Patience

Question: Third question: How long to wait? Osho! How long to wait? The very question “how long” tells me you do not know the art of waiting. “How long” is already impatience—where is waiting in that? “How long” is haste—where is waiting in that? True waiting is infinite. Anything less than the infinite is not waiting; it is a counterfeit. And the one whose waiting is infinite will find it this very moment. The more impatience you have, the longer it will take. Let this arithmetic settle within you: the more the haste, the longer the delay. The more the impatience, the longer the delay. For a mind full of impatience is agitated, trembling; it cannot be still. An impatient mind keeps peering into the future; it is not present in the present.

Isn't there a limit to patience? I have suffered enough in my life: should I revolt against it or not?

But something drastic will be needed. You have suffered so long, you have become so accustomed to it, that unless you do something drastic, a quantum leap, you will not be able to get out of it. Become a sannyasin: that will be something drastic. Take a jump into something new, try something new that you have never done before. And remember, the ego is always attached to suffering. why is the ego always attached to suffering? Because the ego feeds on suffering; you feel like a great martyr. The ego disappears when you are happy, really happy. Enjoy, and the ego is not found. That's why if you have chosen an egoistic life-style you will never be able to get out of suffering. You may change your sufferings, but you will create new sufferings again. You may divorce one woman, and you will get married very soon to the…

At times I feel like I can just silently sit and wait for eternity -- and other times like sobbing with the futility of sitting outside a gate I cannot even see -- frozen between action and inaction. Does one miss by demanding? Is impatience a lack of trust?

So waiting has to be with no idea for what. A real waiter cannot answer the question for what he is waiting; he can only shrug his shoulders, he can say 'I don't know.' But one thing is certain: that waiting is infinitely beautiful, waiting is infinitely joyous. When the whole turmoil disappears and it is all silence, it has a beauty of its own. You ask me: DOES ONE MISS BY DEMANDING? Certainly, absolutely. Demand has to be dropped. IS IMPATIENCE A LACK OF TRUST? Yes, certainly, absolutely. Impatience simply means you can't trust existence, you have to do something. You can't just sit there and trust that it will happen when you are ripe; that when spring comes, the grass will grow of its own accord. You cannot trust; you have to pull the grass from the earth. You cannot wait like a farmer who has thrown his…

Osho, “A sigh needs a lifetime before it takes effect; who lives long enough for the tangles of your tresses to be set right? We agreed you would not feign indifference, but we shall turn to dust before the news even reaches you.”

“A sigh needs a lifetime before it takes effect; who lives until the tangles of your tresses are set right? We agreed you would not feign indifference, but we shall turn to dust before the news reaches you.” Become so! “We will wait for You our whole life long, yet the grief will remain that life is too short.” Do it! Let life prove too short and waiting grow vast. Let many lifetimes be encompassed; let waiting become so dense that birth and life pass like the blink of an eye. Yet let the thread of waiting continue unbroken. Bodies change, lives change, wombs change, forms change, colors change, names change—let everything go on changing—but within, let a single thread of waiting remain strung through all the beads. The happening can occur in this very moment, but the waiting must be endless. And the happening will be much delayed if…