According to Osho, mere skill in acting cannot free actors from sorrow because their 'acting' ends with the stage; offstage the ego returns as the doer who clings, owns, and suffers. Even in performance they become doers when pride arises. Liberation comes only when all of life is lived as effortless acting—through meditation and surrender—where the sense of 'I' dissolves and actions happen without ownership or attachment.
Pretending on stage doesn’t stop real pain at home; freedom comes when you see life as a play and drop the “I am doing” that wants control and credit.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, yesterday you gave the message: “Learn acting.” But skilled and famous actors, even though they know the art of acting, are anxious, unhappy, and troubled. Why does their acting not free them from sorrow? Please explain.
There is a great difference between knowing the art of acting and becoming a non-doer. Knowing the art of acting is one thing; turning life itself into acting is quite another. An actor knows the art of acting when he is on the stage. The moment he steps down, he forgets the whole art. He comes home and becomes a doer again. On stage, when he plays Rama and Sita is lost, he will act; the tears will be false; he will ask the trees; all will be unreal. He will weep, call out, shout, set out to search—everything will be false. But if, on coming home, he finds his wife has run away, he forgets to “act” again. Then he really begins to cry; real tears will flow. On the stage there was acting; the moment he comes home, the sense of doership returns. Stage-acting will not help. Let…
Osho, they too are acting!
Then even what they say will not make us unhappy. If someone abuses you, you know it is just part of the acting. When within we know we are unattached, we should know that everyone is unattached. In that state the mind will remain calm—calm even amidst disturbance. And until this art is learned, where will you run? Nothing will come of it. Here children make a racket; go and sit in the forest and the birds will make a racket and disturb you. Life is present everywhere and in every way. Right now you have a big house and you worry so much about it; a sannyasin worries just as much about his loincloth—that it might get stolen. Once, this happened: I boarded the train at Jabalpur. Some people had come to see off a sannyasin—seemed to be great devotees of his, perhaps he was from out of town.…
Osho, you say: live life as if it were acting. In that case, what more than acting would spiritual practice, religion, and the search for liberation be?
Someone laughs; you may also laugh. But you know there is nothing now truly to laugh at, and nothing now truly to weep about. The world goes on. For you it has become a dream, but that does not make it disappear. Trees will bloom, birds will sing, people will fall in love, deaths will occur, births will occur, bands will play, weddings will be celebrated, the shehnai will sound, someone will die and the chant “Ram naam satya hai” will be recited—this all will continue. For you it has ended. For you it ending means only this: you are no longer possessed by it. For you all has become acting. But everything continues. Where is there to run? What use is running? Because if you run, you again become the doer. That is why Krishna insists: do not run—otherwise running too is doership. And running also means that you…
Osho, I find your words very full of rasa, very delightful. But as a stage actor I want to go deep into the art of acting. So I am not yet ready for sannyas. Nor do I want to be limited to a single ochre color. I am interested in colorful clothes, because life too is colorful, rainbow-like. Can I come from time to time for your darshan without becoming your sannyasin?
But I had to choose some symbol. And I chose saffron deliberately. Deliberately—because for some five thousand years saffron has been in the wrong hands. It must be taken back from them. This lovely color has become a symbol of the denial of life. Yet it is the color of life, of spring. Hence its other name: basanti—the color of spring, when all flowers bloom. I don’t know how this spring-color fell into the hands of the wrong people—enemies of flowers, lovers of thorns—people who lay thorn-beds and sleep upon them, who long for thorns, who torment themselves in every way, who are filled with violence. Since there is risk in doing violence to others—for others will answer back—they do violence to themselves. No one can answer that, no one can defend against it. It became the symbol of the self-violent. It became the symbol of hypocrites—those who say one…
Osho, if this whole world is the play of Purusha and Prakriti, then where are we participants, who are suffering so much?
In Japan there is a form called Noh drama. There is no raised stage; actors perform right among the audience. A newcomer cannot tell who is spectator and who is actor. This Noh drama is a Zen invention. The script is not fully prepared; only cues are given—and even those are not rigid. Spontaneity is allowed. If a seated spectator gets carried away and joins in, he is not forbidden. If an actor changes his role completely, there is no prompter backstage, no facility to correct him. The play flows as life flows—into the unknown. What will happen is not fixed; the conclusion is not decided. It is thrilling—and just like life. This whole life is a great Noh drama. There is no spectator here; all are actors. And there is no written manuscript in the hand. No voice from behind the curtain says, “Say this.” Nothing is certain. Everything…