Will being a businessman prevent me from achieving enlightenment?

Beloved Osho,

THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL QUESTIONS CONCERNING WHAT YOU WERE SAYING ABOUT WARRIORS AND BUSINESSMEN. SINCE MOST OF US WERE BUSINESSMAN AND PROFESSIONALS, AND NOT WARRIORS, ARE WE GOING TO MISS ENLIGHTENMENT? Just imagine two persons with drawn swords encountering each other: can they think? If they think they will miss. Thinking stops; when swords are drawn thinking stops. They cannot plan because if they plan, in that moment the other will hit. They move spontaneously, they become no-minds. The danger is so much, the possibility of death is so near, that the mind cannot be allowed to function. The mind needs time; in emergencies the mind cannot be allowed. When you are sitting in your chair you can think, but when you are facing an enemy you cannot think. If you pass through a street, a dark street, and suddenly you see a snake, a dangerous snake sitting there, what…

It makes me feel very sad whenever you say that a businessman cannot be religious, because I am in business. Is there no possibility for me?

A BUSINESSMAN IS ONE THING, and to be in business is quite another. You can be in business AND religious, but you cannot be a businessman AND religious And they are poles apart. They are not synonymous. I am not saying that you have to renounce all your businesses to become religious. I am never in favor of any renunciation of the world. But when I say a businessman cannot be religious I mean something totally different. I mean the psychology -- not the work that you do in the market-place, but the psychology, the mind. The mind of a businessman is always bargaining, always greedy, always thinking of the profit, always in the future, always interested in petty things, mundane objects. When I say, "Don't be a businessman," I mean drop this psychology. And you can drop the marketplace and go to the Himalayan caves -- that won't help…

Beloved master, I am a businessman. Can I also meditate and become a sannyasin?

Remain a businessman, but for a few hours forget all about it. I am not here to tell you to escape from your ordinary life. I am here to tell you the ways and the means, the alchemy, to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Be a businessman in your shop and don't be a businessman at your home. And sometimes for a few hours forget even the home, the family, the wife, the children. For a few hours just be alone with yourself. Sink deeper and deeper into your own being. Enjoy yourself, love yourself. And slowly slowly, you will become aware, a great joy is welling up, with no cause from the outside world, uncaused from the outside. It is your own flavor, it is your own flowering. This is meditation. Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. Sit silently, doing nothing,…

Is it possible to live religiously and continue on the road to enlightenment while living in a country like the usa and involving oneself in a competitive business?

It is not accidental that Jesus' followers go on talking about Jesus' miracles.What are those miracles? First, they are physiological: a blind man is given eyes, an ill person is healed; or miracles like Jesus' turning stones into bread. Just think! These miracles say something. Jesus does not turn stones into sermons, but into bread; Jesus does not turn stones into music, but into bread; and he turns water into wine. Now we don't have any miracles like that around Buddha. There are miracles, but they are totally different -- the hierarchy. Buddha's miracles are so different that you will be surprised. A woman goes to Buddha: her child is dead and she is crying and she is weeping, and she is a widow and she will never have another child, and the only child is dead, and that was all her love and all her attention. She goes crying…

You have asked, Lotu C. Chugani, “I am a businessman.”

You will have to rise a little above business, become a little non-businesslike. Business belongs to the outside—of money, of position and prestige. This is an inner journey. It is not arithmetic; it is not business. It is the realm of love—of prayer, of meditation. Here an altogether different language is spoken. Here a different logic moves. If you try to go within while remaining a businessman, you will not be able to go. You will have to learn a slightly non-commercial attitude, because business always thinks in the language of profit and loss. And in meditation there is neither profit nor loss. In meditation is the experience of that which is already ours; only we have turned our backs on it. One has to turn around and face it. Right now we are averted; we must become oriented. Then there is color upon color. All the colors of the…