One has to be detached from the world – but not out of any fear. If you give up anything out of fear it will not really be given up, it will chase you, it will follow you. If you are scared of anything, it will scare you more. If you run away from anything, it will follow you because the fear is inside you.

 

Where will you run away to? From whom will you run away? If the world were outside you could run away. But you will find the world wherever you go. Even in a cave of the Himalayas it will be the same ’you’ who will be living there, the same ’you’ who lives here. So the real question is not of changing the place or the way of living; the real question is to change the inner state of the mind. At present the state of your mind is too bent to one side.

 

So do not bend it too much to the other side. The extreme is the disease. One who gets balanced in the middle is free, that is why Buddha has called his path majjhim nikaya, the middle path. One who stays in the center has found the way. A person who is in the middle, who does not bend to this side or to that side, is there. As long as you bend to one side life will be shaky, there will be no stability, you will not be healthy, and you will go on wavering.

 

Just as the light of the earthen lamp goes on burning steadily in the middle without being disturbed by the breeze, in the same way when the light of consciousness becomes steady in the middle, when neither desire nor detachment is able to shake it, in fact when nothing shakes it – when it is neither this side nor that side, when it is stable just in the middle – then Krishna calls it stithapragya, one who has stabilized in his wisdom.

 

You sit, you stand, but within you nobody sits or stands. You eat or you fast, but within you nobody eats or fasts. You may live in the world or in sannyas, but there is neither sannyas nor the world within you. This ultimate, middle condition is detachment.

 

If detachment is the opposite of attachment then it is wrong. But if detachment is freedom from attachment then it is right. This is a very delicate difference. If detachment is the opposite of attachment then there is something wrong somewhere, because that which is the opposite of attachment is definitely connected with attachment. All the opposites are interconnected. If you love anyone, you go on remembering him.

 

If you hate anyone, even then you go on remembering him. Love and hate are opposites but they are connected. A friend you can perhaps forget, but you cannot forget your enemy. It goes on pricking you like a thorn. You are related with the friend, similarly you are related with the enemy too.

 

– Osho, “The Great Transcendence, #3”