From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 23. CONSCIENCE: A COFFIN FOR CONSCIOUSNESS
only then can you find the intrinsic value of any act. Otherwise you have to live the life of tension,
stretched between here and there, this and that faraway goal.
The pseudo-religions say, ”Of course, this life is only a means so you cannot be involved in it totally;
it is only a ladder you have to pass. It is not something valuable, just a stepping-stone. The real
thing is there, far away.” And so it always remains faraway. Wherever you will be, your real thing will
be always faraway. So wherever you will be, you will be missing life.
I don’t have a goal.
When I was in the university I used to go for a walk in the morning, evening, anytime.... Morning and
evening absolutely, but if there was another time available, I would also go for a walk then, because
the place and the trees and the road were so beautiful, and so covered with big trees from both
sides that even in the hottest summer there was shadow on the road.
One of my professors who loved me very much used to watch me: that some days I would go on
this road, some days on that road. There was a pentagon in front of the gate of the university, five
roads going in five directions, and he lived just near there; his were the last quarters near the gate.
He asked me, ”Sometimes you go on this road, sometimes on that road. Where do you go?”
I said, ”I don’t go anywhere. I just go for walking.” If you are going somewhere then certainly you
will go on the same road; but I was not going anywhere, so it was just whimsical. I just came to the
pentagon and I just used to stand there for a little while. That was making him more puzzled: how I
figure it out, what I figure out standing there?
I used to figure out where the wind was blowing. Whichever way the wind was blowing I would also
go; that was my way. ”So sometimes,” he would say, ”You have been going on the same road for a
week continually; sometimes you go only one day, and the next day you change. What do you do
there? And how do you decide?”
And I told him, ”It is very simple. I stand there and I feel’ which road is alive – where the wind is
blowing. I go with the wind. And it is beautiful going with the wind. I jog, I run, whatsoever I want to
do. And the wind is there, cool, available. So I just figure it out.”
Life is not going somewhere.
It is just going for a morning walk.
Choose wherever your whole being is flowing, where the wind is blowing. Move on that path as far
as it leads, and never expect to find anything.
Hence I have never been surprised, because I have never been expecting anything – so there is no
question of surprise: everything is surprise. And there is no question of disappointment: everything
is appointment.
If it happens, good; if it does not happen, even better.
From Ignorance to Innocence 332 Osho