Stop chasing being a winner; accept what comes and you’ll feel peaceful whether you win or lose.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is your view of being successful in ordinary life? -- I am afraid you are against success!
I AM NEITHER AGAINST ANYTHING NOR FOR ANYTHING. Whatsoever happens, happens. One need not choose -- because with choice is misery. If you want to be successful then you will remain miserable. You may succeed, you may not succeed; but one thing is certain: you will remain miserable. If you want to succeed, AND you succeed by chance, by coincidence, it is not going to fulfil you -- because this is the way of the mind. Whatsoever you have got becomes meaningless, and the mind starts going ahead of you. It desires more and more and more -- the mind is nothing but the desire for more. And this desire can never be fulfilled, because whatsoever you have got you can always imagine for more. And the distance between that 'more' and that which you have got will remain constant. This is one of the most constant things in human…
Osho, what does a successful life mean? First of all, if there is life, it is successful. If there is no life, it is a failure. And there is no life. We are alive, but there is no life. To be merely alive is one thing—breath goes on, we eat, we sleep, we get up—so we are alive, not dead. But mere aliveness is not enough for life. Life means: all the energies of being alive are dedicated to a direction from where music arises, from where love arises, from where bliss arises, from where peace arises.
When he would not agree, they said, “Ask for something that benefits others.” He said, “I won’t ask even that, because the idea that others are benefitted by me can bring ego. I will not ask that. But if you insist, do something such that, even if something happens through me, I never come to know that it has happened through me.” They asked, “What should we do?” He said, “Arrange it so that wherever I pass, my shadow that falls behind me—if it can benefit someone, let it do so. If my shadow falls on a sick person, let him be healed; if it falls on a withered plant, let it turn green. But let me never know that it happened through me. Because I want nothing through me; I want everything through God.” So the story says Augustine’s shadow received the boon. Wherever Augustine’s shadow fell, flowers blossomed.…
Osho, this “total surrender” you speak of—the worldly people are never going to accept it. Otherwise a man seems like a sadhu, even a madman, not civilized... If he works with discernment, with a little intelligence, it’s fine; otherwise he’ll be a failure everywhere.
Our trouble is this: we are proceeding on the assumption that success will happen—therefore we fear failure. What I am saying is that we are taking it for granted that success must be. And we never ask how success could exist without failure. Success and failure are the two legs of the same mind. The person who succeeds will also fail—daily. Today he’ll win an election; tomorrow he’ll lose. Today people will praise; tomorrow they’ll condemn. Today he’ll be up; tomorrow down. Lao Tzu used to say: never climb to a place from which you will have to fall. But our desire is to climb precisely to the place from which all have fallen and we alone will not; to climb where no one has ever managed to climb. Our desire is to reach the very place where whoever climbed fell—and there I should not fall: that is what we…
A friend has asked: Osho, is it possible for someone to live egoless in this ego-filled world and still be successful? Where everyone is full of ego, wouldn’t living egoless be like swimming against the current? Wouldn’t it bring obstacles, difficulties, failures?
Notice: even the egoist pays respect to the egoless. Even the politician comes and sits at a saint’s feet—this person has stepped out of the arena; one enemy less; he has left the fight; he has begun to flow with the current. So if you think that by becoming egoless you will flow against the current, you are mistaken. As an egoist you are already against life’s current. In egolessness you flow with life’s stream. Yes, you will go opposite to the egoists—but that will create no obstacle. Hindrance only comes if, even through egolessness, you still want wealth, prestige and position in the world. Then there can be trouble. It is said: An emperor was praying in a temple on New Year’s Day. He used to come on the first day of the year to pray. He was saying to God, What am I! The dust of your feet—worse…
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…