This article is taken from Osho’s book, Being in Love.
There are things which only happen, which cannot be done.
Doing is the way of very ordinary things, mundane things. You can do something to be powerful, you can do something to have prestige; but you cannot do anything as far as love is concerned, gratitude is concerned, silence is concerned. It is significant to understand that “doing” means the world, and non-doing means that which is beyond the world — where things happen, where only the tide brings you to the shore. If you swim, you miss. If you do something, you will undo it; because all doing is mundane.
Very few people come to know the secret of non-doing and allowing things to happen. If you want great things — things that are beyond the small reach of human hands, human mind, human abilities — then you will have to learn the art of non-doing. I call it meditation.
It is a trouble, because the moment you give a name to it, immediately people start asking how to “do” it. And you cannot say that they are wrong, because the very word “meditation” creates the idea of doing. They have their doctorate, they have done a thousand and one things; when they hear the word “meditation: they ask, “So just tell us how to do it.” And meditation basically means the beginning of non-doing, relaxing, going with the tide — just being a leaf in the breeze, or a cloud moving with the winds.
Never ask a cloud, “Where are you going?” He himself does not know; he has no address, he has no destiny. If the wind change he was going to the south, he starts moving towards the north. The cloud does not say to the winds, “This is absolutely illogical. We were moving south, now we are moving north. What is the point of it all?” No, he simply starts moving north as easily as he was moving south. To him, south, north, east, west, don’t make any difference. Just to move with the wind, with no desire, with no goal, nowhere to reach; he is just enjoying the journey. Meditation makes you a cloud — of consciousness. Then there is no goal.
Never ask a meditator, “Why are meditating?” because the question is irrelevant. Meditation is in itself the goal and the way together.
Lao Tzu is one of the most important figures in the history of non-doing. …
Lao Tzu became enlightened sitting under a tree. A leaf had just started falling: it was in the autumn and there was no hurry; the leaf was coming down zigzag with the wind, slowly. He watched the leaf. The leaf came down and settled on the ground, and as he watched the leaf falling and settling, something settled in him. From that moment, he became a non-doer. The winds come on their own, and existence takes care.
Lao Tzu’s whole teaching was the watercourse way: just go with the water wherever it is going, don’t swim. But the mind always wants to do something, because then the credit goes to the ego. If you just go with the tide, the credit goes to the tide, not to you. But if you swim, there is a chance that you can have a greater ego: “I managed to cross the English Channel!”
But existence gives you birth, gives you life, gives you love; it gives you everything that is invaluable , everything you cannot purchase with money. Only those who are ready to give the whole credit of their lives to existence realize the beauty and the benediction of non-doing.
It is not a question of doing. It is a question of being absent as an ego, letting things happen.
Let go — just these two words contain the whole experience.
In life you are trying to do everything. Please, leave a few things for not-doing, because those are the only valuable things.
There are people who are trying to love, because from the very beginning the mother is saying to the child, “You have to love me because I am your mother.” Now she is making love also a logical syllogism — “because I am your mother.” She is not allowing love to grow on its own, it has to be forced.
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The wives are telling husbands, “You have to love me, I am your wife.” Strange. Husbands are saying, “You have to love me. I am your husband, it is my birthright.” Love cannot be demanded. If it comes your way, be thankful; if it does not come, wait. Even in you’re waiting, there should be no complaint, because you don’t have any right. Love is nobody’s right, no constitution can give you the right to experience love. But they are all destroying everything, the wives are smiling, husbands are hugging.
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We have created a society which believes only in “doings,” while the spiritual part of our being remains starved because it needs something which is not done but happens. Not that you manage to say “I love you,” but that suddenly you find yourself saying that you love. You yourself are surprised by what you are saying. You have not rehearsed it in your mind first and then repeated it, no; it is spontaneous.
And in fact, the real moments of love remain unspoken. When you are really feeling love, that very feeling creates around you a certain radiance that says everything that you cannot say, that can never be said.
But instead we manage everything, we turn everything into a “doing” and the ultimate result is that slowly hypocrisy becomes our very characteristic. We forget completely that it is hypocrisy. And in the mind, in the being of a person who is a hypocrite, anything of the world of non-doing is impossible. You can go on doing more and more; you will become almost a robot.
So whenever you have suddenly experience of happening, take it as a gift from existence and make that moment the herald of a new lifestyle. Just allow a few moments in twenty-four hours when you are not doing anything, just allowing existence to do something to you. And windows will start opening in you, windows that will connect you with the universal, the immortal.
