by Osho
Misery comes because we choose. Bliss is when we don’t choose.
7 of Fire: Stress
Struggling with life does not help at all. Struggling is simply destructive; there is no point in it. Effort is not needed.
All private goals are against the goal of the universe itself. All private goals are against the goal of the whole. All private goals are neurotic. One who knows the essential comes to feel, “I am not separate from the whole and there is no need to seek and search for any destiny on my own. Things are happening, the world is moving—call it existence, call it the beyond—existence is doing things. They are happening of their own accord. There is no need for me to make any struggle, any effort; there is no need for me to fight for anything. I can relax and be.”
The essential man is not a doer, the accidental man is a doer. The accidental man is, of course then, in anxiety, tension, stress, anguish, continuously sitting on a volcano—it can erupt any moment, because he lives in a world of uncertainty and believes it is certain. This creates a tension in his being: he knows deep down that nothing is certain.
A rich man has everything that he can have, and yet he knows deep down that he has nothing. That’s what makes a rich man even poorer than a poor man. A poor man is never so poor because still he has hopes: someday or other, destiny is going to shower blessings on him.
Someday or other he will be able to arrive, to achieve. He can hope. The rich man has arrived, his hopes are fulfilled—now, suddenly, he finds nothing is fulfilled. All hopes fulfilled and yet nothing is fulfilled. He has arrived and he has not arrived at all—it has always been a dream journey. He has not moved a single inch.
A man who is successful in the world feels the pain of being a failure as nobody else can feel it. There is a proverb that says that nothing succeeds like success. I would like to tell you that nothing fails like success. But you cannot know it unless you have succeeded. When all the riches are there that you have dreamed about, planned for, worked hard for, then sitting just amidst those riches is the beggar—deep inside empty, hollow; nothing inside, everything outside.
In fact, when everything is there outside, it becomes a contrast. It simply emphasizes your inner emptiness and nothingness. It simply emphasizes your inner beggarliness, poverty. A rich man knows poverty as no poor man can ever know it. A successful man knows what failure is. At the top of the world, suddenly you realize that you have been behaving foolishly. You may not say so, because what is the point of saying it? You may go on pretending that you are very happy—presidents and prime ministers go on pretending they are very happy. They are not. They are just saving their faces. Now, what to say? There is no point even in saying anything—they are not truthful.
In the older ages, people were truer, more authentic. Buddha was a prince. He was going to be the emperor, but he realized that there was nothing in it. He could have pretended. Mahavira was a prince; he was going to be the emperor. He realized that there was nothing in it. They simply declared their realization to the world. They simply said that riches had failed, that kingdoms were not kingdoms; that if you are really seeking the kingdom you will have to seek somewhere else, in some other direction. In this world there is no way to arrive.
If you have a private goal you are going to go mad. Relax! Drop out of the accidental world so you can drop into the essential world. Then one starts accepting things as they are. Then one starts loving things as they are. Then one starts cherishing things as they are. And they have always been beautiful. Once you are not fighting, not going anywhere, you can feel the music, the celestial music that is surrounding you. You can see the infinite beauty and you can feel grateful for it. It is a gift. There is no need to steal it—it is already given to you.
And once you start understanding this, the world takes on a totally new color. Even sometimes when there is pain, you are understanding. Sometimes it hurts—yes. Even then it is not all roses, it cannot be, but you start understanding it. In fact, you start seeing that thorns are there to protect the roses; that night is needed to help the day to be born; that death is needed to refresh life. Once you start understanding, you become positive. Then whatsoever happens, you can always look deeper into its meaning, its significance.
One who has attained to the essential center moves on, dancing in different situations. Sometimes it is hot, sometimes it is cold; sometimes it is joy, sometimes it is sadness—but now everything brings some message from the whole. Everything has become a messenger.
8 of Fire: Traveling
Life is a continuity, always and always. There is no final destination it is going towards. Just the pilgrimage, just the journey in itself is life, not reaching to some point, no goal.
What will you do by getting to a destination? Nobody has asked this because everybody is trying to have some destination in life. But the implications … .
If you really reach the destination of life, then what? Then you will look very embarrassed. Nowhere to go … you have reached the final destination—and in the journey you have lost everything. You had to lose everything. So standing naked at the final destination, you will look all around like an idiot: What was the point? You were hurrying so hard, and you were worrying so hard, and this is the outcome.
Rabindranath Tagore has a story. The story says in song, “I have been searching for God for centuries. Sometimes he was around the moon, but by the time I reached there he had moved to some other star. I saw him at another star, but by the time I reached there he had moved again. This went on and on, but there was great joy in the knowledge that he was there, and one day I was going to find him. How long can he hide? How long can he escape?
