Osho Quotes on Being Hurried

Osho Quotes on Hurry and Haste

1. Mind is always in a hurry, and mind is always in search of instantaneous realizations. To wait, for the mind, is very difficult, almost impossible.
2. Haste always makes waste, because in haste your mind is very much topsy-turvy and you are bound to make mistakes. And if haste creates delay in small matters, it will create enormous delays in matters pertaining to the journey to the ultimate.
3. There is no hurry anywhere else except in your mind. If you really want to be in a state of peace and joy, you will have to unlearn your old habit for achieving things quickly, fast.
4. That is one of the problems with the Western mind — hurry. People want everything immediately. They think in terms of instant coffee, instant meditation, instant enlightenment.
5. If you are in a hurry, if you are in haste, you will never know the taste of meditation. The taste of meditation needs great patience, INFINITE patience. Meditation is simple, but you have become so complex that to relax it will take time. It is not the meditation that is taking time — let me remind you again — it is your complex mind. It has to be brought down to a rest, to a relaxed state. THAT takes time.
6. There are religions born in India and religions born outside India; the religions born outside all believe in one life — that is, seventy years. Naturally, one is in a hurry; one has to be in a hurry — such a small life and so much to do, so much to experience, so much to explore. That’s why the Western mind is speedy, wanting to do everything faster and faster, quickly, because his conception of life is too small. You cannot blame him. The religions born in India have an eternal expanse — life after life. There is no hurry, there is no haste.
7. Life is not short; life is eternal, so there is no question of any hurry. By hurrying you can only miss. In existence do you see any hurry? Seasons come in their time, flowers come in their time, trees are not running to grow fast because life is short. It seems as if the whole existence is aware of the eternity of life. We have been here always, and we will be here always — of course not in the same forms, and not in the same bodies. Life goes on evolving, reaching to higher stages. But there is no end anywhere, and there has been no beginning anywhere either. You exist between a beginningless life and an endless life. You are always in the middle of two eternities on both sides. Your conditioning has given you the idea of one life. The Christian idea, the Jewish idea, the Mohammedan idea — which are all rooted in the Jewish conception that there is only one life — has given the West a tremendous madness for speed. Everything has to be done in such a hurry that you cannot enjoy doing it, and you cannot do it in its entire perfection. You somehow manage to do it and rush to another thing.
8. The Western man has been living under a very wrong conception: It has created so much tension in people’s minds that they can never be at ease anywhere; they are always on the go, and they are always worried that one never knows when the end is coming. Before the end they want to do everything. But the result is just the opposite; they cannot even manage to do a few things gracefully, beautifully, perfectly. Their life is so much overshadowed by death that they cannot live joyously. Everything that brings joy seems to be a wastage of time. They cannot just sit silently for an hour, because their mind is saying to them, “Why are you wasting the hour? You could have done this, you could have done that.” It is because of this conception of one life that the idea of meditation never arose in the West. Meditation needs a very relaxed mind, with no hurry, with no worry, with nowhere to go… just enjoying moment to moment, whatever comes. In the East, meditation was bound to be discovered, just because of the idea of life’s eternity — you can relax. You can relax without any fear, you can enjoy and play your flute, you can dance and sing your song, you can enjoy the sunrise and the sunset. You can enjoy your whole life. Not only that, you can enjoy even dying, because death too is a great experience, perhaps the greatest experience in life. It is a crescendo. In the Western concept, death is the end of life. In the Eastern concept, death is only a beautiful incident in the long procession of life; there will be many, many deaths. Each death is a climax of your life, before another life begins — another form, another label, another consciousness. You are not ending, you are simply changing the house.
9. In the East it is believed that you have millions of lives: there is no hurry, time is not short, no need to be worried about it; enough to waste and even enough always there is reserve — it is eternal. You will be born again and again, again and again — it is a circle; you go, you come again, you go, you come again, so there is no need to be worried about time. That’s why in the eyes of the West the East looks lethargic, lazy, not doing anything. Nobody is worried, people can relax under the trees — no hurry; but this no-hurry helps religion. The mind which is too time-conscious may create many materialistic miracles but it will miss the inner dimension. Because the inner dimension is approached only when you are absolutely patient. You will miss many things if you are patient, that is right, but you will never miss yourself.
