Question – Osho – Can a Businessman 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 notknowing.
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?
Source : “The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 6” By Osho