Great Ectasy comes from doing something useless:Osho:The Times of India: The Speaking Tree

By Osho

You don’t know the usefulness of the useless. In fact, the useful is only useful so far. It has a certain utility, but the useless has no limitation to it.

What is the use of a rose flower? No use, but life would be very empty without rose flowers. What is the use of laughter? It is not a commodity; it does not feed people. If you are hungry, it will not help. If you are ill, it will not help, it is not medicine. If you are fighting with somebody it will not help, it is not an atom bomb. Of what use is laughter? That’s why the people who look at life with the eyes of a utilitarian don’t laugh. They don’t love because what use is love? To them it is wastage, a wastage of energy, time, life. To them it is stupid because it is useless. They earn money rather than falling in love, because money is useful. Love has no utility, but love has grandeur and splendour. Without love what is life?Of what utility is meditation? Sometimes people come to me, and they ask, “What will we get out of meditation?” They are thinking of getting some profit, they want some result. And I say to them, “You are not going to get anything out of it.” Meditation is not a means to some end; it is an end unto itself – that’s why it has no utility.


What utility is there in poetry? That’s why in the countries where people become too money-minded, poetry starts disappearing. Have you watched it happening in America? Politicians, rich people, businessmen – they live long; poets die very soon.It was not so in ancient Greece. In ancient Greece, poets, philosophers, mystics lived very long. In India in the past, yogis and meditators lived very long, but now that is not the case any more. Politicians and actors in India live long.

We measure people by their utility, we reduce people into commodities. I’m not saying don’t do anything useful. I’m saying do useful things but remember that the real and the greatest experience of life and ecstasy come out of doing something useless. It comes through poetry, it comes through painting, it comes through love, it comes through meditation. The greatest joy floods you only when you are capable of doing something useless, useless in worldly eyes. Because it can’t be reduced into a commodity, that’s why they call it useless.Now if you invent something, a gadget, you can patent it and you can earn money out of it. But if you write a beautiful poem, you can’t earn any money out of it; it is just wastage. People ask, “What are you doing? Why are you wasting your life?” But writing poetry, if you really have been into it, is a great joy in itself. Nothing else is needed, you are already rewarded. No other extrinsic reward is going to make any difference to you. The reward is inward, intrinsic; it arises out of the activity. Writing poetry, painting, or playing on the flute – they are not utilities.(Abridged from The Wisdom Of The Sands, courtesy: Osho International Foundation, www.osho.com)