10. In India we have not felt time so much because we have a conception of a circle of continuous births. So each time you die, it is not death — again you are reborn. So, really, India destroyed the concept of death totally. It is not a death at all if you are reborn again. That’s why India never became time conscious. We are so lethargic, and we can waste time so easily. The reason is that death is not there in the Indian mind; after death there is birth. So time is infinite, and there is no hurry. But the American mind, the Western mind, has become very time conscious, and the reason is Christianity — because once you say that there is only one life and that this death is going to be the final one, that there is no rebirth, then death becomes very meaningful. And everything has to be taken in reference. If death is so final and occurs only once, time becomes very valuable. It cannot be lost. And a strange phenomenon happens: the more you become conscious of time, the less you can use it. You can only hurry and run. The less you can use it, because you are in such a hurry. And to use time you need a very, very patient attitude, a very slow-moving attitude; then only can you use it.
11. The present has no space in it for the mind, the mind cannot move in it. You can be in the present but mind cannot be. Mind is a monkey — it jumps from one branch to another, it goes on jumping. It cannot stay in any place, it cannot remain patient, there is always a hurry.
12. You will be able to find the mystery of life only if you enter through the door of surrender. If you bow down, if you pray, you will be able to reach the center of love. Courting God is almost as good as courting a woman. One needs to approach Him with a heart full of love, gratitude and humility. And there is no hurry! Any haste on your part, and you miss. A great deal of patience is required. Your haste… and His heart will be closed. Even rushing things is an act of aggression. Hence those who set out in search of God, their life-style is contained in two words: prayer and patience. So the scriptures begin with prayer and they end with awaiting. The search therefore, begins with the prayer.
13. It is only the Western mind which has created the proverb that time is money. In the East, things go slowly; there is no hurry — one has the whole of eternity. We have been here and we will be here again, so what is the hurry? Enjoy everything with intensity and totality. So, one thing: because of the idea of one single life, the West has become too concerned about being young, and then everything is done to remain young as long as possible, to prolong the process. That creates hypocrisy, and that destroys an authentic growth. It does not allow you to become really wise in your old age, because you hate old age; old age reminds you only of death, nothing else.
14. The ego can exist only in a goal-oriented vision; the mind can exist only in the future. The purpose brings future in; the goal creates the space for thoughts to move, desires to arise. And then naturally there is hurry, because life is short. Today we are here and tomorrow we are gone — maybe the next moment. Life is very short. If there is a goal to be achieved, there is bound to be hurry. And there is bound to be worry, a constant worry “whether I am going to make it or not” — a trembling heart, a shaking of the foundations. You will remain almost always in an inner earthquake, you will be always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Have a goal, and sooner or later you will end up on the psychoanalyst’s couch. My vision is that of a goalless life. That is the vision of all the buddhas. Everything simply is, for no reason at all. Everything simply is utterly absurd. If this is understood, then where is the hurry, and for what? Then you start living moment to moment. Then this moment is given to you, a gracious gift from God or the whole or whatsoever you want to call it — Tao, dhamma, logos.
15. This is my idea of being successful: Be a nobody. There is no need for Abraham Lincolns, no need for Adolf Hitlers. Just be ordinary, nobody, and life will be a tremendous joy to you. Just be simple. Don’t create complexities around yourself. Don’t create demands. Whatsoever comes on its own, receive it as a gift, a grace of God, and enjoy and delight in it. And millions are the joys that are being showered on you, but because of your demanding mind you cannot see them. Your mind is in such a hurry to be successful, to be somebody special, that you miss all the glory that is just available. To be ordinary is to be extraordinary. To be simple is to have come home.
16. Truth is worth devoting as much time to as you can. One should not be in the mind in any way or have any hurry; otherwise he is bound to fall victim to some false commodity. In the name of truth, he will have something bogus.