“And it happened that one day I reached a house where there was a sign saying that this was the house of God. I had a great sense of relief that my destiny was fulfilled. I went up the steps and I was just going to knock on the door when I had a second thought: ‘What are you going to do if God comes and opens the door? What will you do next? Your whole life has been a journey, a pilgrimage, finding, searching. You are trained as a runner for millions of years, and suddenly you meet God and you don’t have anything to say. What will you say?’”
Have you ever thought about it? That if you meet God by chance, neither will you have anything to say, nor will he have anything to say. You unnecessarily burned yourself out, finished. A final destination means ultimate death.
The Zen master Ikkyu is right when he says, “No final destination, nothing of any value”—everything is just to enjoy and dance and sing. But don’t ask about value; don’t ask what is virtue and what is good. Rejoice in everything, and go on in different pilgrimages knowing perfectly well that life is not going to end anywhere, the journey will continue, the caravan will continue. There is no place where the road ends.
Be on a pleasure trip. Let this life be a joyous journey to nowhere—from nowhere to nowhere. You come from nowhere, you go to nowhere. In the middle you exist. You come out of nothing, you disappear into nothing. In the middle is the flash of being. Enjoy it while it is there. Celebrate it. Don’t destroy it in reaching somewhere; there is nowhere to reach. And, more important, there is nobody inside to reach. The traveler exists not, the traveler is a myth. The pilgrimage is true but the pilgrim is false.
9 of Fire: Exhaustion
You are not to do anything to be happy. In fact you have done too much to become unhappy. If you want to be unhappy, do too much. If you want to be happy, allow things, allow things to be. Rest, relax, and be in a let-go.
Let-go is the secret of life. When you are in a let-go, many things, millions of things start happening. They were already happening but you were never aware. You could not be aware; you were engaged somewhere else, you were occupied.
The birds go on singing. The trees go on flowering. The rivers go on flowing. The whole is continuously happening, and the whole is very psychedelic, very colorful, with infinite celebrations going on. But you are so engaged, so occupied, so closed, with not even a
single window open, no cross-ventilation in you. No sunrays can penetrate you, no breeze can blow through you, you are so solid, so closed, what Leibnitz called monads. You are monads. Monad means something without any windows, with no opening, with every possibility of opening closed. How can you be happy? So closed, how can you participate in the mysteries all around? How can you participate in the divine?
You will have to come out. You will have to drop this enclosure, this imprisonment.
Where are you going? And you think that somewhere in the future there is some target to be achieved? Life is already here! Why wait for the future? Why postpone it for the future? Postponement is suicidal. Life is slow; that’s why you cannot feel it. It is very slow, and you are insensitive; otherwise postponement is the only poison. You kill yourself by and by. You go on postponing—and you go on missing the life that is here and now.
It is very easy to be active, it is very easy to be inactive. There are people who are active, continuously active, restless, day in, day out. That’s what has happened in the West: people have become super-active. They cannot sit in rest even for a single moment. Even sitting in their beautiful, comfortable chairs, they are fidgeting, they are changing their posture. They cannot be at rest. Their whole life is a turmoil; they need something to keep them occupied. They are driving themselves mad through activity.
In the East, people have become very inactive, lazy. They are dying because of their laziness. They are poor because of their laziness. They go on condemning the whole world, as if they are poor because of the world, because of other people. They are poor because they are lazy, utterly lazy. They are poor because action has completely disappeared—how can they be productive? How can they be rich? And it is not that they are poor because they have been exploited; even if you distribute all the money that the rich people in India have, the poverty will not disappear. All those rich people will become poor, that is true, but no poor persons will become rich. Poverty is there, deep down, because of inaction. And it is very easy to choose one polarity: action is male, inaction is female.
One has to do, but not become a doer. One has to do almost as if one is functioning as an instrument of God. One has to do and yet remain egoless. Act, respond, but don’t become restless. When the action is complete, you have responded adequately, go into rest. Work when it is needed to work, play when it is needed to play. Rest, lie down on the beach when you have worked and played. When you are lying down on the beach under the sun, don’t think of work—don’t think of the office, don’t think of the files. Forget all about the world.
Lying in the sun, lie in the sun. Enjoy it. This is possible only when you learn the secret of action through inaction. And then in the office, do whatsoever is needed. In the factory do whatsoever is needed, but even while you are doing, remain a witness: deep down, in deep rest, utterly centered, the periphery moving like a wheel, but the center is the center of the cyclone. Nothing is moving at the center.
This man is the perfect man: his soul is at rest, his center is absolutely tranquil, his periphery in action, in doing a thousand and one things of the world. That’s why I say don’t leave the world, remain in the world. Act in the world, do whatsoever is needful, and yet remain transcendental, aloof, detached, a lotus flower in the pond.
10 of Fire: Suppression
Into the unconscious you go on throwing all the rubbish that society rejects—but remember, whatsoever you throw in there becomes more and more part of you: it goes into your hands, into your bones, into your blood, into your heartbeat.
