The Art of Living
Part 1:
People who are not enjoying their lives in the present have lust
for life in the future. Lust for life is always in the future. It is
a postponement. They are saying, "We cannot enjoy today so we will
enjoy tomorrow." They are saying, "Right this moment we cannot
celebrate, so let there be a tomorrow so that we can celebrate."
Future arises out of your misery, not out of your celebration. A
really celebrating person has no future; he lives this moment, he
lives it totally. Out of that total living arises the next moment,
but it is not out of any lust. Of course, when out of celebration
the next moment arises, it has more capacity to bless you. When out
of celebration the future arises, it goes on becoming more and more
rich. A moment comes when the moment is so total, so whole, that
time completely disappears. Time is a need of the miserable mind.
Time is a creation of misery. If you are happy there is no time -
time disappears.
Watch it from another dimension: have you observed
that whenever you are in misery, time moves very slowly? Somebody is
dying, somebody you love, somebody you would like to be alive, and
you are sitting by the side. The whole night you sit by the side of
the bed and the night looks as if it is an eternity. It seems not to
be ending at all; it goes on, and on, and on. The clock on the wall
seems to be moving very, very slowly. In misery, time moves slowly.
When you are happy - you are with your beloved, your friend, you are
cherishing the moment - time goes fast. The whole night has passed
and it seems that it has been only a few moments or a few minutes.
Why does this happen? Because the clock on the wall doesn't bother
about whether you are happy or unhappy; it moves on its own. It
never goes slow, never goes fast with your moods. It is always
moving with the same pace, but your interpretation differs. In
misery time becomes bigger, in happiness time becomes smaller. When
somebody is in a blissful mood time simply disappears.
Christianity
says that when you are thrown into hell, the hell is going to be
eternal, never-ending.
Bertrand Russell has written a book, Why I Am
Not A Christian - he gives many reasons. One of them is this:
"Whatsoever sins I have committed, it is impossible to think that
eternal punishment can be just. I may have committed many sins. You
throw me in hell for fifty years, a hundred years, fifty lives, a
hundred lives, one thousand lives, but eternal punishment cannot be
just." Eternal punishment seems to be simply unjust, and
Christianity believes in only one life. How can a man commit so many
sins in one life, a life of just sixty or seventy years, so that he
becomes worthy of being punished for eternity? It looks simply
absurd! Russell says, "Whatsoever sins I have committed and
whatsoever I have been thinking to commit but have not committed
yet; if I confess all my sins, committed, uncommitted, imagined,
dreamed, then too the hardest judge cannot send me to jail for more
than five years."
And he is right, but he misses the point.
Christian theologians have not been able to answer. Hell is eternal
not because it is eternal, but because it is the greatest misery -
time moves not. It appears that it is eternal. If in bliss time
disappears, then in the deepest misery, which is hell, time
continues so slowly, as if not moving it all. A single moment of
hell is eternal. It will appear to you that it is not ending, not
ending, not ending. The theory of eternal hell is beautiful, very
psychological. It shows simply that time depends on the mind; time
is a mind-oriented phenomenon. You are in misery, there is time; you
are happy, there is no time. The lust for life is lust for more
time. It shows that whatsoever you have gained is not enough, you
are not satiated yet. "Give me more time so that I can be satiated.
Give me more life, more future, more space to move, because all my
desires are yet unfulfilled." That's what a man who is lusting for
life goes on praying for, "Lord, give me more time, because all my
desires are still there. Nothing has been a fulfillment, I am not
contented, I am not satiated and time is flowing fast. Give me more
time." This is the meaning of lust for life: lust for more time.
What do you mean by life? - life means more time in the future. What
do you mean by death? Death means no future. If death comes right
now, future ends, time ends. That's why you are afraid of death,
because it will not give you space and all your desires are
unfulfilled.
Live life to its totality, enjoy it to the deepest
possibility, allow it to happen, then there will be no lust for
life. Be more sensitive, alive, aware, and then you will not hanker
for more time. In fact, for a man who is satiated with life, death
looks like rest, great relaxation, not the ending of life. He is not
afraid of it, he welcomes it; a full rich life lived, then death
comes in the night, as the night. The whole day you worked, now you
prepare the bed and go to rest.
There are people who are afraid of
night. I used to stay in Calcutta with a very rich man who was as
afraid of night as people are afraid of death. He could not sleep
and he could not sleep because he was resting the whole day. Then
how could he expect sleep? He was rich, he had everything, so he
didn't do anything. Only poor people walk on their legs, only poor
people do things. Somewhere, Camus writes that a time will come in
future when, really, people will be so rich that they will not even
love. They will send their servants to do it. In fact a rich man
should not love. Why bother about the whole effort? You can send a
servant. That's what rich men are doing: servants have to be sent to
live life, and they rest.