17. Attain to inner accomplishment, innate, with no hope — not going to any goal, not in any hurry, no haste; just enjoying… each moment.
18. The disciple who can wait will find all his questions answered at the right moment. But waiting is a great quality: it is deep patience, it is great trust. The mind cannot wait, it is always in a hurry. It knows nothing about patience; hence it goes on piling questions upon questions without getting the answer.
19.  Meditation is not a hit or miss affair. It needs tremendous waiting; it needs love, trust. It needs a very unhurried approach. In fact, it needs a mind which is not goal-oriented at all. But if you are in a hurry, it will be impossible.
20. My effort is totally different: a new consciousness not a new religion, a new consciousness not a new doctrine. Enough of doctrines and enough of religions! Man needs a new consciousness. And the only way to bring consciousness is to go on hammering from all the sides so that slowly slowly chunks of your mind go on dropping. The statue of a Buddha is hidden in you. Right now you are a rock. If I go on hammering, cutting chunks out of you, slowly slowly the Buddha will emerge. It takes time…. And there is no hurry either. I am not in a hurry, because the problem with hurry is: the more you are in a hurry, the more the whole thing is delayed. And if you are not in a hurry at all, things start happening sooner. I can wait for ever, I can wait infinitely. But the miracle is: if you can wait infinitely, things can happen instantly.
21. The whole idea of hurry is a creation of the mind. Let me say it in this way: mind and time are synonymous; the moment your mind stops, time also stops. The more you are in your mind the more you are in time; the less you are in your mind the more you are out of time.
22. Why be in such a hurry? Relax — if you can relax, you reach to the center sooner. If you are in a hurry you remain on the surface, because a hurried, a tense state of mind, cannot move to the deeper realms of being. Only patience helps you to settle to the bottom, to the very bottom.
23. Gautam Buddha has made it a meditation. He called it upeksha — indifference. Just be indifferent to the mind, and it won’t be a disturbance for long. And it is worthwhile to wait and not be in a hurry, because the very hurry will make your mind more stubborn. If you want to push it away, it will come back with force. You just let it do whatever it wants to do. It is none of your concern, this way or that. Suddenly a watchfulness arises. It takes a little time. It depends on you, how much indifference you can create towards the mind, how much you can be watchful. The mind will become slowly, slowly rejected. It will stop doing its things, because now nobody is interested. For whom to do all the circus?
24. Waiting will be a great difficulty. In the old days initiation was done after a long waiting. Then surrender was easy, and responsibility too could be taken. Now the whole thing has become different, no one is ready to wait. The most acute disease of the modern mind is hurry. The new phenomenon of the modern mind is time consciousness, the basic change that has come in the mind is time consciousness. We have become so time conscious that not for a single moment can we wait. It is an impossibility. That is why this whole age has become childish. There is no maturity anywhere, because maturity is always a by-product of waiting. And waiting is only possible with timeless consciousness, not with time consciousness.
25. Meditation is simply a waiting for the unknown, for the unpredictable, for the incomprehensible. And the more the waiting is pure, the more grace arises out of it. No hurry, no desiring, no expectations, just waiting and millions of things will happen. In fact, the things that are going to happen to a meditator are so vast you can not conceive of them, you can not have even dreamt of them; they are beyond the capacity of the mind to conceive. You just wait and let things happen to you — not according to you, but according to existence itself. Existence has not to be according to you; you have to be in tune with existence, according to existence. This is the only difference between the non meditator and the meditator. The non-meditator always wants existence according to his ideas, and falls naturally into miserable states, because existence is too big; it cannot follow your ideas, your prayers, your expectations, your demands. The proverb is true that man proposes and God disposes — but there is no God to dispose. In fact, in the very proposal, you have disposed of it. You have created a failure for yourself because you wanted to succeed. So there is nothing to expect, nothing to desire. Existence is so abundant that if you are simply waiting it starts showering flowers on you. A life of waiting, without any expectations, is the only religious life I know of.
