[To a new Indian sannyasin:]
Osho – So you have arrived – I have been waiting for you. You had to come and you have arrived in the right time…. And remember a few things. The most important is that now meditation should become the very center of your life; everything else should be secondary.
Nothing has to be dropped, nothing has to be renounced. Just meditation becomes the most important, significant thing; everything else follows it. Out of twenty-four hours at least one hour has to be absolutely devoted to meditation, whatsoever the cost. Sometimes it is difficult – one is too busy, too occupied – but if it is the first preference then other things can be dropped.
A little less money will do, but a little less meditation will not do, because ultimately, finally, one finds that the only richness comes through meditation. When one is dying one comes to know that only the time that has been devoted to meditation has been saved; everything else and all the time devoted to it, has gone down the drain.
Nothing is left of it, it has been a sheer wastage. Meditation is the only way to save time and life energy. And one who has been meditating has something to take with himself beyond death, a treasure. He is not going empty-handed, he is going full, overflowing.
Death proves how a man has lived. If a man can go into death dancing, joyously, silent, blissful, that means that he has lived rightly . because death is the climax of life, the essence of the whole of life. It gives absolute proof how one has lived.
People die crying, weeping, clinging. They don’t want to die: a little more life… Everything is unfinished, no desire has been fulfilled, all longings are waiting there and time is finished. They die like beggars. Their whole life must have been wrong, otherwise one dies like an emperor.
So the first thing: meditation has to become the center of your existence. And once it becomes the center it starts influencing everything else, it starts coloring everything else. Your work slowly slowly becomes meditation, your relationship slowly slowly becomes meditation.
A moment comes to the meditator when he need not meditate separately; it spreads over his life – a subtle flavor, an aroma. Then whatsoever he is doing – walking, talking, sleeping – he remains in meditation.
So the second thing to be remembered: only in the beginning is meditation a separate phenomenon that you have to give special time to. But that is only for the beginning, only for the learner. Once you have learned the art, then you have to bring the quality to everyday life. One can drive meditatively, one can write meditatively, and the quality is so definitely different that when you know it you see the difference: each act becomes a deep relaxation; it is no more tense, it is no more worry.
And if a man can work without tension his work becomes play, his work becomes worship. I am not for renunciation. My whole approach is how to make life more joyous, how to transform this life into a rejoicing, a constant rejoicing. So remember that, the third thing: my approach is not life-negative, it is life-affirmative. Life is God to me, and to live intensely and passionately is the only prayer I prescribe.
And keep in mind that sooner or later you have to come and be part of the family here. Now this is your home – wherever you are you will be in a foreign country. So whenever it is possible – and soon it will be possible, once the seed is there in the heart…
So keep the seed in the heart, let it sink there, and everything will start happening. But this is your home and you have to come here.
Source: from Osho Book “The Rainbow Bridge”