According to Osho, tathata means total acceptance of whatever is, without denial or condemnation. By not fighting reality, you conserve energy, gain clarity, and thereby transcend it. Rejection breeds fear, repression, and endless inner conflict; acceptance opens understanding and liberation. When you stop battling anger, sex, greed, or jealousy, their energy integrates rather than mutates, restoring sanity and vitality for the arduous journey toward awakening.
Say a wholehearted yes to whatever happens, and that yes gives you the energy and understanding to grow free.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS tathata -- TOTAL ACCEPTANCE? Dharmesh, tathata is one of Buddha's most significant contributions to the world. Tathata means total acceptance: whatsoever the situation is, don't fight with it. Accept it wholeheartedly, because it is through total acceptance that transcendence happens. If you fight with it you will be unnecessarily wasting your energy. Accepting it you preserve your energy. Accepting it you become capable of understanding it, because only one who accepts can understand; one who rejects cannot understand. Anything that you reject, anything that you become inimical to, you become incapable of understanding -- because we avoid that which is rejected. We are really afraid of it so we keep it at the back and we escape from it; we find ways and means to escape from it. And if you try to escape from something, how are you going to understand it?
First Tathata. Tathata means to be in a state of suchness -- it is a buddhist word... to live life as it is without hankering for any improvement, because all improvement is a desire of the ego. To think of oneself in terms of becoming is to create misery. So Tathata means whatsoever is, is -- live it. Don't compare it with the past and don't compare it with the future. Let that moment, the present moment, be all, as if there is no other time -- in fact there is not, only the present is. Tathata means living in the present, and living so totally that the past and the future disappear, so you are passionately herenow, intensely herenow. You become a burning flame -- your torch burns from both ends together. And in those moments one exists at the optimum.
Osho, is effort and sadhana the method and tathata the goal? Or is tathata both the method and the goal?
You will sit with maps. Has anyone ever journeyed using maps alone? I tell you, if you don’t intend to travel, then studying the map is very necessary. If you want to avoid the journey, cling to the maps. The mind stays entangled in maps. And maps are of many kinds, in many colors and forms. Don’t worry about what Buddha said, what Mahavira said, what Krishna said. Glance a little at what Buddha is, what Mahavira is, what Krishna is—and begin to be. All this is hair-splitting: which method and which attainment, which path and which goal. Do not split hairs. There are many logicians; leave them aside. In the end you will find that those who walked arrived, and those who kept thinking got lost. The seeker is concerned with one step. He takes one step; then he concerns himself with the next. There is a Chinese story.…
In this state of awareness everything that is meaningless in life stops because nobody can do anything worthless and meaningless while being aware of it The web of meaningless things in life which we spin like a spider and often get ourselves caught, is at once broken. If I tell a lie, and to maintain that lie throughout life, you go on telling other lies, you forget the original lie, the net goes on spreading and step by step you move into it thoughtlessly. We walk on those roads where we did not wish to go. We make such connections which we did not wish to make. We perform such actions which we had never wished for. Then the whole life becomes perplexed and shattered. Awareness means I am totally aware of what I am doing at the time of doing it.
[To a sannyasin, who had just arrived from the States, Osho recommended the Tathata group, describing it as 'suchness' -- just being totally in the moment... ] ... as if all bridges are broken and there is no past and no future. Time is only this moment, herenow. And whatsoever happens is the only way that life can happen to you. There is no 'should', no 'oughts', no goal, no ideal... just being existential, almost like an innocent animal: not knowing any memory, any imagination. Animals don't know that they have been yesterday and they don't know that they are going to be tomorrow. They just live this day. The only life they have is of the moment. Tathata is a group in which you have to live like an animal, in the immediate, in the pure present, and without any 'should', because all 'shoulds' bring in the future.