Really waiting means caring and looking so much that you spot your chance; being fatalistic means not caring and missing it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, what is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?
Whether you are for it or against it doesn't matter -- your concern shows where your ego is hanging. And I will include the capitalist in it also: his whole concern is how to gather money, hoard money -- because money has power over matter. You can purchase any material thing through money. You cannot purchase anything spiritual, you cannot purchase anything that has any intrinsic value; you can purchase only things. If you want to purchase love, you cannot purchase; but you can purchase sex. Sex is the material part of love. Through money, matter can be purchased, possessed. Now you will be surprised: I include the communist and the capitalist both in the same category, and they are enemies, just as I include Charvaka and Mahatma Gandhi in the same category, and they are enemies. They are enemies, but their concern is the same. The capitalist is trying…
What is the difference between waiting for godot and waiting for god?
It is as if the sun has risen in the morning and you are sitting in your room with closed doors and windows, in darkness. Open the doors, you become available to the sun. The sun was already available -- just the meeting happens. You cannot wait for God. All waiting is for Godot. Godot means the one who never comes, who CANNOT come, whose arrival is impossible. And the only impossible thing is that which has already happened -- how can it happen again? You are alive, and you are waiting for life, Now, this is ridiculous. The real man of religion does not think in terms of God. He thinks in terms of life or, even better, of living -- because life can again become an abstract idea. Living, moment-to-moment living. In that very living, one knows what God is, because one knows who one is. Your idea…
Osho, I have been listening to you for years. I have been with you a long time. From time to time I have heard many different statements from you, even mutually contradictory ones, yet no question has ever arisen in my mind about them. And in spite of them you have always remained one and indivisible in my vision and in my heart. Kindly shed some light on this.
You can be with me in two ways: through thought and intellect, or through the heart and feeling. If you are with me through the intellect and thought, there will be great difficulty. Day after day you will find contradictory statements. Every day you will have to sort them out, and still you will not succeed. The intellect never really resolves anything. Even where things are simple, the intellect tangles them up. And my words are very tangled. Even where everything is clear, the intellect creates problems. And I speak of paths filled with mist. Even if there were only one path, the intellect would find contradictions; here there are countless paths—contradictions upon contradictions. There is hardly a statement I have not refuted a thousand times. So if you are with me through the intellect, only two things are possible: either you will go mad and drop the intellect, or…
At times I feel like I can just silently sit and wait for eternity -- and other times like sobbing with the futility of sitting outside a gate I cannot even see -- frozen between action and inaction. Does one miss by demanding? Is impatience a lack of trust?
So waiting has to be with no idea for what. A real waiter cannot answer the question for what he is waiting; he can only shrug his shoulders, he can say 'I don't know.' But one thing is certain: that waiting is infinitely beautiful, waiting is infinitely joyous. When the whole turmoil disappears and it is all silence, it has a beauty of its own. You ask me: DOES ONE MISS BY DEMANDING? Certainly, absolutely. Demand has to be dropped. IS IMPATIENCE A LACK OF TRUST? Yes, certainly, absolutely. Impatience simply means you can't trust existence, you have to do something. You can't just sit there and trust that it will happen when you are ripe; that when spring comes, the grass will grow of its own accord. You cannot trust; you have to pull the grass from the earth. You cannot wait like a farmer who has thrown his…
Osho, “A sigh needs a lifetime before it takes effect; who lives long enough for the tangles of your tresses to be set right? We agreed you would not feign indifference, but we shall turn to dust before the news even reaches you.”
“A sigh needs a lifetime before it takes effect; who lives until the tangles of your tresses are set right? We agreed you would not feign indifference, but we shall turn to dust before the news reaches you.” Become so! “We will wait for You our whole life long, yet the grief will remain that life is too short.” Do it! Let life prove too short and waiting grow vast. Let many lifetimes be encompassed; let waiting become so dense that birth and life pass like the blink of an eye. Yet let the thread of waiting continue unbroken. Bodies change, lives change, wombs change, forms change, colors change, names change—let everything go on changing—but within, let a single thread of waiting remain strung through all the beads. The happening can occur in this very moment, but the waiting must be endless. And the happening will be much delayed if…