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Osho on Businessman doing
meditation
Question: I am a businessman, Can I
also be a Meditator ?
Osho: One has to do something in
life. Somebody is a carpenter and somebody is a king, and
somebody is a businessman and somebody is a warrior. These are
ways of livelihood, these are ways of getting bread and butter,
a shelter. They can't change your inner being. Whether you are a
warrior or a businessman does not make any difference: one has
chosen one way to earn his livelihood, the other has chosen
something else. Meditation is life, not livelihood. It has
nothing to do with what you do; it has everything to do with
what you are.
Yes, business should not enter into your being, that is true. If
your being also has become businesslike, then it is difficult to
meditate and impossible to be a sannyasin... because if your
being has become businesslike, then you have become too
calculative. And a calculative person is a cowardly person: he
thinks too much, he cannot
take any jumps. And meditation is a jump: from the head to the
heart, and ultimately from the heart to the being.
You will be going deeper and deeper, where calculations will
have to be left behind, where all logic becomes irrelevant. You
cannot carry your cleverness there. In fact, cleverness is not
true intelligence either; cleverness is a poor substitute for
intelligence. People who are not intelligent learn how to be
clever. People who are intelligent
need not be clever; they are innocent, they need not be cunning.
They function out of a state of not-knowing.
If you are a businessman, that's okay. If Jesus can become a
meditator and a sannyasin, and ultimately a christ, a buddha...
and he was the son of a carpenter, helping his father, bringing
wood, cutting wood. If a carpenter's son can become a buddha,
why not you? Kabir was a weaver. He continued his work his whole
life; even after his enlightenment he was still weaving; he
loved it!
Many times his disciples asked him, prayed to him with tears in
their eyes, that "You need not work anymore -- we are here to
take care of you! So many disciples, why go on in your old age
spinning, weaving?"
And Kabir would say, "But do you know for whom I am weaving, for
whom I am spinning? For God! -- because everyone is now a
god to me. It is my way of prayer."
If Kabir can become a buddha and still remain a weaver, why
can't you? But business should not enter into your being.
Business should be just an outside thing, just one of the ways
of livelihood. When you close your shop, forget all about your
business. When you come home, don't carry the shop in your head.
When you are home with your wife, with your children, don't be a
businessman. That is ugly: that means your being is becoming
colored by your doing. Doing is a superficial thing.
The being should remain transcendental to your doing and you
should always be capable of putting your doing aside and
entering into the world of your being. That's what meditation is
all about. So, Remain a businessman, but for a few hours forget
all about it. I am not here to tell you to escape from your
ordinary life. I am here to tell you the ways and the means, the
alchemy, to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Be a
businessman in your shop and don't be a businessman at your
home.
And sometimes for a few hours forget even the home, the family,
the wife, the children. For a few hours just be alone with
yourself. Sink deeper and deeper into your own being. Enjoy
yourself, love yourself. And slowly slowly, you will become
aware, a great joy is welling up, with no cause from the outside
world, uncaused from the outside. It is your own flavor, it is
your own flowering. This is meditation.
Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass
grows by itself. Sit silently, doing nothing, and wait for the
spring. It comes, it always comes, and when it comes, the grass
grows by itself. You will see great joy arising in you for no
reason at all. Then share it, then give it to people! Then your
charity will be inner. Then it will not be just a means to
attain to some goal; then it will have intrinsic value. My
sannyas particularly is nothing but living in the ordinary
world, but living in such a way that you are not possessed by
it; remaining transcendental, remaining in the world and yet a
little above it. That is sannyas.
It is not the old sannyas, Ram Prasad: in that you have to
escape from your wife, your children, your business, and go to
the Himalayas. That kind of thing has not worked at all. Many
went to the Himalayas, but they carried their stupid minds with
them. The Himalayas have not been of any help to them; on the
contrary, they have destroyed the beauty of the Himalayas,
that's all. How can the Himalayas help you?
You can leave the world, but you cannot leave your mind here.
The mind will go with you; it is inside you. And wherever you
are, your same mind will create the same kind of world around
you. You can leave the world... you will be the same. You will
again create the same world, because you carry the blueprint in
your mind. It is not a question of leaving the world, it is a
question of changing the mind, renouncing the mind. That's what
meditation is.
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