Generosity

 

 

Generosity is the real richness.

 

And to be generous, to share, you don’t need many things. To be generous, you just have to share whatsoever you have. You may not have much – that is not the point. Who has much? Who can ever have enough? It is never much, it is never enough. You may not have anything at all, you may be just a beggar on the road, but still you can be generous.

 

Can’t you smile when a stranger passes by? You can smile, you can share your being with a stranger, and then you are generous. Can’t you sing when somebody is sad? You can be generous – smiles cost nothing. But you have become so miserly that even before smiling you think thrice: to smile or not to smile? to sing or not to sing? to dance or not to dance? – in fact, to be or not to be?

 

Share your being if you have nothing. And that is the greatest wealth – everybody is born with it. Share your being! Stretch your hand, move towards the other, with love in the heart. Don’t think anybody is a stranger. Nobody is. Or, everybody is. If you share, nobody is. If you don’t share, everybody is.

 

You may be a very rich man, but a miser, a non-sharing one. Then your own children are strangers, then your own wife is a stranger – because how can you meet a miserly man? He is closed. He is already dead in his grave. How can you move towards a miserly man? If you move, he escapes.

 

He is always afraid, because whenever somebody comes close, sharing starts. Even shaking hands a miserly man feels is dangerous, because who knows? – friendship may grow out of it, and then there is danger. A miserly man is always alert, on guard, not to allow anybody too close. He keeps everybody at a distance. A smile is dangerous because it breaks distances. If you smile at a beggar on the road, the distance is bridged.

 

He is no more a beggar, he has become a friend. Now, if he is hungry, you will have to do something. It is better to go on without smiling. It is safe, more economical, less dangerous – no risk in it.

 

It is not a question of sharing something. It is a question of simple sharing – whatsoever you have! If you don’t have anything else, you have a warm body – you can sit close with somebody and give your warmth. You can smile, you can dance, you can sing; you can laugh, and help the other to laugh. And when two persons laugh together, their beings are one in that moment. When two persons can smile together, suddenly all distance dissolves – you are bridged.

 

So don’t think that to be generous you have to be rich. Just the contrary is the case: if you want to be rich, be generous. And so many riches are always available; so many gifts you bring with your life, and you take with your death with yourself. You could have shared, and through sharing you would have become aware how rich existence makes you, and how poor you live.

 

And the more you share, the more your being starts flowing. The more it flows, newer springs are always filling the river again and again. And you remain fresh. Only a generous man is fresh. A non-generous man, a closed, miserly man, becomes dirty – bound to become so. It is just like a well. Nobody comes to it, and the well is not ready to give its water to anybody, then what will happen to the well? Fresh springs will not be supplying it because there is no need. The old water will become more and more dirty.

 

The whole well will be dead. Fresh, living waters are not coming into it. This is how it has happened to many of you.

 

Invite people to share you.

Invite people to drink you.

 

That is the meaning when Jesus says: ‘Drink me! Eat me!’ The more you eat him, the more Jesus grows. The more you drink him, the more fresh waters are flowing in. The riches that life has endowed you with are not limited. But only a generous man can know about it. They are unlimited.

 

You are not a company with limited sources – you are a company with unlimited sources. Behind you is hidden the Divine. Nobody can exhaust it. Sing as many songs as you can: you will not be exhausted; rather, on the contrary, better and better songs will be coming in.

 

-Osho, "Until You Die, #1"