Life has No Goals, No Purpose
This video, an edited part of a talk by Osho, changed my life and kickstarted my spiritual awakening.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3hnem5
Osho — Life has NO goals, NO purpose
Why? Well, it deals with the biggest inhibition to peace of mind and wellbeing: the ambition to achieve, which can translate to not enjoying this moment for what it is. Osho’s basic message is that to live, life itself, is THE purpose. It is the biggest thing we can do.
My personal take on goals and desires is that they are not bad in itself but they can be the reason why you are not living in the present moment, and why you are not enjoying yourself in this moment. Goals can give you a perspective that can be detrimental. Looking at life through the lens of your goals: where if you achieve them, you are good and if not, you are bad, makes us feel bad or neutral about ourselves and our journey most of the time. Which is not what we should want. To me the two biggest problems with goals are: self-judgement in relationship to goals and not enjoying the journey of getting there, and this moment in particular.
Osho says: “The goal is in the future, I’m here and the mind which is goal-oriented is bound to be in the future”.
The future is of course non-existent, it is always the now, so when the mind is in the future, you detract yourself from the present moment and the joy it can bring.
Osho says: “Life is a purposeless play. A play of infinite forces, beautiful if you don’t have achievers mind, ugly if you have ambition to become something, to be something, to do something.”
That ugliness is to me reflected by judging or being negative about this moment and not recognising the beauty it has.
To clarify: I do not try to rid my life of goals as Osho advices but I do understand that life itself is perfect and awesome in itself and that we should not judge ourselves based on our goals.
Ridding ourselves of goals and desires would be suppressing a natural phenomenon of the mind and that would also not be good. So if we set goals and work on goals just for play, focus, clarity and contribution it is different from setting goals to achieve, to matter and to get respect and recognition. It is very important to understand why you set that goal and where you are coming from. When you only set the goals that really matter, from a good place, a place of positive contribution, then your goals and the action coming from them are things that you do not HAVE to do, but only something you CAN do and that will make you feel great.
Osho says: “When one person comes to discover that all goals are useless with no exception. All goals are useless. Then there is nothing to do, one just has to be. One relaxes, and one relaxes so totally because there is nothing to do, there is no tension. Suddenly your boundaries melt, like there is not melting in the morning sun. With nothing to do you disappear, the ego disappears, with nothing to do, nothing to be, nothing to achieve, who you will be, the whole identity evaporates. This is enlightenment.”
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Kees Blok is a Certified Coach & Teacher, Coaching People in Amsterdam and Remotely to Reduce Stress and Improve Flow through Meditation, Nonduality and Coaching.