According to Osho, stop asking “What should I do?” and turn to “Who am I?”. Doing is the circumference; being is the center. First be still and know yourself; from that clarity, right action unfolds effortlessly. Without self-knowledge, all doing misfires; with self-recognition, mistakes drop away. You arrive by not running—abiding in your own nature.
Before trying to do anything, sit quietly and find out who you really are; then the right actions will happen on their own.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: The first question: Osho, what should I do? What is your command for me? Dinkar! I do not emphasize doing. My emphasis is on being. Act is an outer event—the circumference of a human life, not its center. However much we decorate the circumference, the soul remains as impoverished as before. Yet for centuries a curse has ridden on the human chest: the ghost of doing—What should we do! No one asks, Who am I? Without first knowing who I am, people keep asking—What should I do? Then whatever you do will go wrong. Inside it is dark; even if you call yourself Dinkar (day-maker), it will make no difference. The eyes are blind; you may put on spectacles, they still won’t help. Mulla Nasruddin went to an eye doctor.
Osho, I have taken great pains in pursuit of Your devotion; every joy of mine has been erased in pursuit of Your every joy. How far and wide I have wandered for Your worship! Now please have the compassion to tell me what I should do next.
Poems can be beautiful; that does not make them true. Truth is certainly beautiful; but not everything beautiful is true. Truth is supremely beautiful. But don’t take something to be true just because it is beautiful. For you deem all kinds of things beautiful! You take even a body of bone, flesh, and marrow to be beautiful—which is utterly untrue. You take a rainbow in the sky to be beautiful—which in fact isn’t there. You take the dreams of night to be beautiful—and a thousand times you have awakened to find them false! There is not much truth in your sense of beauty; there cannot be—unless truth has blossomed within you. You did choose a beautiful verse. It isn’t even yours—borrowed as well. “My every joy has been wiped out in pursuit of Your every joy.” No, God asks no sacrifice of you. And those who taught you that God…
I myself am a question. I know not who I am. What to do? Where to go?
REMAIN WITH THE QUESTION. Don t do anything, and don t go anywhere; and don't start believing in any answer. Remain with the question. That is one of the most difficult things to do -- to remain with a question, and not to seek the answer; because the mind is very cunning, it can supply a false answer. It can console you; it can give you something to cling to; and then the question is not answered but suppressed. Then you go on believing in the answer, and the question remains deep down in your unconsciousness like a wound. The healing has not happened. If you remain with the question, I'm not saying that you will receive the answer. Nobody has ever received any answer. If you remain with the question, by and by the question disappears. Not that the answer is received; there is no answer. There cannot be,…
Question: Second question: Osho, who am I and what is the goal of my life? See: the Ganges sets out from Gangotri in the Himalayas and falls into the ocean. You may say, “Where did it reach its origin? It began at Gangotri and fell into the Bay of Bengal.” No—you have not seen the whole. You have not seen the complete circle. From the ocean the Ganges rises again as vapor into the sky, becomes clouds, and rains once more upon the Himalayas to descend at Gangotri. Then the circle is complete. When the Ganges returns to Gangotri, the circle is complete, the journey fulfilled. The end, friend, is where the origin is. Therefore all the sages say: when you attain to perfection, you become like a small child. The end, friend, is where the origin is. When you attain saintliness you become simple—as if ignorant.
Osho, I don't know who I am. I feel like I need grounding at some level. Is there no place for grounding?
This is my understanding: unless you can enjoy the meaningless, you will never become religious. God, to me, is the meaningless beauty that surrounds you, the meaningless song that is heard all around: the meaningless murmur of a brook, the meaningless whisper of the winds, the meaningless silence of the stars. Tremendously beautiful, but meaningless. Why do I say meaningless? Because it is unknowable. A thing remains meaningless unless it is known. Once you know, then it is meaningful. And I tell you, stars are mysterious, but they are nothing compared to your inner being. Rivers are mysterious, but they are nothing compared to your inner stream of consciousness. The Himalayas are mysterious, but nothing as compared to your inner peaks of ecstasy. Be, rather than know. Marcus Aurelius looks to me to be of more and deeper understanding when he says, "Be thyself!" than Socrates when he says, "Know…