Darshan Diary

“Question : IF LIFE IS A BLISSFUL COSMIC PLAY, THEN WHY ARE ALL BEINGS SUFFERING?

Osho : You, please, forget about all beings. You don't know. I'm not suffering. You may be suffering; don't talk about all beings. You don't even know yourself. How can you know the other? Just talk about yourself, because things are already much too complicated.

When you start talking about all, you will make it almost impossible for yourself to understand the thing. Just you will do. Say only this: "Why am I suffering? If life is a blissful cosmic play, then why am I suffering?" -- only this much will do. Forget about all beings -- that is none of your business. If they want to suffer let them suffer. You, please, decide only for yourself. Even that is too much, not easy.

Why are you suffering?
The ego suffers.

The whole is a cosmic play; it is beautiful. It is a tremendous celebration -- moment to moment, moving to higher and higher peaks.

You are suffering because you are not part of it. The ego is never part of the whole; the ego tries to be separate. The ego tries to have its own plans, to have its own ideas, to have its own goals. That's why you are suffering.

If you become part of the whole there is no suffering. Suddenly you start floating with the stream. You are no longer moving upstream. You are no longer even swimming, because then too there is effort. You are just floating with the stream: wheresoever it leads, there is the goal. You have dropped private goals; you have accepted the destiny of the whole. Then you live easily, you die easily. There is no resistance.

Resistance is suffering -- and you cannot win against the whole. So every moment you resist you fail, you suffer.

Try to live without your ego, and there is no more suffering. Suffering is an attitude; it is not an actuality. You fall ill: you immediately start fighting with illness; suffering arises.

If you accept it, suffering disappears. Then you know that God wills this; there must be some point in it. It must be needed for your growth.

You ask me if life is a blissful cosmic play, then WHY... then why is there suffering. There is suffering because you are still not part of the cosmic play. You have your own small drama, and you want to play it. You are not part of the whole; you are trying to create a small world of your own. Every ego creates its own world, that's the problem.

Float with the whole, and suffering disappears. Suffering is symptomatic: it shows you must be fighting the whole, that's all. You are not suffering for your sins committed in the past; you are suffering for the sin that you are continuing right now, committing right now. The sin is simple: to fight, not to accept.

The word "sin" is beautiful. It comes from a root which means "to separate." The word "sin" itself comes from a root which means to separate: you are separated, that is the only sin.

Just the opposite is the concept of Patanjali -- He insists on "yoga," to be joined together.

..sin means to be separate; yoga means to be joined together again. If you are joined together again with the whole, there is no suffering.

The more you go far away from the whole, the more you suffer. The more you are, the more you will suffer.”
― Osho, Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega Volume 10

“Question : BELOVED OSHO, I AM JUST CURIOUS. HAVE YOU READ THE BOOK ZORBA THE GREEK BY KAZANTZAKIS? I LOVE IT SO MUCH. IS NOT ZORBA EXACTLY THE WAY YOU WANT US TO BE? AT LEAST THAT IS HOW I UNDERSTAND YOUR TEACHING.

Osho : I have been Zorba the Greek for many lives. I need not read the book; that is my autobiography. And that's what I would like you to be.

Take life joyfully, take life easily, take life relaxedly, don't create unnecessary problems.

Ninety-nine percent of your problems are created by you because you take life seriously.

Seriousness is the root cause of problems. Be playful, and you will not miss anything - just be alive, be abundantly alive. Live each moment as if this is the last moment. Live it intensely; let your torch burn from both sides together. Even if it is only for one moment, that is enough.

One moment of intense totality is enough to give you the taste of God.

One moment of clarity, totality, spontaneity, and you burn like a flame. Just one moment is enough! One moment will make you eternal; you will enter from that moment into eternity.

Live this moment as totally as possible.
Let a little irrationality always be there. That makes you capable of playing, being playful; that helps you to relax.

And don't wait for next time...

Not that you will not be born again; you will be born again, but then you will forget. Then you will start again from ABC.

..next time you don't remember - that's the problem. You lose all memory of the past life.

Then again you start from ABC......

So I would not say to you to wait for the next time. Take hold of this moment!
Even if you are eighty-five you can start living. And what is there to lose when you are eighty-five? If you go barefoot on the beach in the spring, if you collect daisies - even if you die in that, nothing is wrong. To die barefoot on the beach is the right way to die. To die collecting daisies is the right way to die. Whether you are eighty-five or fifteen doesn't matter. Take hold of this moment. Be a Zorba.

You ask: "I am just curious. Have you read the book Zorba the Greek? I love it so much."

Only loving it won't help. Be it! Sometimes it happens that you love the opposite of what you are. You enjoy the opposite of what you are - because it releases fantasies in you. It gives you a vision of how you would like to be: that's the appeal of a Zorba.

But loving the book will not help. That's what people have been doing down the ages.

Be a Zorba. Remember it: loving books is not going to help, only being helps.

"I love it so much. Is not Zorba exactly the way you want us to be?"

Not exactly, because I would not like many Zorbas in the world. Not exactly, because that would be ugly and monotonous and boring. You be a Zorba in your own way - not exactly.

Never try to imitate anybody, never be an imitator; that is suicide. Then you will never be able to enjoy. You will always remain a carbon copy, you will never be the original.

And all that happens in life - truth, beauty, good, liberation, meditation, love - happens to the original, never to the carbon copy. Beware - not exactly; that is dangerous. If you simply start following Zorba and start doing things as he is doing them you will get into trouble. That's how people have done it.

