Osho – A person who wastes his life in accumulating things that can be purchased is simply being stupid, because those are not the things which can give meaning to your life. They don’t have any real value; they have a price but no value. So this is one of the most significant criterions to judge what is essential and what is non-essential: the non-essential can be purchased, can be sold; it is a commodity. The essential is not a commodity. It can neither be sold nor purchased; it has to be grown in one’s being, it is a growth.
Now, a child cannot purchase youth he has to grow. The young man cannot purchase old age, he has to grow. The old man cannot purchase wisdom. We may have lived long and yet he may not have grown inwardly. Growing in age is not really growing up.
Sannyas means making a clear-cut discrimination between the non-essential and the essential and focussing your energy on the essential. The non-essential is needed, it has a certain utility; you need food, you need clothes, you need a shelter — make arrangements for them. But that’s not all, that is only the peripheral.
Don’t sacrifice the essential for the non-essential. The non-essential can always be sacrificed for the essential and then one is not going to be a loser. Bliss is one of those most significant treasures which have to be grown within you. And the most strange thing is that all that is needed to grow into a blissful state is available. It comes with you with birth.
All that is needed is a turning in to look for it, to search for it, to give it an opportunity. Attention is nourishment. When you pay attention to your inner world it starts growing, it is nourished. And that’s the whole art of meditation, the art of turning in.
Source – Osho Book “Going All the Way”
what does “essential” mean here ?