Question3
Osho,
I don't know where I'm going, and I don't know what there is to do. Do I have what I need for this adventure?
There is no need to know where you are going.
There is no need to know why you are going.
All that is needed to be known is that you are going joyously, because if you are going joyously you cannot go wrong.
If you are going dancing, singing, celebrating, the direction does not matter, the road does not matter, the goal does not matter. Every moment becomes paradise.
Let me repeat it again to you: there is no goal in existence. There are only moments, and the art is to squeeze the moment, its whole juice, herenow. And as moments go on coming into your hands, go on squeezing all the juices that existence contains for you.
In fact, you are where you are supposed to be, so if you are going somewhere it is just a morning walk. Don’t be worried. There is no goal, you can turn back from any point. You are not going anywhere!
My whole teaching is just to be here and let all the blissfulnesses of existence shower on you.
Why should you go anywhere? And anyway, where will you go? Trains are there, buses are there, planes are there and you can go wherever you want – to the moon you can go. In just a few years you may be able to go to Mars; in a few more years you may be able to go to some star. But that is all stupidness – what are you going to do standing on the moon? Have you ever thought about it? You will look utterly weird to yourself: “What are you doing here?”
Life is the way.
Life has no goal.
That’s why I love the word Tao. Tao means the way, with no goal. Simply the way. It was courageous of Lao Tzu, twenty-five centuries ago, to tell people that there is no goal and we are not going anywhere. We are just going to be here, so make the time as beautiful, as loving, as joyous as possible. He called his philosophy Tao, and Tao means simply “the way.”
Many asked him, “Why have you chosen the name Tao? Because you don’t have any goal in your philosophy….”
He said, “Specifically for that reason I have chosen to call it ‘the way,’ so that nobody forgets there is no goal, but only the way.”
And the way is beautiful, the way is full of flowers. And the way goes on becoming more and more beautiful as your consciousness goes on becoming higher. The moment you have reached the peak, everything becomes so sweet, so ecstatic, that you suddenly realize that this is the place, this is home. You were unnecessarily running here and there.
Never think of going somewhere.
Think in terms of transforming yourself here.
“There” is a cunning strategy of the mind to deceive you. The mind always makes you interested in things far away, there, so that you can be led away from here. Or at least your attention is no longer here, it is there. And you will never be there. Going from here to there, slowly, slowly you acquire the habit of always looking there, so wherever you reach, that place is no longer in your focus – your goal has shifted somewhere else.
In India there is an ancient proverb – diya tale andhera – “there is darkness under the lamp.” The lamp gives light all around, and just exactly underneath it there is darkness. This is the situation of man. You are capable of seeing everywhere, all around, but you are incapable of seeing where you are, who you are.
So cancel all the tickets you have booked! There is nowhere to go; just being here is so blissful.
Close your eyes, so that you can see the reality of the here.
There and then are only fictions.
Here and now are the only realities.
-Osho, “Sermons in Stones, #15”