When you rest the whole day, how can you
sleep in the night? The need is not created. A man works the whole
day, lives, and by the evening-time he is ready to fall into
oblivion, into darkness. The same happens if you have lived a true
life, an authentic life. If you have really lived it, death is a
rest. Evening comes, night falls, and you are ready; you lie down
and wait. When you live rightly you don't ask for more life because
more is already there, more than you can ask is already there; more
than you can imagine has already been given to you. If you live
every moment to its total intensity, you are always ready to die.
If
death comes right now to me I am ready, because nothing is
incomplete. I have not postponed anything. I have taken my morning
bath and enjoyed it. I have not postponed anything at all for the
future, so if death comes there is no problem. Death can come and
take me right now. There will not even be a slight idea of future
because nothing is incomplete.
And you? Everything is incomplete.
Even the morning bath you could not take well because you had to
come to listen to me; you missed it. You move according to the
future and then you go on missing. If this missing becomes a habit
and it be comes one, then you will miss my talk also because you are
the same man who missed the morning bath, who missed the morning
tea, who somehow finished it but remained incomplete. It is hovering
around your head. All that you have left incomplete is still like
buzzing bees around you. Now this becomes a habit. You will listen
to me but you are getting ready to go to the office, or to the shop,
or to the market; you have already moved. You are only physically
sitting here. Your mind has moved in the future. You will never be
anywhere. Wherever you are, you are already moving somewhere else.
This incomplete life creates lust for life.
You have to complete
many things. How can you afford to die right this moment? I can
afford to, I can enjoy - everything is complete! Remember this,
Patanjali, Buddha, Jesus - nobody is against life. They are for
life, all for life, but they are against lust for life because lust
for life is a symptom of a man who has been missing life.
Part 2:
Life is a mystery, and the first
mysterious thing about life is that you can be alive and you may not have life
at all. Just being born is not enough to have life. To be born is just an
opportunity. You can use it to have life, and you can miss it also. Then you
will live a dead life. Only apparently will it look like life, but deep down
there will be no alive current in you.
Life has to be attained, one has to work for it. It is like a seed in you: it
needs much effort, soil, right soil, care, love, awareness. Only then does the
seed sprout. Only then is there the possibility that someday the tree will bear
fruit, someday it will flower. Unless you reach to the state of flowering you
are alive just in name, but you have missed the opportunity. Unless life becomes
a celebration, it is not life at all.
Ecstasy, nirvana, enlightenment, whatsoever you want to call it - that is the
flowering. If you remain miserable, you are not alive. The very misery shows
that you have missed the step. The very misery is an indication that life is
struggling within to explode, but the cocoon is too hard. The shell of the seed
is not allowing it to come out; the ego is too much and the doors are closed.
Misery is nothing but this struggle of life to explode into millions of colors,
into millions of rainbows, into millions of flowers, into millions of songs.
Misery is a negative state. In fact, misery is nothing but the absence of
ecstasy. This has to be understood deeply, otherwise you will start fighting
with the misery, and nobody can fight with an absence. It is just like darkness:
you cannot fight with darkness. If you fight, you are simply being stupid. You
can light a candle and the darkness disappears, but you cannot fight with the
darkness. With whom will you fight? Darkness is not existential, it is not
there. It is not something that you can throw out, kill, or beat out. You cannot
do anything to darkness. If you do something, your own energies will be
dissipated and darkness will remain there just the same, unaffected. If you want
to do something with darkness, you have to do something with light, not with
darkness at all. You have to light a candle, and suddenly there is no darkness.
Misery is like darkness; it is nothing existential. And if you start fighting
with misery, you can go on fighting with misery but more misery will be created.
It is just an indication, a natural indication to your being that life is still
struggling to be born. The candle is not yet lighted, hence misery. The absence
of ecstasy is misery, and something can be done for ecstasy, but nothing can be
done with misery. You are miserable and you go on trying to solve it. Here, on
this point, the paths of a religious and an irreligious man divide, they
separate. The irreligious man starts fighting the misery, trying to create
situations in which he will not be miserable, starts pushing the misery
somewhere out of his eyes, out of his vision. The religious man starts seeking
ecstasy, starts seeking the blissfulness, starts seeking satchitananda - you may
call it God. The irreligious person fights with the absence, the religious
person tries to bring the existential: the presence of light, of bliss.
