Osho - Weekly Meditation For The Here And Now
Weekly Meditation - Week 21. Unhappiness
May 20
Unhappiness
People say they would like to be happy, but they really don't want to be. They are afraid that they will be lost.
Whenever you become aware of something, you are separate from it. If you are happy, you are separate and happiness is separate. So being really happy means becoming happiness rather than becoming happy. You dissolve, by and by. When you are unhappy, you are too much. The ego comes into focus when one is unhappy. That's why egoistic people remain very unhappy, and unhappy people remain very egoistic.
There is an interconnection. If you want to be egoistic, you have to be unhappy. Unhappiness gives you the background and the ego, comes out of it very clear, crystal-clear, like a white dot on a black background. The happier you are, the less you are. That's why many people want to become happy but really they are afraid to. Its my observation that people say they would like to be happy but they really don't want to be. They are afraid that they will be lost. Happiness and egos can't go together. The happier you are, the less you are. There comes a moment when only happiness is, and you are not.
May 21
The Two Doors
It is not a question of choosing between truth and illusion, because all doors that are outside you lead to illusion.
The truth is within you. It is in the very heart of the seeker. So if on one door is written "illusion" and on another is written "truth," don't bother to choose between them. Both are illusory. You are truth. Truth is your very consciousness. Become more alert and more conscious. It is not a question of choosing between doors. The darkness is there because you are unconscious, so no light from the outside can help. I can give you a lamp right now, but it won't help. By the time you have reached your room, it will be out.
You have to become more conscious, more and more conscious and alert, so your inner flame, only that, will enlighten your surroundings. In that light you will see that all doors have disappeared. The door that was illusion and the door that was truth both have disappeared. They were both in conspiracy. In fact, they both lead to the same place. They just give you an illusion of choice. So no matter what you choose, you always choose the same thing. They both lead to the same passage. Eventually you end up in illusion. So that is not the problem. The problem is how to become more alert.
May 22
Looking Into Darkness
Sometimes when you come into your room it looks dark. But then you sit and rest, and by and by the darkness disappears. The room is full of light.
It is not that something has happened. It is just that your eyes have become accustomed to looking into the darkness. It is said that thieves start seeing in the dark more clearly than anybody else, because they have to work in darkness. They have to enter unfamiliar houses, and on every step there is danger. They may stumble upon something. By and by, they start seeing in the dark. Darkness is not so dark for them. So don't be afraid. Be like a thief. Sit with closed eyes and look into the darkness as deeply as possible. Let that be your meditation.
Every day for thirty minutes sit in the corner, close your eyes, and create darkness - as dark as you can imagine - and then look into that darkness. If it is difficult just think of a blackboard in front of you, so dark and so black. Soon you will be able to imagine more darkness. You will be tremendously surprised that the more you look into darkness, the clearer your eyes will become.
And if fear is there, allow it. In fact, one should enjoy it. Let it be there; start; trembling. If the fear starts a certain vibration in you, just allow it. Get as frightened as possible. Be almost possessed by fear... and see how beautiful it is. It is almost like a bath; much dust will be washed away. When you come out of that trembling, you will feel very alive, throbbing with life, pulsating with a new energy, rejuvenated.
May 23
Loving Yourself
We always think in terms if loving somebody else. The man thinks to love the woman, the woman thinks to love the man; the mother thinks to love the child, the child thinks to love the mother; friends think to love each other. But unless you love yourself it is impossible to love anybody else.
You can love somebody else only when you have love within you, You can share something only when you have it. But the whole humanity has lived under this wrong ideology, so we take it for granted-as if we already love ourselves and now the whole question is of how to love our neighbor. It is impossible! That's why there is so much talk about love, and the world remains ugly and full of hatred, war and violence and anger.
It is a great insight to come to - that you don't love yourself. It is really hard to love oneself, because we have been taught to condemn ourselves and not to love. We have been taught that we are sinners. We have been taught that we are not of any worth. Because of that it has become difficult to love. How can you love a worthless person?