26. Nature is not in a hurry. Remember: mind is always in a hurry, nature is never in a hurry — nature waits and waits, it is eternal. There is no need to be in a hurry; life goes on and on and on, it is an eternity. But for mind time is short, so mind says, “Time is money.” Life never says that. Life says, “Experience!” — not time. Life waits, can wait: mind cannot wait — death is coming near. There is no death for life, but for mind there is death. Mind always tries to find a shortcut. And to find a shortcut, the easiest way is to create an illusion: think that you are what you want to be — then you have become neurotic. That is what has happened to many people who are in madhouses: they think they are Napoleon or Alexander, or somebody else. They believe it and they behave that way.
27. The mind is always in a hurry, the mind is always speeding; but all great things grow very slowly, very silently, without making any noise.
28. Just concentrate your whole energy on meditation. Become silent, watch your thoughts moving on the screen of the mind. Just by watching, they will disappear one day. Don’t be in a hurry. You cannot do anything except watch and wait. Remember these two key words : watch and wait. Whenever the time is ripe, your watchfulness is perfect, thoughts will disappear — and their disappearance means the opening of the whole existence. This is what I call meditation.
29. Seek, and you will never find — because the very seeking makes you tense. The East says: Seek not, and He will find you. Seek and you will never find, seek and you will seek in vain. Blessed are those who can rest in prayer, who can rest and trust, and who can say, “Okay, whenever you feel like coming, come. I am not in a hurry.” The East is not in a hurry, the East has no time-consciousness. It says, “Okay, if in this life, good; and if you decide to come next life, good. You will find me still here. There is no hurry.” The West is too much in a hurry. In the West the concept of one life has made such a tense knot in the human mind. Only one life? — seventy years? — three score and ten years, and finished? And of these seventy years, twenty-five years are lost in education, for almost twenty-five years you will be sleeping, and for the remainder, shaving and going to the office, coming from the office… and the traffic and the conflict and the children and the court and the divorce — all these things. What is left? If you count everything, you will be simply surprised: not even seven minutes are left for God. A great hurry arises: move fast! Do something! Otherwise, how will you find God? God is not something to be found. It is something you relax in, it is an inner space. When you are not, it is there. And when you are not, you are only not when you are not a seeker. The seeker holds you as an ego. WHO is seeking? The ashram is a totally different concept: you relax, you just be. You do small things. You feel hungry — you eat. You feel tired — you go to sleep, with no hurry, with no worry. You just allow God to come in His own way, in His own time. This is the concept of the ashram.
30. Always to remain in a let-go, relaxed, as if you are not going anywhere. We are here, we have been here always and we will be here always and always; there is no hurry, there is no haste. Then one can taste each moment in its radiance, in its utter benediction.
31. Try to understand this: time exists only for reason. For the heart there is no time, heart exists in timelessness. Only for reason is there time. So mind goes on insisting on haste, hurry, urgency, and mind is always tense. Time is going, flowing, life is becoming less and less every moment. Things should happen instantly — that is the insistence of reason. But the heart knows no time, there are no clocks for the heart. Heart exists timelessly, that’s why the heart can wait — the heart can wait infinitely. If you love, if you have faith, if you trust, then there is no hurry, and then there is no need to wait listlessly. Why not dance while waiting? Why waste this time in listlessness? Why not dance? It will be better when your lover comes if your lover finds you dancing. It will be a good meeting, it will be the right moment.
32. Listen to me, not through your thoughts, your prejudices. Listen to me without your prejudices, just put the mind aside. While listening to me don’t go on interpreting, while listening to me get en rapport with me. Don’t be in a hurry to conclude; that hurry is harmful. You are in such a hurry to conclude, you want to achieve some results so fast, that’s why you go on missing many things. There is no hurry and there is no need to conclude right now. While listening to me, first listen TOTALLY. And then later on you can think about it. If you have listened rightly then your thoughts will not be able to distort the meaning, they will not be able to distract you. Once you have listened rightly, without any interpretation, without any thinking about it, then later on you can bring your whole mind to it. There will be no problem, you will have followed what I have said to you.