meaning that seems to be hidden there. But let me tell you: on this earth no one is ever ready to give up anything unless, behind that giving up, something has already been found. If a man’s hands are full of pebbles and we open a pouch and place diamonds before him, he will drop the pebbles. He must empty his hands in order to hold the diamonds. When the diamonds are about to come into his hands, the pebbles are dropped. The world will say—those still clutching their pebbles—“What a great renunciate he is! He has given up what we are still gathering.” But those who have found the diamonds will say, “How intelligent he is! It’s common sense—what ‘renunciation’ is there in it?…
All the things of this world, organic and inorganic, are filled with god. Enjoy them through renouncing them. Be detached; do not covet other people's riches.
This is why Marx and others of his way of thinking were not wrong when they felt that all religions have given protection to the affluent and rich, because interpretations of such sutras have been misleading and incorrect. From these interpretations it seems you should not try to grasp from another that of which he is the possessor. This clearly determines that the owner may get the help of the police to protect his property. So its intention is to maintain law and order, the status quo and the idea of ownership. But this sutra does not intend this; the very first proclamation of the Ishavasya is that everything belongs to existence. Existence alone is the master. Neither I nor you are the master, and our idea of ownership is an illusion. It alone is the master who never came to proclaim, "I am the master." Before whom would it…