The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 6. THE NEED TO WIN
The prime minister said, ”But how will this help? This may make him even more energetic. He will
get one rupee and he will eat more. He will not even bother to beg.”
The wise man said, ”Don’t worry, simply do as I say.”
This was done, and the next week, when again the king passed, the boy tried to stop the elephant
but he failed. He was dragged along by it.
What happened? Care entered, anxiety entered. He had to remember, for twenty-four hours a day
he had to remember that he had to go to the temple every evening and put the light on. That became
an anxiety that divided his whole being. Even in his sleep he started to dream that it was evening:
What are you doing? Go and switch on the light and get your one rupee. And then he started to
collect those golden rupees. He had seven, now eight, and then he started to calculate that within so
much time he would have one hundred golden rupees – and then they would grow to two hundred.
Mathematics came in and the fun was lost. And it was only a small thing that he had to do, to put
the light on. Just the work of a single minute, not even that, just a momentary thing. But it became
a worry. It drained him of all his energy.
And if you are drained it is no wonder your life is not fun. You have so many temples and so many
lamps to put on and off, so many calculations to make in your life, it cannot be a fun.
The archer’s skill has not changed, the skill is the same, but the archer, when he is shooting for fun,
has all his skill available. Now although his skill has not changed, the prize divides him. He cares,
anxiety enters, nervousness comes in. He thinks more of winning, now he is not concerned with
shooting. Now the question is how to win, not how to shoot. He has moved from the beginning to the
end. Now the means is not important, the end is important, and whenever the end is important your
energy is divided, because all that can be done is to be done with the means, not the end. Ends are
not in your hands.
Says Krishna in the Gita to Arjuna: ”Don’t be concerned with the end, with the result. Simply do
whatsoever is to be done here and now and leave the result to me, to God. Don’t ask what will
happen, nobody knows. Be concerned with the means and don’t think of the end. Don’t be resultoriented.”
This situation is beautiful and worth linking with Chuang Tzu’s sentences, because Arjuna was an
archer, the greatest India has produced. He was the perfect archer.
But the end entered his mind. He had never worried, it had never happened before. His archery was
perfect, his skill was total, absolute, but looking at the battlefield of Kurukshetra, at the two armies
confronting each other, he became worried. What was his worry? It was that he had friends on both
sides. It was a family affair, a war between cousins, so everybody was interlinked, on both sides
were relatives. All the families were divided – it was a rare war, a family war.
Krishna and Arjuna were on one side and Krishna’s army was fighting on the other side. Krishna
had said, ”You both love me so you will have to divide half and half. One side can have me, and the
other side can have my armies.”
The Empty Boat 115 Osho