How can you love somebody who is already condemned? But it will come. If the insight that you do not love yourself has come, there is nothing to be worried about. One window has opened. You will not be inside the room for long - you will jump out. Once you know the open sky, you cannot remain confined in a stale world. You will come out of it.
May 24
Prisons
You are a tremendous freedom with no boundaries to your being.
All boundaries are false. That's why only in love do we become healthy and whole, because love takes away all boundaries, all labels; it does not categorize you. It accepts you, whoever you are. Nobody is really ill. In fact, the society is ill, individuals are victims. Society needs therapy; individuals simply need love. The society is the patient and needs hospitalization.
Individuals suffer because you cannot catch hold of society; it remains invisible. When you try to catch hold of it, an individual is found and then becomes responsible-and he is simply suffering, he is a victim. He needs understanding, not therapy; love, not therapy. Society has not given him understanding, has not given him love. Society has given him straitjackets, prisons. Society has forced him into a pigeonhole, categorized him, labeled him "this is you, this is your identity."
You are freedom and you have no identity. You cannot be labeled, and that's your beauty and glory - that you cannot say who you are. You are always in the making. By the time you have asserted that you are this or that, you have moved. You are deciding each moment what to be - to be or not to be. Each moment there is a fresh decision, a fresh release of life. A sinner can become a saint in a single moment, and a saint can be a sinner in a single moment. The unhealthy can become healthy, and the healthy can become unhealthy in a single moment.
Just a change of decision, just a change of insight, of vision, and everything changes.
May 25
Illusions Of Contentment
Only in Buddhahood is there contentment; all other forms if contentment are just consolations just illusions, created by the mind.
To live constantly in discontent is so painful that the mind creates illusions of contentment; those illusions keep people going, they help people. If you take away all the illusions, a person will not have any reason to live for even a single moment more. They are needed. In unawareness illusions are a must, because through illusions we create pseudo - meanings in life, and naturally until the real has happened, we have to go on creating these pseudo meanings. When we become fed up with one pseudo meaning, we create another. We become fed up with money, move into politics; we get fed up with politics and move into something else. Even so-called religion is nothing but a subtle illusion.
The real religion has nothing to do with so-called religions - Christianity, Hinduism, Islam. The real religion is the shattering of all illusions. It is to live in discontent, in deep suffering, in utter pain, and to search for the real thing. The path is of great pain and only a few attain, because, in the first place, people can't start out on it. In the first place, they can't accept the pain of life-but that pain is the source of all growth.
Seeing the naked truth of it all - not avoiding, not escaping, looking into it through and through - that is the beginning of intelligence, the beginning of mindfulness, the beginning of awareness.
May 26
Purity
The purity that resides in the heart is incorruptible; what you do does not affect it at all.
Even the greatest sinner remains pure at the deepest core of being. So even the deepest sinner remains a saint; the sin can only touch the periphery, the circumference. It cannot go to your core, because doing remains on the surface; only being is at the core. And when you start looking at people's being, then nobody is a sinner, nobody has ever been a sinner. It is impossible. Purity is so absolute that all that we do is not more than dreams; that is the Eastern approach.
The Eastern approach doesn't bother much about your doing. It says that whatever you have done, you can simply go within and have a. contact with the being, which remains crystal clear and always pure, unpolluted. On the periphery are just facessaint and sinner, good and bad, the famous and the notorious. They are just acts, as if a drama were being enacted. Somebody has become a Jesus and somebody has become a Judas. Both are needed: Jesus cannot be without Judas, and what will Judas be without Jesus?
They are both necessary for the whole Christ story to happen. But behind the stage they sit together and drink tea and smoke. That's the reality. This whole world is a vast stage, and a great drama is being enacted. So don't worry about it. Whatever part has been given you, fulfill it as joyously as possible, and always remember that deep down you remain pure.