These paths are diametrically opposite; nowhere do they meet. They may run
parallel for miles together, but they meet nowhere. The irreligious person has
to come back to the point from where these two paths divide and separate. He has
to come to an understanding that to fight with darkness, with misery, is absurd.
Forget about it and, rather, strive for light. Once light is there you need not
do anything else; misery disappears.
Life is there only as a potentiality. You have to work it out, you have to bring
it to an actual, existential state. Nobody is born alive, only with the
possibility of being alive. Nobody is born with eyes, only with the possibility
of seeing. Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, 'If you have ears, listen; if
you have eyes, see.' Those disciples were as you are: they had eyes, they had
ears. They were not blind or deaf. Why did Jesus go on saying that if they had
eyes they would see? He was talking about the capacity to see a Christ; he was
talking about the capacity to hear a Christ. How can you hear a Christ if you
have not heard your own inner voice? - impossible. Because Christ is nothing but
your inner voice. How can you see a Christ if you have not been able to see
yourself? Christ is nothing but your self in its absolute glory, in its final
flowering.
You live as a seed. There are a few reasons why one goes on living like a seed,
and ninety nine per cent of people live like seeds. There must be something in
it. To live like a seed feels comfortable. Life seems to be dangerous. Remaining
like a seed, one feels more secure. It has a security around it. A seed is not
vulnerable. Once it sprouts, it becomes vulnerable: it can be attacked, it can
be killed - animals are there, children are there, people are there. Once a seed
sprouts into a plant, it becomes vulnerable, insecure; hazards start.
Life is a great adventure. In the seed, hidden in the seed you are secure,
protected. Nobody is going to kill you. How can you be killed if you are not
alive? - impossible. Only when you are alive can you be killed. The more alive
you become, the more vulnerable. The more alive you become, the more dangers are
around you. A perfectly alive man lives in the greatest of dangers. Hence,
people like to live like seeds - protected, secure.
Remember, life, the very nature of life is insecurity. You cannot have a secure
life, you can only have a secure death. All insurances are for death. There can
be no life insurance. All insuring is to protect, to secure, to remain closed.
Life is dangerous, millions of dangers are around. That's why ninety nine
percent of people decide in favor of remaining seeds. But what are you
protecting? - there is nothing to protect. What are you securing? - there is
nothing yet to secure. A seed is as dead as a pebble on the path. And if it
remains like a seed, there is bound to be misery. There is bound to be misery
because it was not meant to be like that. It was not its destiny to be a seed,
but to come out of it. The bird has to leave the egg-shell for the vast,
dangerous sky where everything is possible.
And with all those possibilities, death is also there. Life takes the risk of
death. Death is not against life, death is the very background in which life
flowers. Death is not the opposite of life. It is just like a blackboard on
which you write with white chalk. You can write on a white wall but then the
words will not show. On a blackboard, whatsoever you write with white shows.
Death is like a blackboard: the white lines of life show upon it. It is not
against; it is the very background. Those who want to be alive have to decide
one thing: they have to decide to accept death. Not only must they accept death,
they have to welcome it. Every moment they have to be ready for it. If you don't
accept death, you will remain dead from the very beginning. That is the only way
to protect - you will remain a seed. The bird will die in the egg; many birds
die in the egg.
You are here. If you want any help from me, let me break your egg: your
securities, your bank balances, your life insurances - let me make you
vulnerable. Invulnerable, you will remain in the egg, and soon you will be a
rotten thing. Come out of it. The egg is to protect you, not to kill you. It is
not meant that you should always remain in the egg. It is good - it protects in
the beginning, when you are too soft to come out. But when you are ready, then
the egg has to be broken. Howsoever comfortable and secure you are, a single
minute more in the egg and you will lose the possibility, you will lose the
opportunity to be alive and fly in the sky. Of course, dangers are there, but
dangers are beautiful. A world without dangers would be ugly, and a life without
dangers cannot be very alive.
Hence, deep down in every man and in every woman, there is an urge to live
dangerously. That is the urge for life. That's why you go to the mountains,
that's why you go for an unknown journey, that's why man tries to go to the
moon, that's why somebody tries to reach Everest, and somebody starts on a
voyage at sea in a small handmade boat. There is a deep urge for danger; that
urge is for life. Don't kill that urge, otherwise you will be here and not
alive.
If you understand me well, when I make you a sannyasin, when I initiate you into
sannyas I initiate you into a life of insecurity, vulnerability. Sannyas is the
jump out of the egg, and the egg is the ego. Ego is a protection. Ego is like a
subtle wall around you. That's why ego is so very touchy. Somebody says
something or somebody just smiles at you, and by the way he smiles you are hurt.
