Osho – A religious man is one who is sincere to his inner nature

Osho – Once you become interested in what others say about you, each new act of yours will be a failure. Here it may succeed but this success is absolutely useless because you are never fulfilled by it. You never flow through it. You never come to the fulfillment of your destiny. Your seed remains a seed.

You may accumulate cuttings from newspapers about yourself, but those dead cuttings, certificates, that you put on the wall of your sitting room, are not life. Faces that you carry with you when you go out, smiles that are false, are not life. And by and by, with every new act, you go deeper into lies.

How do you think you can be blissful through these lies? You may attain much of the rubbish of this world but you will lose all of the real. Says Chuang Tzu: Be in Tao, authentically in it, sincerely in it. There is only one sincerity needed of you, and that sincerity is towards Tao – your inner nature, your authentic being.

No other sincerity is needed – let the whole world say you are insincere. That is what Buddha’s father said to him – because Buddha deserted his parents. That is what Buddha’s wife said to him because he deserted her. That is what his whole kingdom said to him because he deserted the whole kingdom.

But he was happy, and he remained sincere to his Tao, his nature. And he said: No other way is possible. If you suffer, you suffer because of your expectations – not because of me. You are here to fulfill yourself. Others are here to fulfill themselves. If they expect something from you this is their problem; they will suffer.

But you need not become false because of it. Be sincere to your inner nature and help others to be sincere to their inner nature. This is what I call a religious man. A religious man is one who is sincere to his inner nature and helps others to be sincere to their inner nature. You are here to fulfill your destiny, and others are here to fulfill theirs.

Don’t expect anything from them, otherwise you will turn them into showmen, you will turn them into liars. Don’t expect anything from anybody, and don’t fulfill others’ expectations of you.