If he attempted to be a great leader, he would have been a failure. He would not have been himself. What he learned under the Bodhi tree was genuine what he lost was fake.
One is not able to foretell success. There are many conditions necessary for worldly success. Happiness, however is mainly concerned with the person. Success is something quite different: competition is stiff, no matter how hard you try there is always someone more cunning, wiser, more violent, careful, diligent than you. Since so many conditions are necessary to become successful it is a societal phenomenon.
Real happiness is success. Buddha and Jesus talked about happiness as success. However, we strive for success. The object of many is to satisfy the ego which means success.
When people say that you have succeeded then really you have lost everything. You have lost your soul, the simplicity that would have enabled happiness to embrace one was lost, and the quiet and silence that one needed to approach God was possibly lost, and all will call you successful.... Finally you have achieved all you wanted but lost yourself in the process.
Therefore, don't aim for success. If you do you will be a failure in life. Think of the road to happiness. Every moment, think of the road to happiness. It may be that the world will call you a failure, but you will be one who has achieved much.
Jesus said: what use is it that a person gains the whole war and loses his soul? Who was successful Alexander the Great or Jesus, who died on a cross? Jesus died with no one looking upon him as being successful. He selected some followers who were country bumpkins who knew little, who abandoned him at the end. Jesus had no status in society, no wealth, no worldly power nothing that we would want.
He was happy, even in carrying the cross, he was happy. Those who nailed him to the cross lived longer but were not happy. Who was really nailed to the cross? Who was really nailed to the cross was it Jesus or rather was it those who nailed Jesus to the cross? That is the question he wants to ask.
This talk was given by the Indian mystic Osho, who died in 1990 and still has a following. His talk was used in this article. A non-Christian Indian mystic gives us a different way of looking at the life of Jesus and what success means for this Indian mystic.