You start protecting yourself; you are ready to fight. Ego is a readiness to
fight with whatsoever appears to be dangerous. Ego is a constant fight against
life, because life is dangerous. From wherever life tries to reach you, the ego
is there like a rock protecting you. Step over this rock, break this egg of the
ego, come out of it.
The sky is dangerous. I don't say that there is no danger. I cannot say that;
there is danger. There are dangers upon dangers. But life thrives on danger,
danger is the food. Danger is not against life; danger is the very food, the
very blood, the very oxygen for life to be there.
Live in danger: that is the meaning of sannyas. The past protects you - the
known, the familiar. You feel at home with the past. The future is unfamiliar,
unknown. With the future you feel alien, strange. The future is always a
stranger knocking at the door. You always open the door for the past; you never
open the door for the future. In fact, you would like your future to be just
like your past, a repetition. This is fear. And remember, you always think that
you are afraid of death, but I tell you, you are not afraid of death, you are
afraid of life.
The fear of death is basically fear of life, because only life can die. If you
are afraid of death, you will be afraid of life. If you are afraid of falling
down, you will be afraid of rising up, because only a wave that rises falls
back. If you are afraid of being rejected you will become afraid, afraid to
approach any body. If you are afraid of being rejected, you will become
incapable of love. Afraid of death, you become incapable of life. Then you live
just for the name's sake, and only miseries, darkness, and night surround you.
Just being born is not enough; necessary, but not enough. You have to be born
twice. Hindus have a word for it: they call it dwij, the twice-born. One birth,
the first birth from your parents is just a possibility, a potential phenomenon,
not actual yet. A second birth is needed. It is what Jesus calls resurrection: a
second birth in which you break all the shells, all the eggs, all the egos, all
the past, the familiar, the known, and you move into the unknown, the strange,
the existence full of dangers. Every moment there is the possibility of death.
And with the possibility of death, every moment you become more and more alive.
In fact, life never dies, but that is an experience of one who knows what life
is. You have never gathered courage enough to come out of the egg shell. How can
you know what life is, and how can you know that life is deathless? You will
die; life never dies. You will live in misery because you are the negation of
life; ego is the negation of life. Negate the ego and life will happen to you.
But you cling to the ego. Clinging to the ego is clinging to darkness, to misery.
...
Life is misery as you know it, life is bliss as I know it. Then we must be
talking about different things, because how can life be misery for you and bliss
for me? We are not talking about one and the same thing. When you talk about
life, you are talking about a life in the seed, a life just in hope, a life of
dreams, fantasies; not a real authentic life. You are talking about a life which
only desires but doesn't know, which only hankers but never reaches; a life
which is constantly feeling suffocated but thinks that suffocation is comfort; a
life which is a miserable hell but always thinks that something is going to
happen out of this hell - heaven is to be born out of this hell.
How can a heaven be born out of hell? How can ecstasy be born out of your
miseries? No, miseries will be born out of your miserable life more and more. A
child is not so miserable as an old man becomes. Why? It should be just the
opposite, because the old man has lived life so much. He must be reaching near
the peak, the peak of experiences, the flowers. But he is nowhere near that.
Just on the contrary, life has not been a rising wave, he has not reached to any
heaven. Rather, he has descend ed into a deeper and deeper hell. A child seems
to be more heavenly than an old man. This is simply absurd; it goes against
nature. A child is just a seed. An old man must become a very ancient oak, a
great tree; but he is not. He has reached into darker realms of hell. It is as
if life is a falling, not a rising phenomenon
What happens to an old man? A child is miserable, an old man is also miserable. They are both on the same path. A child has just started the journey and the old man has accumulated all the miseries of the whole journey.
(Osho - Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, volume 4 #9)Part 3:
Out of hell, heaven is not born.
If you are miserable today, how do you think tomorrow can be happy and blissful?
Tomorrow will come out of you. From where else can it come? Tomorrow doesn't
come out of the clock; tomorrow, your tomorrow, comes out of you. All your
yesterdays together, plus today, is going to be your tomorrow. It is simple
arithmetic: today you are unhappy and miserable; then how, how is it possible
that tomorrow is going to be happy and blissful? - impossible! Until you die, it
is impossible. Because with your death, all yesterdays die. Then it will not
come out of your miseries; then it will be a fresh phenomenon, something which
happens for the first time. Then it will not come out of your mind, it will come
out of your being. You become dwij, twice born.