Learn from Zorba, learn the secret, but never try to imitate. Learn the climate, appreciate, go into it, sympathize with it, participate with Zorba, and then go on your own. Then be yourself.”
― Osho

“Question : OSHO, WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO FORGIVE, TO STOP CLINGING TO HURTS LONG SINCE PAST?

Osho : The ego exists on misery - the more misery the more nourishment for it. In blissful moments the ego totally disappears, and vice versa: if the ego disappears, bliss starts showering on you.

Joy is like poison to the ego, and misery is like vitamins.

You will have to understand the whole mechanism of the ego. If you try to forgive, that is not real forgiveness. With effort, you will only repress. You can forgive only when you understand the stupidity of the whole game that goes on within your mind.

You will repress in one form; it will assert in another form - sometimes so subtle that it is almost impossible to recognize it, that it is the same old structure, so renovated, refurnished, redecorated, that it looks almost new.

The ego lives on the negative, because the ego is basically a negative phenomenon; it exists on saying no. No is the soul of the ego. And how can you say no to bliss? You can say no to misery, you can say no to the agony of life. How can you say no to the flowers and the stars and the sunsets and all that is beautiful, divine? And the whole existence is full of it - it is full of roses - but you go on picking the thorns; you have a great investment in those thorns.

The first thing to remember is: ego is the most negative phenomenon in existence. It is like darkness.

Darkness has no positive existence; it is simply absence of light...that's why you cannot do anything directly with darkness.

If you try to fight with it, you will be defeated. Darkness cannot be defeated by fighting. It is impossible, for the simple reason that darkness does not exist. If you want to do anything with darkness you will have to go via light. If you don't want darkness, bring light in. If you want darkness, then put the light off. But do something with light; nothing can be done with darkness directly.

I don't say to you: Don't hate; love. I don't say to you that drop all your sins and become virtuous. I say: Bring light into your being. Don't be bothered by all these fragments of darkness.

And at the very center of darkness is ego. Ego is the center of darkness. You bring light - the method is meditation - you become more aware, you become more alert. Otherwise you will go on repressing, and whatsoever is repressed has to be repressed again and again and again.

That I have to do; that's the function of the Master, to destroy your ego. And you can become very revengeful, and you can carry deep wounds through it.

People go on carrying things that they hate. They live in their hatred. They go on fingering their wounds so they don't heal; they don't ALLOW them to heal - their whole life depends on their past.

Unless you start living in the present, you will not be able to forget and forgive the past.

I don't say to you: Forget and forgive all that has happened in the past; that is not my approach. I say: Live in the present that is the positive way to approach existence. Live in the present. That is another way of saying: Be more meditative, more aware, more alert, because when you are alert, aware, you are in the present.

Awareness cannot be in the past and cannot be in the future. Awareness knows only the present.

Awareness knows no past, no future; it has only one tense, the present. Be aware, and as you will start enjoying the present more and more, as you will feel the bliss of being in the present..You will stop going into the past. You will not have to forget and forgive, it will simply disappear on its own accord. You will be surprised - where it has gone?

To be free from past and future is to taste freedom for the first time, is to taste God. And in that experience one becomes whole, healthy; all wounds are healed. Suddenly there are no more any wounds; you start feeling a deep well-being arising in you. That well-being is the beginning of transformation.”
― Osho

“When I say celebrate what do I mean? I mean that whatsoever you do, don't do it as a duty, do it from your love; don't do it as a burden, do it as a celebration. You can eat as if it is a duty: long-faced, dull, dead, insensitive. You can throw food inside yourself without ever tasting, without ever feeling for it. It is life; you live through it. Don't be so insensitive to it.

Indians have said, 'anam brahman,' food is Brahman. This is celebration: you are eating brahman, you are eating God through food, because only God exists. When you are taking a shower, it is God showering because only God exists. When you go for a morning walk, it is God on a morning walk. And the breeze is also God, and the trees are also God -- everything is so Divine. How can you be a long-face, dead and dull, moving in life as if you are carrying a burden?

When I say celebrate, I mean become more and more sensitive to everything. In life, dance should not be apart. The whole life should become a dance; it should be a dance. You can go for a walk and dance.

Allow life to enter into you, become more open and vulnerable, feel more, sense more. Small things filled with such wonders are lying all around.

Watch a small child. Leave him in the garden and just watch. That should be your way also; so wonderful, wonder-filled: running to catch this butterfly, running to catch that flower, playing with mud, rolling in the sand. From everywhere the Divine is touching the child.

If you can live in wonder you will be capable of celebration. Don't live in knowledge, live in wonder.

Life is surprising; everywhere, it is a continuous surprise. Live it as a surprise, an unpredictable phenomenon: every moment is new. Just try, give it a try! You will not lose anything if you give it a try, and you may gain everything. But you have become addicted to misery. You cling to your misery as if it is something very precious.

You become cruel because you don't know how to become compassionate. It is a negative state. The same energy that is cruelty will become compassion.
With an unalert mind the energy becomes violence; with an alert mind the same energy becomes compassion. In sleep the same energy becomes torture, either of yourself or of somebody else. When you are awake, the same energy becomes love, for yourself and for others also.

You are already where you need to be, you are already in that space which you are seeking. Just make a little effort to come out of your clinging to misery.

Don't invest in misery; invest in celebration. You take one step towards life and life takes one thousand towards you.”
― Osho, Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega Volume 4