Present Moment

Beloved Osho, the other morning I woke up with these words on my mind: "I'm going to squeeze the juice, the whole juice, and nothing but the juice, out of this moment." can this be the new oath when we rewrite the constitution?

You woke up with this sentence: "I'm going to squeeze...." Still "going..."? You should have squeezed then and there! "Going to squeeze the whole juice of this moment"? When? When this moment is gone? And you started wondering about the world constitution that sannyasins will write: "Can this be the oath in that constitution?" No! In the first place sannyasins are not going to write any constitution. Constitutions are written by politicians. Constitutions are written by people who are power-lusty, ambitious. Constitutions are needed because they are all nations. I am trying to destroy all divisions between man and man. In my commune nobody knows who is a German, who is an Italian, who is an American. And soon I'm going to suggest to my commune people to create dresses which don't make any distinction between man and woman. So in the first place we are not going to make…

Osho, you say, “Live here and now.” But when we look at ourselves, living here and now doesn’t feel appealing. Instead of living in the present, it feels more pleasant to live in fantasies of the future. So what should we do?

Therefore I say, live today. But you feel the present does not feel worth living. If the present does not feel worth living, tomorrow too will come only as the present; then that too will not feel worth living. The day after tomorrow will also come as the present; that too will not feel worth living. I call this self-destruction. Then you are committing suicide, not living. There is no other way to live. Only today exists, and it is today that has to be lived. Whether it feels worth living or not makes no difference. There is no other way. Living will happen only here. Do not fall into the delusion of tomorrow. The mirages of tomorrow have drowned many. Live today. Do not let this moment pass empty. This moment is an opportunity. Do not waste it like this. Make something of it. Take some juice out of…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHERE IS THIS MOMENT? I KEEP LOSING IT. Here! You ask me, "Where is this moment?" Your question implies it must be somewhere else. You have already lost it. It is always here! Don't try to find where it is, because while you are finding where it is, you are losing it. You are missing the train continuously. Time knows no tenses: past, present, future, no -- absolutely no! Time knows only one tense, and that is now. It is always now. But your mind can carry the past and destroy the beauty of the now. Your mind can project the future, and can lose the precious moment. Please, start relaxing here and now. This is the taste of it.

Osho, you often say we should be aware only of the present. But along with that, would you also say that while remaining aware we should not worry about the future? Do you want to exclude it altogether—are you advocating its total banishment?

In truth, my emphasis is on living, not on thinking. And one can live only in the present; you cannot live in the future. My emphasis is on living—just as my emphasis is on eating food. Now if someone says to me, “Shall we eat tomorrow’s bread—do you object?” I would say, first of all, you cannot eat the bread of the future; you can only dream about it. And the great danger in dreaming is that today’s bread may be missed. The real danger of dreaming is this: if you are busy eating the bread of the future, who will eat the bread of the present? And the present does not stop for you even for a moment. Whether you are present or not, it keeps rushing on. You are there or you are not—still the present does not wait. It does not stop for you; it goes on.…