Through suppression, mind becomes split. The part that you accept becomes the conscious, and the part that you deny becomes the unconscious.
This division is not natural. The division happens because of repression. And into the unconscious you go on throwing all the rubbish that society rejects—but remember, whatever you throw in there becomes more and more part of you: it goes into your hands, into your bones, into your blood, into your heartbeat.
Now psychologists say that almost eighty percent of diseases are caused by repressed emotions: so many heart failures means so much anger has been repressed in the heart, so much hatred that the heart is poisoned.
Why? Why does man suppress so much and become unhealthy? Because the society teaches you to control, not to transform, and the way of transformation is totally different. For one thing, it is not the way of control at all; it is just the opposite.
In controlling you repress. In transformation you express. But there is no need to express on somebody else because the “somebody else” is just irrelevant. Next time you feel angry, go and run around the house seven times and then sit under a tree and watch: Where has the anger gone? You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown it on somebody else—because if you throw it on somebody else, a chain is created because the other is as foolish as you, as unconscious as you. If you throw it on another, and if the other is an enlightened person, there will be no trouble; he will help you to throw and release it and go through a catharsis. But the other is as ignorant as you are—if you throw anger on him he will react. He will throw more anger on you, he is as repressed as you are. Then a chain is created: you throw anger on the other, the other throws anger on you, and you become enemies.
Don’t throw it on anybody. It is the same as when you feel like vomiting: you don’t go and vomit on somebody. Something needs to be vomited, you go to the bathroom and vomit! It cleanses the whole body—if you suppress the vomit, it will be dangerous. And when you have vomited you will feel fresh, you will feel better, unburdened, unloaded, healthier. Something was wrong in the food that you took and the body rejected it. Don’t go on forcing it inside.
Anger is just a mental vomit. Something is wrong that you have taken in and your whole psychic being wants to throw it out. There is no need to throw it out on somebody else. But because people throw it on others, society tells them to control it.
There is no need to throw anger on anybody. You can go to your bathroom, you can go on a long walk—it means that something is inside that needs some activity so that it can be released. Just do a little jogging and you will feel it is released, or take a pillow and beat the pillow, fight with the pillow, and bite the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed. With a five-minute catharsis you will feel unburdened. And once you know this you will never throw it on anybody, because that is absolutely foolish.
The first thing in transformation, then, is to express anger—but not on anybody, because if you express it on somebody you cannot express it totally. You might like to kill the person, but it is not possible; you might want to bite somebody, but it is not possible. But that can be done to a pillow. A pillow means “already enlightened!” The pillow is enlightened, a buddha; it will not react, and it will not go to any court. The pillow will not feel any enmity toward you, it will not do anything. The pillow will be happy, it will laugh at you!
The second thing to remember: Be aware. In controlling, no awareness is needed; you simply do it mechanically, like a robot. The anger comes and there is a mechanism—suddenly your whole being becomes narrow and closed. If you are watchful, control may not be so easy.
Society never teaches you to be watchful, because when somebody is watchful he is wide open. That is part of awareness—one is open. And if you want to suppress something and you are open, it is contradictory; it may come out. The society teaches you how to close yourself in, how to cave yourself in—don’t allow even a small window for anything to go out.
But remember: When nothing goes out, nothing comes in either. When the anger cannot go out, you are closed. If you touch a beautiful rock, nothing goes in. You look at a flower, nothing goes in; your eyes are dead and closed. You kiss a person—nothing goes in, because you are closed. You live an insensitive life.
Sensitivity grows with awareness. Through control you become dull and dead—that is part of the mechanism of control. If you are dull and dead then nothing will affect you, as
if the body has become a citadel, defended. Nothing will affect you, neither insult nor love.
But this control is at a very great cost, an unnecessary cost; then it becomes the whole effort in life: how to control yourself—and then die! The whole effort of control takes all your energy, and then you simply die. And life becomes a dull and dead thing; you somehow carry it.
Awareness is needed, not condemnation—and through awareness, transformation happens spontaneously.
THE SUIT OF WATER (CUPS)
Feelings—The Heart—Emotion
Knowing is cerebral, feeling is total. When you feel, you don’t feel only from the head, you don’t feel only from your heart, you don’t feel only from your guts; you feel from every fiber of your being. Feeling is total, feeling is orgasmic, feeling is organic.
Feelings
In a moment of feeling, you function as a totality. When you think, you function only as the head. When you are sentimental, you function only as the heart. Remember, sentimentality is not feeling, emotionalism is not feeling. Thinking, you are a head—just a part pretending to be the whole. Of course it is false. This perspective is false. Emotional, sentimental, you are the heart—again another part pretending to be the whole, another servant pretending to be the master. Again it is false.
