[A sannyasin who is leaving with her husband and child says that she has many wrong attitudes to life such as fear
and hopelessness about herself.]
Osho – Mm, mm… these are great qualities! Life is hopeless! It says nothing about you, it doesn’t say anything about you. Life is hopeless unless you change it. In itself it is hopeless… there is nothing. You have to bring great creativity; only then is there any hope.
Life is a blank canvas. If you simply go on staring at the canvas you will not find any picture arising. You will have to get involved and paint; you will have to splash colours. Only then will the painting arise and will there be meaning and hope. And it will depend on you how beautiful a painting you can make; it will depend on you.
It is good that the canvas is given blank, otherwise what will you do? If a painting were given all ready, then life would be really miserable. Then life would be absolutely hopeless because there would be nothing left for you to do. And without doing something, without being creative, how can you find yourself?
So don’t take it as something wrong; it is something very true. But one need not be confined to it; one can change it. I also say that life is hopeless but it can be transformed into a great hope. And it is good that it is not given ready-made. We are absolutely free to make or unmake it. It is for you to decide whether to paint hell or heaven; it is going to be your choice.
So never blame anybody else: if you paint hell you live in hell. And nobody can paint the canvas for you; you will have to paint your canvas yourself. Nobody at all has any access to your canvas. It is so private, in the innermost core of your being, that only you are there. Nobody else can enter – neither your husband nor your children.
So I don’t see that you should be disturbed by it. And by the side of it comes fear… just lingering by the side. The fear is whether you will remain hopeless or you will create hope, whether you will live with this empty canvas or you will paint something; that is the fear. Let that fear become a challenge; don’t think about it as a problem and don’t surrender to it. Take it as a challenge… and start changing your life!
I don’t see that there is any trouble. Mm? there is work but there is no trouble. It is an uphill task, it is moving towards the mountains; it is hard and difficult and many times you will feel like dropping the whole project…. But whenever that feeling comes just have a little rest and again you will find the energy coming up. Until a man is dead, energy goes on coming up again and again. We are joined with an infinite source of energy. Nothing to be worried about, mm?
Source – Osho Book “Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There”