Regret

Is there any point in having regrets?

There is no point at all, except in your ignorance... It is wasting the present, regretting the past: the past you cannot undo but you can waste your present. And tomorrow you will regret that you wasted the whole day unnecessarily and again you are doing the same thing; you are again wasting the present. All that you have got is the present; you can regret, you can imagine, you can dream -- or you can live. My suggestion is, please live. What has happened has happened, it makes no difference any more. You are alive, the climate is good, why bother about unnecessary things? Enjoy the moment.

Osho, you have earlier said, “Live moment to moment, live in the present.” Now you are saying, “Return to the past.” What should we do?

So it is with the mind—there are ruts. The past means endless grooves. However much you understand, your intellect agrees, you make decisions, you resolve—at the moment of resolve you feel something is going to change. But not even an hour passes before your decision breaks. Then only self-condemnation is produced, nothing else. Your saints, your fakirs, your priests and pundits—most of the time they only succeed in producing self-condemnation in you, nothing else. Their words are logically correct. You cannot even say they are wrong; you have to admit they are right. In that admission you take a decision. But against what are you deciding? Inside are grooves carved since who knows when, deep tracks. Walking in them has become a habit. It is easy to walk in them. They will pull you again and again. The meaning of returning into the past is: these grooves must be erased.…

Osho, what is the most astonishing law in this world?

A Sufi story. A thief, at night, began to climb into a house through a window. The window frame gave way, he fell, and broke his leg. The next day he went to court and blamed the householder for his broken leg. The owner was summoned and said in his defense: The one responsible is the carpenter who made the window. The carpenter was called; he said the contractor who built the wall hadn’t made the windowed section strong enough. In his defense the contractor said: My mistake happened because of a woman who was passing by—she drew my attention away. When the woman was presented in court, she said: At that time I was wearing a very fine dress. Normally no one even looks at me. So the fault lies with the dress, which was so exquisitely sewn. The judge said: Then summon the tailor who sewed it; he…

Beloved Osho, why shouldn't we live in the past? Cannot reliving one's pain make one stronger? Cannot rejoicing one's happy moments bring happiness?

The people who live in the past, who remember the happy moments of the past, are the people who are miserable in the present. If your present is more blissful than all the moments of your past, why should you live in those past moments? They are just memory, they have no reality. Past is past. The real is the present. If you want real bliss, you have to live in the present. Your roots are not in the past. The past is only memory and the future is only imagination -- and roots cannot exist in memories and imagination. Roots are always in the present. Everything real is always in the present. In fact, the very idea of dividing time into three tenses -- past, present and future -- is wrong. Time knows only one tense and that is present. Knowing knows two tenses, past and future. And there…