According to Osho, occasional disruptions during a discourse are harmless; they’re just people letting off steam—often seasonal noise, not a personal attack. Don’t take offense or be distracted; allow it to pass. Stay relaxed, keep your focus, and the essential work of awareness continues unhindered.
When people make noise during a talk, they’re just blowing off steam—ignore it and stay calm.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, the cuckoo’s cooing and your discourse go on together. Which should I attend to? Please tell me!
Shanti Swarup, why choose at all? Let both go together. The cuckoo’s cooing is not a disturbance to my discourse; it is the background. The cuckoo’s cooing supports exactly what I am saying; it is a base for the very ecstasy I am teaching. But ordinarily we have been taught one thing—concentration. And we fail to distinguish between concentration and meditation. The books say: meditation means concentration. Nothing could be more wrong. Meditation and concentration are entirely different. Concentration means: pull your attention back from everywhere and fix it in one place. It means: narrow the mind. Meditation means: make the mind vast. It means: open all the doors and windows. The cuckoo has sung—let that in; the sound of the train—include that too; and what I am saying—let that be there as well. There is no need to oppose any of it. Absorb everything together. And you will be…Read the full discourse →
Osho, to abide in oneself beyond the knower, knowledge, and the known—can one live in that state for an entire lifetime? Just as a lake is sometimes calm, sometimes playful, and sometimes stormy, does the self-realized one remain unaffected by worldly circumstances in the same way? Osho, dispel my ignorance!
Spring means harmony between season and mood. Meditation means harmony between you and the whole. You become harmonious. Whatever is, is perfectly okay—accepted. Nowhere any refusal, nowhere any opposition. Whatever is happening is auspicious. That is trust; that is meditation. Such meditation naturally takes you into an altogether new experience. Storms will rise; they will not stop because you meditate. Diseases will not stop coming to the body because you meditate. They will come. A thorn will sometimes pierce the foot. Raman had cancer; so did Ramakrishna—great storms came! Ramakrishna got cancer of the throat; he could neither eat nor drink. Vivekananda said to him, “What is not in your power! Why don’t you pray to the Lord at least to allow food and water to pass? We suffer watching you writhe.” Ramakrishna said, “Ah, it never even occurred to me to pray. How could it occur—to one whose prayer…Read the full discourse →
Osho, even though there is so much love for you, why do restlessness and anger sometimes arise while listening to you?
I have heard: a politician died, and his ghost went along with his bier. Another ghost was there at the cremation ground—an old ex-politician. The new politician’s ghost said, “Had I known that in dying such a crowd would gather, I’d have died long ago! Never in my life did such a crowd assemble. If only I had known earlier, I’d have died long ago!” There is a great relish in gathering a crowd. Behind it is a psychological truth. If no other way is found, a person resorts to upside-down means. In the early part of this century, in America, a man wanting to become famous shaved off half his hair and half his beard and mustache. He wandered the streets of New York for three days. Wherever he went, people stared in shock: what happened! His name was in every newspaper. In three days he was on everyone’s…Read the full discourse →
I say, let’s not call it a hassle; it’s work—necessary work. But when we do this work, our mind gets disturbed by some small thing and keeps going up and down, in struggle...
Yes—let it happen. The unease we feel is not a real problem; it’s just disturbance. When we take that disturbance to be “I am,” then we get troubled. Disturbance will be there. And you think a sannyasin won’t have it? Run away wherever you like—it will be there everywhere. I was just telling you about Nirmalji! In Amritsar I heard that the ashram had deposited money with someone; he refused to return it—and there was a heart attack. Where will you go? The difficulty is: where will you go? Wherever you run, disturbances are like that—suppose you become a Jain monk. He sets out with the rule: only if such-and-such condition is met in such-and-such house will I eat. He comes to that house, the condition isn’t met—disturbance. Then he goes to another house; again it isn’t found—disturbance again. He sits to eat in your home, and some child pees,…Read the full discourse →
Osho, when one tries to steer one’s life in a particular direction, the call of the other directions becomes a distraction. But is it possible to let one’s life flow in all its directions—and then, in a state free of distraction, is there not a danger that life will fall apart?
The very moment you want to concentrate, you have made a wound. You must have noticed: if there is a wound on your foot, the whole day everything bumps into it. A child climbs right onto that foot. You are amazed: all these years, all his life, he never climbed on my foot, and today he climbed! You pass through a doorway and it bumps into you. Things fall. They fell every day, and that child climbed many times—but you never noticed it, because there was no wound. Today there is a wound—so you notice. It is not that seeing your wound the whole world is falling on your foot. No one knows of your wound. When you sit to be concentrated and you make an effort—that very effort creates a wound. Now the smallest things start obstructing you. You must have noticed: the moment you sit to meditate, an…Read the full discourse →