Don’t do it to get a prize; when you stop wanting rewards, you feel peaceful right now.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Letters keep coming to me. One letter I received asked: Ashtavakra says, “Do nothing,” and yet you make us meditate so much. If nothing is to be done, what is the need of meditation, dancing, jumping?
Do not cling. Do not hide behind doctrines. Throw them away; they are worth two pennies. Choose truth. And truth is chosen only by experience. Experience alone is the basis—argument cannot prove; only experience proves. Experience is self-proving. “The ignorant, desiring to be peaceful, does not attain peace. The steadfast, knowing the essence with certainty, is always of peaceful mind.” Na śāntiṁ labhate mūḍho yataḥ śamitum icchati. Peace is not attained by the desire for peace—because desire is the very cause of disturbance. How can there be a desire for desirelessness? It is contradictory. People come and say, I want to be peaceful. I say: As long as you want to be anything, you cannot be peaceful. The wanting itself is unrest. Today you were restless for money and market; suppose you drop that—you will be restless for peace. The race continues—first for wealth and status, now for peace. Will…
A friend has asked, Osho, can a worldly person not attain God? Are home, family and woman the obstacles to attaining God? Is there no way for a householder to attain God?
Break this sleep. Running will do nothing. Remove this sleep. Let this mind be filled with awareness; let the dreams depart; let the waves of thought subside; let this mind become quiet and silent—then His touch will begin immediately. His flowers will start blooming, His fragrance will begin to waft, His song will be heard; His sun will just now cut through your darkness and you will be filled with light. Therefore in my view, the one who is running knows nothing. It may be that you have been hurt by the world and therefore you run. But the suffering of the world is also your own creation. So wherever you run, you will prepare new sources of suffering. If this is not visible on the surface, go and see. Look at people sitting in ashrams, at renunciates. If they have not awakened, you will find them entangled in a…
Osho, from what you said yesterday, it seems that the only usefulness of the practices a master prescribes and a disciple undertakes is to realize the futility of doing. Is it essential for a seeker to know the futility of doing? And do the various practices have no value in themselves?
A seeker simply means one who is now ready to break the ego. And the ego will break only when the sense of doer-ship disappears. The sense of doer-ship will vanish when all your actions fail, when all your methods, all your techniques, all your paths prove futile—when you reach a place where you can say, “Nothing happens by what I do; nothing will ever happen by what I do.” This supreme failure—only in this supreme failure does a person realize, “I am helpless.” Only in this supreme failure does one know, “There is no center of ego within me; I am but a wave upon the ocean.” From one angle this is failure; from another, this is the very birth of religion, the greatest success. From the worldly side it is the greatest defeat; from God’s side it is the greatest victory. One who is not ready for this…
Osho, Sri U.G. Krishnamurti explains that all spiritual practices—yoga, meditation, sannyas, the guru–disciple relationship, and spiritual development, etc.—are confusions and hallucinations of the human mind, mere mind games. And after wandering a great deal in all these, in the end a person is left only with a state of utter helplessness. In Sri U.G. Krishnamurti’s satsangs, a sharp disbelief in practice has arisen in the minds of many. Many friends have told me they would like guidance from you regarding this situation.
Even deception has its limits!... “I am not the one who lived with you. Only the body is the same. I have died. The one you think I am has gone. This is the incarnation of the twenty-fourth tirthankara in my body. This proves you are ignorant. Can’t you see even this much? The body is the same, but the soul has changed—can’t you see this simple fact?” When a man descends into hypocrisy, he will do anything. U.G. Krishnamurti says that his self-experience, his attainment, is his own—nothing to do with Krishnamurti. And every seven years his attainment has increased, because every seven years a chakra has opened. At the forty-ninth year he attained supreme awakening. If a chakra was opening every seven years, what were you doing with Krishnamurti for twenty-five years? Many chakras had already opened in you, and many were opening. Why were you trailing after…
Question: Osho, Matsu was immersed in practice. In a secluded hut of his master’s ashram, he practiced day and night to subdue the mind. He would not pay any attention even to those who came to see him. One day his master went to his hut. Matsu did not pay any attention to him either. But the master sat there the whole day, rubbing a brick on a stone. At last Matsu could not restrain himself and asked, “What are you doing?” The master said, “I am making a mirror out of this brick.” Matsu said, “A mirror out of a brick? Have you gone mad? Even if you keep rubbing it all your life, it will not become a mirror.” Hearing this, the master laughed and asked Matsu, “Then what are you doing? If a brick cannot become a mirror, can the mind become a mirror?