Osho
desire for money is not really the desire for money, it is the desire to expand.
And the same is the case with all other desires.
Men want more power, more fame, longer life, better health, but what are they desiring in these different things?
The same, exactly the same:
they want to be more. They don’t want to remain confined, they don’t want to be limited.
It hurts to feel that you are definable, because if you are definable then you are just an object, a thing, a commodity. It hurts that you have limitations, because to have limitations means to be imprisoned.
But all objects of desire, sooner or later, disappoint.
Money becomes possible one day, and yet expansion has not happened;
you may have a little more freedom of choice, but that does not satisfy.
The desire was for the infinite, and money cannot purchase the infinite.
Yes, you have more power, you are more well-known, but that doesn’t really matter in the long run.
Millions of people have lived on this earth and were very famous, and now nobody even knows their names. Everything has disappeared into dust — dust into dust, not even traces are left.
Where is Alexander the Great? What is he? Would you like to be a dead Alexander the Great or an alive beggar? Ask yourself, and your being will say it is better to be alive and be a beggar than to be dead and be an Alexander.
“ watch carefully……money, power, prestige — nothing satisfies.
On the contrary, they make you more discontented.
Why? — because when you were poor there was a hope that one day the money was going to happen and all would be settled and settled forever, and then you would relax and enjoy. Now that has happened, and there seems to be no sign of any relaxation. In fact, you are more tense than before, you are more anxiety-ridden than before.
“Money has brought a few blessings, but in the same measure it has brought many curses too.
bigger house, but less peace.
bigger bank balance, but bigger madness, anxiety, neurosis, psychosis.
The rich man becomes hopeless. He knows now the money will go on increasing and nothing is going to happen — just death, only death. He has tasted all kinds of things; now he only feels a tastelessness. A kind of death has already happened, because he cannot conceive of how to fulfill that desire for expansion.
“But desire in itself is not wrong. The desire for money, the desire for power, the desire for prestige, are wrong objects for desire — let it be very clear. By having wrong objects of desire, desire itself does not become wrong. You can have a sword and you can kill somebody — that does not make the sword something wrong. You can also save somebody with the same sword. Poison can kill and poison can become medicine too. In the right hands, poison is nectar; in the wrong hands, nectar is poison.
“This is the essential wisdom of all the buddhas of all the ages. What the priests say is one thing; what the buddhas have brought to the world is totally different, it is diametrically opposite.
“Desire has to be purified and transformed, because it is your energy — you don’t have any other energy. How to transform desire? One way, the ordinary way, the mediocre way, is to change the object. Don’t go after money, start going after God. You are frustrated with money — become religious, go to the church, to the temple, to the mosque. Let your desire have a new object called God, which is as illusory as the object called money, even more illusory, because what do you know about God? Money at least is something visible, objective; you have known it, you have seen it. What do you know of God? You have only heard the word. God remains a word unless experienced. God remains an empty word unless you pour some content into it through your own existential experience.