According to Osho, you hesitate to stake everything because staking means leaving the known for the unknown, and the mind—trained by society’s fears—clings to familiarity, even to old pains laced with hopes. Meditation demands utter aloneness; you cannot carry possessions, relations, or knowledge—only naked being. Though nothing is truly yours to lose, only indomitable courage breaks conditioning and steps into the trackless, risky freedom of the unknown.
Even if nothing can really be lost, your mind is scared of leaving what feels safe, so you need courage to go alone into the unknown.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you say there is nothing to lose here. Then why is it that I still cannot stake everything?
Life can be lived in two ways: a hellish way and a heavenly way. I am teaching you the heavenly way—how to live here and now in a heavenly manner. This earth is heaven for those who know the art of joy. This earth is liberation for those who know the art of freedom. And this earth is hell for those who are skillful at manufacturing hell. Those who live on fear and greed turn life into hell. Those who live in non-greed and fearlessness turn life into heaven. And accept challenges, because only challenges bring to a polish the talent hidden within you; they give you edge. Challenges unify you. They organize you inwardly. You become concentrated. And challenges awaken you—for one whose life has no challenge, he sleeps. He whose life has challenge—how can he sleep? If your house is on fire, can you sleep? However tired you…
Osho, Master Shuzan raised his short staff and said: If you call it a short staff, you oppose its truth. And if you do not call it a short staff, you deny the fact. Now tell me, what would you like to call it? Osho, kindly explain the intent embedded in this Zen master's riddle.
As human opinion changes, beauty and ugliness change. What is beautiful? What is ugly? There is no definitive yardstick; it depends on your intellect. The intellect lives by comparison, so the very moment you see something you start comparing. This Zen master says to his disciple: do not compare—and without comparison, tell me what this is. He says: if you call it a short staff, you oppose truth—because in truth there is no comparison; comparison is of the mind. As long as mind remains, you will not know truth. Truth is incomparable. It is neither beautiful nor ugly; neither auspicious nor inauspicious; neither good nor bad. There is no division—there is only “is-ness.” Will you call this entire existence beautiful or ugly? Good or bad? People have called it one thing or another: the theist says “absolutely good—God created it.” The atheist says, “How can it be good with so…
Osho, why is it so dangerous to be with a living Sadguru? Why do so few people dare to stake everything and dive into your Buddha-field, even though, like Paltu, your call is echoing across the world—“There’ll never be such a wager again; you may not be human again. Why do you stand hesitating while the gold slips from your hand.” Osho, have compassion, grant awakening.
Paltu’s call never resounded across the world. Very few knew him. He was a simple rustic; his language was of the village. But he spoke to the point. This one aphorism of his is priceless. It should have resounded—but it didn’t. To make a thing resound in the world requires great skill and organization. And to make a religious statement resound is very hard. Religion is not a detective novel that everyone wants to read; not a film full of murder and rape that everyone wants to watch; not sensational news that every newspaper puts in headlines. Religion is delicate—no sensation, no violence, no arson. Religion is meditation. Who has taste for meditation? People care for money, not meditation; for office, not for the divine. They are ready to collect all kinds of junk, but words like moksha and nirvana create no echo in their hearts. The moment they hear…
Question: Fourth question: Osho, what does it mean to put everything at stake? There are two kinds of people who take sannyas. One is those who take sannyas after thinking and considering; they say, “We will think it over, weigh all the pros and cons, then take our own decision, then take sannyas.” The second are those who take sannyas out of feeling, not out of thought. Their sannyas is of a very different order. They take sannyas through tears, not through logic. They take sannyas in rapture; not through inference, not through conclusion. They put the intellect aside and take sannyas. They come to me; I ask them, “Think it over a little.” They say, “What is there to think?” I say, “First consider.” They say, “What is there to consider! We saw you—everything happened. If you consider us unfit, don’t give it.
Attend to one thing: What do you really have? What does a seed have? Do not ask whether there will be a tree or not. Ask what the seed has that you fear losing. What do you have that you are afraid to lose—ask this. Shraddha always asks this. Shraddha asks, What do I have that I should fear to lose? Do you have anything which, if lost, would feel like a loss? Nothing at all. There will be worries, sorrow, suffering, gloom. But what fear is there in losing these? Do you have any joy that, if lost, you would be deprived, impoverished? You have nothing. You are like that naked man who did not bathe because he said, If I wash my clothes, where will I dry them? He had no clothes; there was no question of washing. Yet the worry of drying had seized his mind.