Satisfaction

If he becomes satisfied right there, why—why should he need to go any higher?

Fulfillment cannot happen. Short of the Divine, fulfillment is impossible. Contentment can happen. By contentment I mean a placated, managed contentment—one talks oneself into believing that everything is fine, that now where is there to go... That will remain. Until you have gone beyond the last center, there will only be contentment.

Beloved Osho, why is it that we are never quite satisfied with who we are, and what existence has given us? We are always looking for something better to do, looking for someone else to be, always wanting what the other one has more than what we have been given. Like the saying goes, "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." why is this?

I am really enjoying that a single person who has no power can make these pygmy politicians just go out of their minds! I had just mentioned it, and immediately the European parliament tabled a resolution, which they will be discussing soon and passing, that I cannot land at any airport in Europe. But we will find some way... In Europe there are communist countries -- Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia -- we can land at their airports. They cannot prevent me just landing. But we can have a big ship with thousands of sannyasins on it, and just live on the ship. And let them do what they can do -- bomb the ship or do whatsoever they want to do -- but one thing is certain, they cannot upset me. They tried in the American jails to upset me in such ways that anybody would have been upset. They would wake…

Osho, the very sky you tirelessly describe again and again—why is there still no fulfillment even after repeatedly dissolving into and becoming one with that same sky? In the outer world there seems to be every kind of fulfillment, satisfaction for everything; but within, there is a constant dissatisfaction, a feeling every moment that something is missing, that there is something more that has not yet been known. A little further… ever further—the thirst keeps growing. The more of your grace I receive, the more the thirst increases.

At the moment of life’s transition, when you turn from the outer to the inner, this is what happens. The dissatisfaction that was outside gets attached within. Before, there was money—and you wanted more. There was position—and you wanted it higher. There was a house—and you wanted to build a palace. Your dissatisfaction was fastened outside. Now you have turned your mind away from the outer, so outside there is a sense of satisfaction. Consider this: earlier there was no dissatisfaction within; within there was contentment, outside dissatisfaction. Now you have changed the arrangement. You turned the mind inward. You said, “Know what is within. Recognize the Divine, seek the self, have the vision of truth, attain liberation.” You redirected the dissatisfaction toward the inner, and the satisfaction shifted to the outer. They are two sides of the same coin. It is as if you were holding a coin in…

Satisfaction is a poor man's effort to keep his face smiling, somehow. Contentment is the joy of inner richness. It is the aura that surrounds a meditative person. It is the fragrance that naturally comes to those who go beyond mind. Satisfaction is of the mind, contentment is of no-mind. And that's what meditation is all about: a shift of your consciousness from thought to no-thought, from constant chattering to an inner silence. And unless one knows contentment one is not really alive. One is somehow dragging, somehow keeping oneself together. But the moment you experience contentment you need not keep yourself from falling apart. You become integrated, you become crystallized. You are not only a union, you become a unity; you are one. And that oneness is the goal of sannyas. Knowledge can be acquired in two ways. Either you acquire knowledge from others... Then it is superficial.