life should never be lived with a plan or strategy to achieve goals, says Osho
Man has been conditioned down the centuries for goals, destinations, purposes, meanings — that’s how man has lived hitherto, with the goal-oriented ideology.
All ideologies are goal-oriented. It is always tomorrow that you have to look to or the next life. It is always somewhere else: the goal, the meaning, the bliss, the paradise — it is never now here. Because of these ideologies you cannot allow yourself to relax in the moment. They go on goading you...you have to attain something, you have to achieve something. Your whole education system is a strategy of poisoning your consciousness; it is a strategy of driving you crazy after goals, it is a strategy of creating ambition in you. And ambition is neurosis. But this has been done for so long that it has become part and parcel of the human mind.
That’s why you go on thinking in terms of goal or destination. It is not you: it is the society that goes on thinking in you, through you; it is your parents, it is your priests, it is your politicians, it is your pedagogues, who go on thinking through you, and you are identified with them. You don’t know that you are separate.
The first thing that you will have to learn is to be a witness to all that goes on in the mind because the mind is a social phenomenon — it is not a God-given gift. It is social exploitation, it is society that makes a mind in you and through that mind controls you, keeps you imprisoned, chained, reduces you to a slave. And you are not the mind. You are the witness who can see the mind very easily. You can see the thoughts moving in your consciousness — those thoughts are the content of the consciousness but they are not consciousness itself. And this is what meditation is all about, creating a distance between you and your mind.
Once the distance is there, you will be surprised that the whole mind structure is your imprisonment — you are free from it because you are separate from it. Once you start enjoying the freedom from the mind all goals will disappear, all destinations will disappear. Mind can only live in goals, because mind can only exist in the future.
Mind cannot exist herenow — try to be herenow and try for the mind to continue. You will find it impossible. Either the mind continues, then you are not herenow, or, you are herenow and the mind is no more there. Mind has no present tense at all, either it is past or it is future — it is always in the non-existential. And God is that which exists. God is not a goal, nirvana is not a goal, enlightenment is not a goal, it is not an achievement — just the contrary. When you have forgotten all goals, when you have dropped the whole achieving mind, enlightenment is a state of no-mind. And enlightenment is nothing special. It is the most ordinary, natural phenomenon. It looks special because you make a goal out of it.
There is no meaning in life. life is utterly beyond meaning. So don’t bother about the meaning. Don’t ask the question: “What is the meaning of a rose flowerIJ” There is none. “And what is the meaning of the sunriseIJ” There is none. There is beauty but no meaning. There is immense beauty but no meaning at all.
life is not a logical process. It is poetry, it is a love song — without any meaning, yet it is utterly beautiful. In fact, when something has a meaning, it can’t be beautiful — it is utilitarian. The rose is beautiful because it has no utility at all. Its sheer being is enough; it need not have any other significance. But a hundred-rupee note has no beauty, it has utility, it has meaning, it has purpose, it is a means to some end.
live a life which has no idea of purpose, which has no search for meaning. live a life of sheer joy and ecstasy, that is the only way to live. Every other way is only to commit a slow suicide.
That’s what happens when you are too much interested in goals: today goes by without being lived and tomorrow remains important — and tomorrow never comes. Whenever it comes it is today. Every day it will happen: each tomorrow will come as today, and you will not be interested in it and you will be interested in tomorrow and the tomorrow is never going to come.
This is how people are simply wasting away. Their lives could have become great oasis but they remain deserts. And the basic reason for people’s dryness is goal-orientation. You say, “I keep thinking of my life in terms of a goal or destination, waiting to wake up some day and find myself enlightened.”
Why “some dayIJ” Why not nowIJ Why postpone itIJ Is it not a trick of the mind to avoid itIJ Postponing is a way of avoiding. Don’t you want to be enlightened right nowIJ If you look deep down, if you watch, you will see the point — you don’t want to become enlightened right now.
courtesy Osho World