enjoy!

OSHO
only do that which you enjoy

It is a very simple technique, but in the beginning it looks very hard. If you try, you will find it is simple. If you don't try and only think about it, it will look very hard. The technique is: ONLY DO THAT WHICH YOU ENJOY. If you don't enjoy, don't do it.

Try it -- because enjoyment comes only from your center. If you are doing something and you enjoy it, you start getting reconnected with the center. If you do something which you don't enjoy, you are disconnected from the center. JOY ARISES FROM THE CENTER, AND FROM NOWHERE ELSE. So let it be a criterion, and be a fanatic about it.

YOU ARE WALKING ON THE ROAD; suddenly you recognize that you are not enjoying the walk. Stop. Finished -- this is not to be done.

I used to do it in my university days, and people thought that I was crazy. Suddenly I would stop, and then I would remain in that spot for half an hour, an hour, unless I started enjoying walking again. My professors were so afraid that when there were examinations they would put me in a car and take me to the university hall. They would leave me at the door and wait there: had I reached to my desk or not? If I was taking my bath and suddenly I realized that I was not enjoying it, I would stop. What is the point then? If I was eating and I recognized suddenly that I was not enjoying, then I would stop.

I had joined the mathematics class in my high school. The first day, I went in and the teacher was just introducing the subject. In the middle I stood up and tried to walk out. He said, "Where are you going? Without asking, I won't allow you in again." I said, "I'm not coming back again; don't be worried. That's why I am not asking. Finished -- I am not enjoying it! I will find some other subject which I can enjoy, because IF I CANNOT ENJOY IT I AM NOT GOING TO DO IT. It is torture, it is violence."

And, by and by, it became a key. I suddenly recognized that WHENEVER YOU ARE ENJOYING SOMETHING, YOU ARE CENTERED. Enjoyment is just the sound of being centered. Whenever you are not enjoying something, you are off-center. Then don't force it; there is no need. If people think you crazy, let them think you crazy. Within a few days you will, by your own experience, find how you were missing yourself. You were doing a thousand and one things which you never enjoyed, and still you were doing them because you were taught to. You were just fulfilling your duties.

PEOPLE HAVE DESTROYED EVEN SUCH A BEAUTIFUL THING AS LOVE. You come home and you kiss your wife because it has to be so, it has to be done. Now, a beautiful thing like a kiss, a flower-like thing, has been destroyed. By and by, without enjoying it, you will go on kissing your wife; you will forget the joy of kissing another human being. You shake hands with anybody you meet -- cold, with no meaning in it, with no message in it, no warmth flowing. It is just dead hands shaking each other and saying 'hello'. Then you start, by and by, learning this dead gesture, this cold gesture. You become frozen, you become an ice-cube. And then you say, "How to enter to the center?"

The center is available when you are warm, when you are flowing, melting, in love, in joy, in dance, in delight. It is up to you. Just go on doing only those things which you REALLY love to do and you enjoy. If you don't enjoy, stop. Find something else that you will enjoy. THERE IS BOUND TO BE SOMETHING THAT YOU WILL ENJOY. I have never come across a person who cannot enjoy anything. There are persons who may not enjoy one thing, then another, then another, but life is vast. Don't remain engaged; become floating. Let there be more streaming of energy. Let it flow, let it meet with other energies that surround you. Soon you will be able to see that the problem was not how to become integrated, the problem was that you have forgotten how to flow. In a flowing energy, you are suddenly integrated. It happens sometimes accidentally too, but the reason is the same.

SOMETIMES YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH A WOMAN OR A MAN, and suddenly you feel integrated, suddenly you feel you are one for the first time. Your eyes have a glow, your face has a radiance, and your intellect is no longer dull. Something starts burning bright in your being; a song arises, your walk has a quality of dance in it now. You are a totally different being.

But these are rare moments -- because we don't learn the secret. The secret is: that there be something that you have started to enjoy. That's the whole secret. A painter may be hungry and painting, and still you can see that his face is so contented. A poet may be poor, but when he is singing his song he is the richest man in the world. Nobody is more rich than him. What is the secret of it? The secret is: he is enjoying this moment. WHENEVER YOU ENJOY SOMETHING, YOU ARE IN TUNE WITH YOURSELF AND YOU ARE IN TUNE WITH THE UNIVERSE -- because your center is the center of all.

So let this small insight be a climate for you: DO ONLY THAT WHICH YOU ENJOY, OTHERWISE STOP. You are reading a newspaper and halfway through it you suddenly recognize that you are not enjoying it: then there is no necessity. Then why are you reading? Stop it here and now. If you are talking to somebody and in the middle you recognize that you are not enjoying it, you have just said half a sentence, stop then and there. You are not enjoying, you are not obliged to continue. In the beginning it will look a little weird. But my sannyasins are weird, so I don't think there is any problem. You can practice it.

Nisagar is old, but I can see a childlike quality in her. She can also do it. And I hope she will do it. Within a few days many contacts will be made with the center, and then you will understand what I mean when I go on repeating again and again that THAT WHICH YOU ARE SEEKING IS ALREADY IN YOU. It is not in the future. It has nothing to do with the future. It is already herenow, it is already the case.

The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 4
Chapter #4
Chapter title: Let go of the branch
3 November 1976 am in Buddha Hall