The new Osho Life Essentials series focuses on the most important questions in the life of the individual.

Each volume contains timeless and always-contemporary investigations into questions vital to our personal search for meaning and purpose.

Fame, Fortune, and Ambition is the second volume in the series.

About Fame, Fortune and Ambition
“I want you to be rich in every possible way – material, psychological, spiritual. I want you to live the richest life that has ever been lived on the earth.” - Osho

Fame, Fortune, and Ambition examines the symptoms and psychology of preoccupations with money and celebrity. Where does greed come from? Do values like competitiveness and ambition have a place in bringing innovation and positive change? Why do celebrities and the wealthy seem to have so much influence in the world? Is it true that money can’t buy happiness? These questions are tackled with a perspective that is thought-provoking, surprising--and particularly relevant to our troubled economic times. Fame, Fortune, and Ambition includes an original talk by Osho on DVD. This visual component enables the reader to experience the direct wisdom and humor of Osho straight from the source.

Content:
Introduction

1 Success is in the eye of the beholder

2 Neither here nor there

3 Money can’t buy you love

4 dreams and realities

5 Lofty ambitions

Epilogue

 

Exerpt from chapter 2:

Why am I always daydreaming about the future?

Everybody is doing that. Human mind as such is a daydreaming faculty. Unless you go beyond the mind, you will continue to daydream. Because the mind cannot exist in the present. It can either exist in the past or in the future. There is no way for the mind to exist in the present. To be in the present is to be without mind.
You try it. If there is a silent moment when no thought is crossing your being, your consciousness, when the screen of consciousness is absolutely unclouded, then suddenly you are in the present. That is the moment, the real moment -- the moment of reality, the moment of truth. But then there is no past and no future.
Ordinarily, time is divided into these three tenses: past, present, future. The division is basically wrong, unscientific. Because present is not part of time. Past and future only are parts of time. Present is beyond time. Present is eternity.
Past and future are part of time. Past is that which is no more, and future is that which is not yet. Both are non-existential. Present is that which is. The existential cannot be a part of the non-existential. They never meet, they never cross each other's way. And time is mind; past accumulated is what your mind is.
What is your mind? Analyse it, look into it. What is it? -- just the past experiences piled up, accumulated. Your mind is just a blanket term, an umbrella term; it simply keeps, holds, your whole past. It is nothing else. If by and by you take your past out of the bag, the bag will disappear.
If past is the only reality for the mind, then what can the mind do? One possibility is that it can go on chewing, rechewing the past again and again. That's what you call memory, remembrance, nostalgia. You go again and again backwards; again and again to the past moments, beautiful moments, happy moments. They are few and far between, but you cling to them. You avoid the ugly moments, the miserable moments.
But this you cannot do continuously because this is futile; the activity seems to be meaningless. The mind creates a 'meaningful' activity -- that's what daydreaming about the future is.
The mind says, 'Yes, past is good, but past is finished; nothing can be done about it. Something can be done about the future because it is yet to come.' So you choose out of your past experiences those which you would like to repeat again, and you drop experiences that were very miserable, painful; that you don't want to repeat in the future.
So your future dreaming is nothing but past modified, better arranged, more decorated, more agreeable, less painful, more pleasant. This your mind goes on doing. And this way you go on missing reality.
Meditation simply means a few moments when you are not in the mind, a few moments when you slip out of the mind. You slip in reality, in that which is. These existential moments are so tremendously ecstatic that once you taste them, you will stop daydreaming.
Daydreaming will continue unless you start tasting meditation. Unless you are nourished on meditation, you will go on starving and hankering for some food in the future. And you know the future is not going to bring it, because today was future just one day before. Yesterday it was future, and you were daydreaming about it. Now it is there. What is happening? Are you happy? Yesterday was also one day in the future. The past was all part of future one day, and it has slipped -- and the future will also slip. You are befooling yourself in daydreaming.
Become a little more aware and try to bring your consciousness more and more to the facticity of existence. See THIS flower, don't think about THAT flower. Listen to THIS word I am uttering, not to THAT word that I am going to utter. Look at me right now. If you postpone even for a single split moment, you miss me.
And then it becomes a habit, a very ingrained habit. Tomorrow also you will miss me, and the day after tomorrow also, because you will remain the same. Not only that -- your habit of daydreaming will have become more stronger.
…

more books for self-discovery

OSHO PUBLIKATIES
Vianenstraat 48, 1106 DD  AMSTERDAM, Nederland
Tel.: (+31-0)20-6969 372 Fax: (+31-0)20-6915 642
e-mail:info@osho.nl
© Copyright teksten, foto’s en illustraties van Osho: Osho International Foundation
© Copyright Nederlandse teksten van Osho: Osho Publikaties
Voor informatie over kopiëren/publiceren van teksten van Osho, zie: www.osho.com/copyrights