Osho says: Man is capable of receiving immense joy if he only learns how to be grateful.
But don’t go on thinking in terms that you are unworthy, because that has to be transformed into gratitude. It is certain, nobody is worthy. What have you done to be alive? What have you done to have such beautiful eyes? What have you done to have this potentiality of becoming a Gautam Buddha? You have not done anything: it is just coming out of the abundance of existence. Existence has so much that it has to share out of sheer necessity to unburden itself; it is overflowing. And if people remain thirsty. It is their own fault.
Everything that is great in life is abundantly available; just don’t shrink in your unworthiness. It is a beautiful first step to experience it, but then for what we are worthy? Neither for life, nor for love, nor for this beautiful body – we are not worthy for anything; we have just taken all this for granted. This is the irreligious mind.
I don’t call a man irreligious who does not believe in God. I don’t call man irreligious who does not go to the temples or churches. I don’t call a man irreligious if he denies heaven and hell and all that nonsense. But I call man irreligious if he does not feel unworthy of all that he has received and is receiving every moment. With every breath , with every heartbeat life is continuously giving you. The same life is capable of giving immense blissfulness, of which you cannot even have an idea unless you have tested it.
Just change your unworthiness into gratefulness, into thankfulness. And to me, this kind of gratitude is the only true prayer. You don’t have to say anything – just the feeling of gratefulness that I don’t deserve, I don’t see why so much has been given to me and so much goes on showering on me. What can I do expect be grateful?
This gratefulness should sink deep in your consciousness, in your very fibres and cells of body. You will simply become gratefulness, then it is prayer. And the things that are called prayer are just false. Millions of temples and churches and synagogues, and millions of people continuously praying… but their prayers are false because they are always asking for something. They are never thanking for what they have already received.
It is not in the words, it is prayerfulness. And prayerfulness means only one thing, gratefulness – a gratitude that goes on sinking deep into your being for everything: for trees being green, for rain coming down to quench the thirst of the earth. And when the first rains come, the sweet smell coming from the earth is earth’s gratitude. And the trees becoming green, and bringing millions of flowers, that is earth’s thankfulness, that is earth’s prayer. That’s how you should be; that’s how your prayer should be – nothing but a gratefulness.
Slowly, slowly man goes on forgetting what complaint is, what grudge is. As he becomes more attuned with gratefulness, he forgets completely that he has to ask for something. Things are coming without his asking. He has just to keep his doors open and the guest comes. He has just to wait, and wait lovingly, prayerfully.
Osho, From the book ‘Ten Non-Commandments’