Drop Hope and Hopelessness Together, Says Osho

Questioner: How does hopelessness arise?

You must be hoping too much; it comes out of too much hope.

If you don’t hope, all hopelessness disappears. If you expect too much, frustration is bound to come. if you are trying to succeed, you are bound to fail. Whatsoever you force with too much effort tends to produce the opposite result.

You must have been trying too hard to fulfill some hope, that’s why hopelessness comes. If you really want to get rid of — and everybody wants that — then get rid of hope. Drop all hope and suddenly you will see that with the hope, hopelessness has disappeared, too. Then one comes to an inner tranquillity where no hope exists — and no hopelessness. One is simply calm and quiet and collected — a deep reservoir of energy, a pool of energy, cool.

But for that you have to sacrifice hope. The question shows that you are still hoping…. Go a little deeper and further: if you are really hopeless, hopelessness will disappear.

Still Clinging to Hope

Let me tell it to you another way. Whenever a person says that he is hopeless he simply says he is still clinging to the same hope which has proved to be futile, of which there is no indication of being fulfilled at all. One goes on holding it, hoping against all hope. Then hopelessness continues.

Don’t hope for anything. There is no need because all that you can hope for is already given. What more can you hope for?

You are here, everything is here — just being is enough. But you don’t appreciate, you are asking for some dead mouse, some power trip, some ego trip, some success in the eyes of the world. Those are not going to be fulfilled, even “Alexanders” have failed. Even Alexander dies a poor man, a beggar, because everything that you accumulate is snatched back from you. Empty-handed you come; empty-handed you go.

So why bother about success, riches, power – material or spiritual? Just be… And being is the greatest miracle.

Turn Toward yourself

Do a complete turn, a total turn, and suddenly you are so full of joy, you don’t need anything. In fact, you have so much that you would like to shower it on others.

But things go on moving from one extreme to another. You hope – then by and by the pendulum moves towards hopelessness. If you are too much in love with life, by and by you move towards suicide. If you are too religious, by and by you move the other way and become antireligious.

From religion, too much dogmatic religion, people become too irreligious. When they leave the church, they move to the prostitute. Somewhere a deep balance is needed. Just between the two, exactly between the two, is transcendence. The pendulum goes on moving towards the opposite.

Related » The Paradox of Hope

Stay In the Middle

Somewhere in the middle one has to stop. And if you stop in the middle, time stops with you. And when time stops, all hope, all desires have stopped. You start living. Now, now is the only time and here is the only space.

So, you have lived with hope – now the hope has failed and you are living in hopelessness. Now, let hopelessness also fail; you drop hope and hopelessness together.

You just transcend that attitude which lives in the future. Live here now! Living in hope is living in the future, which is really postponing life. It is not a way of living, but a way of suicide. There is no need for any hope and there is no need to feel hopeless. Live here now. Life is tremendously blissful, it is showering here and you are looking somewhere else. It is just in front of your eyes, but your eyes have moved far away, they look at the horizon. It is within you, but you are not there.

I am not for hope; I am not for hopelessness. I am against all extremism. All excess is futile. Buddha used to say, ‘My path is the middle path.’ That is the path of transcendence.

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