Transformation is never gradual, it is always at once
Osho : There is a Jaina story: A man came home tired after the whole day’s work. His wife was giving him a bath – it is an old story, now no wife gives a bath to the husband. His wife was giving him a bath, and while pouring water on his body and cooling his tired limbs, she talked and she said, ”My brother has become a follower of Mahavira, and he is thinking to renounce the world.”
The man laughed and said, ”Thinking? – then he will never leave the world!”
The wife felt hurt, because it was a question of HER brother. She said, ”What do you mean? And I have never seen you going to Mahavira or to Buddha or anybody, and you think you understand?
He is a great scholar and he understands what Mahavira says. And he meditates, worships, and he is a religious man. And you? I don’t see any religiousness in you. I have never seen you praying or meditating. And you have the courage and you dare to say such a thing – that he will never renounce?”
The man stood – he was naked, taking his bath – came out of the bath, went onto the street. The wife cried, ”Are you crazy? What are you doing?”
He said, ”I have renounced.”
He never came back. This is the man – he understood. He never prepared for it; nobody ever knew about him that he was a religious man, but this quality… He reached to Mahavira, he surrendered himself, he became a naked fakir.
The wife came, weeping and crying. Even the wife’s brother came to convince him that ”There is no hurry. Look at me! I have been thinking for twenty years. And you are a madman – is this a way to renounce?”
The man said, ”I don’t bother, is there any other way? For twenty years you have been thinking, for twenty lives you will continue thinking. And whenever you renounce you will renounce this way, because this is the only way – at once!”
You see a thing clearly and it happens. The question is of clarity. An immediate look into the nature of things, then there is no question of changing somewhere in the future. No one changes in the future – transformation is always here and now. This moment is the only moment something can happen. There is no other moment.
Source: “Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing” – Osho