Once it happened that Buddha asked one of his disciples, “Can you find anything which is worthless in life? If you can, then bring it.”
The disciple thought for many days and Buddha enquired every day, “What is happening? Have you not yet found anything worthless?”
And after a month or two the disciple came and he said, “Sorry. I looked all around. I looked very hard. I could not sleep because you had put a question and I had to find the answer. But I could not find anything worthless.”
Then Buddha said, “Now another task. Find anything which has worth. How many days will you take for it? You took months for the first.”
And the disciple laughed. He said, “No need to take any time.” He just took a straw from the ground and gave it to Buddha. And he said, “This is enough proof. This has worth.”
Buddha blessed the disciple and he said, “This is how one should look at life. This is the right attitude – samyak drushti, right vision.” And Buddha said, “I am happy with you that you took months and still you could not find anything worthless. You could not find a single instance of something meaningless. And now for the meaningful, for that which has worth, you have not taken even a single second. Yes, this is how it is. The whole life is sacred.”
Osho (Acharya Rajneesh) in the book Sufis: The people of the Path Vol. 2
Image courtesy: https://www.buddhiststamp.com
Acharya Rajneesh (1931-1990), known later as Osho, was an Indian godman, philosopher, mystic and founder of the Rajneesh movement. He was viewed as a controversial religious leader during his life. He rejected institutional religions, insisting that spiritual experience could not be organised into any one system of religious dogma. He advocated meditation and taught a unique form called dynamic meditation. Rejecting traditional ascetic practices, he asked his followers to live fully in the world but without attachment to it. Pic courtesy: https://www.sannyas.wiki/