According to Osho, nature has no external aim; a flower blossoms for the bliss of blossoming. Humans need 'purpose' only as a temporary medicine because we’ve become unnatural and cling to goals. Use one purposeful thorn to pull out the thorn of purposiveness, then discard both. Ultimately, live purposelessly yet fully: act from intrinsic joy and spontaneity, not for outcomes or rewards.
Be like a flower—just be; if you need a goal, use one last goal to stop chasing goals, then drop even that.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, yesterday you said that jealousy is included in respect. I have immense respect for you, but the jealousy inherent in it keeps poisoning it, and I feel guilt and pain. Does reverence transcend this poison-laced respect?
It needs a little explaining—it's a delicate point. Whenever you respect someone, you do so because you see in that person something you do not have. You respect because you glimpse in the other something you would also like to possess. A beggar respects an emperor because he, too, longs to be an emperor. So on the one hand he respects, and inside he also envies. Because he is not yet an emperor but wants to be. You have attained what he wants to attain. He respects you as skillful, successful: “I stand far back in the line; you have gone ahead to where I should have been.” So you are powerful, clever, intelligent, strong—he respects you. But inside a fire of jealousy also burns—if he gets the chance, he would like to be in your place and push you aside. And if the beggar gets that chance, he will…
Osho, to be very frank, let me raise this question of a purposeful way of life today. To me it is not very clear: as I see, everything is in constant transformation—whether in the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdoms, including rational beings, and in natural phenomena. I see nature ever-changing; how can our ready-made formulas serve any purpose? In fact, the purpose of life is not very clear to me. May I expect a detailed account from you on this aspect of life?
Life is its own goal, its own joy, its own meaning, its own purpose. Whoever makes life a means to something else will fall into misery. Some make life a means to money. Money can be a means for life, but life cannot be a means for money. The man who thinks that by accumulating money he has fulfilled life’s meaning is mad. Wise is the one who uses money as a companion, a support in descending into life’s depths. Life is a means neither for wealth nor for religion. There are people who make life a means for religion—worship, ritual, renunciation, austerity, sannyas—and they pour their whole life into these. They commit the same mistake the money-chaser commits. Prayer, worship, sannyas—all of these are for life. There is nothing above life—there cannot be. There is nothing for which you should be ready to lose life. Such a thing cannot…
God is a fiction of the mind, an invention of religious politicians. But my mind wants fictions, hopes, future. Is this natural?
I said, "I don't have any purpose. I love it -- that's my way of playing. That's my way of telling stories which have no purpose at all. Just the sheer joy, overflowing life. I am not old enough to think about purposes." He said, "What?" I said, "Yes, I am not old enough, and I will never be old enough to think about purpose and meaning. I rejoice in whatever I am doing. There is no purpose." Do you think talking to you there is any purpose? I just enjoy it. You enjoy listening, I enjoy talking, it is complete. There is no need beyond it. If something happens within it, that is not my responsibility. If you become enlightened, it is your problem. So be careful! I am just enjoying talking, you are enjoying listening. In between these two things anything is possible. You may become enlightened, but…
Beloved Osho, if everything is simply happening, then can there be any ultimate purpose to it all, or is life just an accident? Can it be said that life is evolving towards some ultimate goal?
Buddha became a beggar. He was born a king, he became a beggar. Why? Just to live richly... because he came to understand that there are two ways to live: one is to die richly, the other is to live richly. And any man who has any understanding will choose to live richly, because dying a rich man doesn't mean anything; you simply wasted yourself for nothing. But this is possible only if you can conceive that the whole existence is purposeless; it is a cosmic play, a continuous beautiful game, a beautiful hide-and-seek -- not leading anywhere. Nowhere is the goal. If this is the background, then you need not be worried about individual purposes, evolution, progress. This word progress is the basic disease of the modern age. What is the need? All that can be enjoyed is available, all that you need to be happy is here and…
Is not man the purpose of all evolution?
Evolution has no purpose. The very idea of purpose is mediocre; it comes from the marketplace. Existence is playful, not purposive. It is leela; it is not work. But we think in terms of economics, business; we think in terms of the marketplace. Everything has to be with purpose. People come to me and they ask, "What is the purpose of meditation?" They take it for granted that there must be a purpose behind it. There is none. Meditation is its own end; there is no end beyond it. What is the purpose of love? Is love a means to something else, or is love an end unto itself? Purpose means division, division between the means and the end. What is the purpose of these green trees, and what is the purpose of the bird singing, and what is the purpose of the sunrise, and what is the purpose of…