Try to understand the phenomenon of misery. Why are you so miserable? What
creates so much misery? I watch you, I look inside you; miseries upon miseries,
layers upon layers. It is really a miracle how you continue living. It must be
that hope is stronger than experience, dream is stronger than reality.
Otherwise, how could you continue living? You have nothing to live for except
the hope that tomorrow something, somehow, is going to happen which will change
everything. Tomorrow is the miracle - and this you have been thinking for many,
many lives. Millions of tomorrows came, became todays, but the hope survives.
Again hope goes on living. You live, not because you have life, but because you
have hope.
Hope is your only life. With the thread of hope you can tolerate all miseries.
With just a dream of heaven, you forget the hell all around you. You live in
dreams; dreams sustain you. Reality is ugly. Why does so much misery happen and
why can't you see why it is happening? Why can't you find the cause of it?
To find the cause of misery, one has to stop evading it. How can you know a
thing if you evade it? How can you know a thing if you escape? If you want to
know something, you have to encounter it face to face. Whenever you are
miserable, you start hoping; tomorrow immediately becomes more important than
today. This is evasion. You have escaped and now hope is functioning as a drug:
you are miserable, you take the drug and you forget. Now you are drunk, drunk
with hope. There is no drug like hope. No marijuana, no LSD is comparable. Hope
is the ultimate LSD. Because of hope you can tolerate everything, everything!
Thousands of hells are nothing.
How does this mechanism of hope function? Whenever you are in misery, sad,
depressed, you immediately escape from it, you try to forget it. That's how it
continues. The next time you are miserable - and you will not have to wait long;
the moment my talk is finished you will be - don't try to escape. My talk may
also be functioning as an escape - you listen to me, you forget yourself. You
listen to me, you have to be attentive towards me, but towards yourself you turn
your back. You forget, you forget what your real situation is. I talk about
bliss, I talk about ecstasy. That is real to me, but to you it becomes a dream.
Again it becomes the hope that if you meditate, if you work for it, then it is
going to happen to you also. Don't use it as a drug. You can use a Master as a
drug, and you can be drugged.
Don't hope, and don't dream against the reality. If you are sad, then sadness is
the reality. Remain with it; remain with it, don't move, concentrate on it. Face
it, let it be. Don't move to the opposite of it. It is going to be a very bitter
experience in the beginning, because when you face sadness, it surrounds you
from everywhere. You become like a small island and sadness is an ocean all
around - and such great waves of sadness! One feels afraid, one feels a
trembling to the very being. Tremble, be afraid. Only don't do one thing - don't
escape. Let it be, penetrate deeply into it. See, watch - don't judge. You have
been doing that for millions of lives. Just watch, penetrate into it. Soon, the
bitter experience will not be so bitter. Soon, out of the bitter encounter
arises reality. Soon you will be moving, penetrating deeper and deeper - and you
will find the cause, what the cause of misery is, why you are so miserable.
The cause is not outside, it is within you, hidden in your misery. Misery is
just like smoke. Somewhere there is fire inside you; penetrate deep into the
smoke so you can find the fire. Nobody can put the smoke out because it is a
by-product. But if you put the fire out, the smoke disappears of its own accord.
Find the cause, the effect disappears because then something can be done.
Remember, only with the cause can something be done, never with the effect. If
you go on fighting with the effect, all fight is in vain.
Go back to the cause, penetrate the effect and reach to the cause. The cause must be there somewhere. The effect is just like smoke surrounding you; but once the smoke surrounds you, you escape into hope. You dream about days when there will be no smoke. This is all foolish. Not only is it foolish, but suicidal, because this is how you are missing the cause.
...
As you are, everything leads to misery. And if you remain as you are, everything
will go on leading to misery. It is not a question of changing the situations,
it is a question of a very deep-rooted thing within you. Something within you
frustrates the very possibility of bliss. Something in you goes against your
flowering into a blissful state. The man of awareness comes to know that
everything leads to misery, everything.
You have done everything, but have you watched that everything leads to misery?
If you hate, it leads to misery; if you love, it leads to misery. There seems to
be no logical system in life. A man hates, it leads to misery. Simple logic will
say that if hate leads to misery then love must lead to happiness. Then you
love, and love also leads to misery. What is this? Is life absolutely absurd,
irrational? Is there no logic? Is it a chaos? You do whatsoever you want, and
finally comes misery. It seems that misery is the road and every road leads to
it. >From wherever you want to start, you can start: right, left, in the middle;
Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jain; man, woman, knowledge, ignorance, love, hate
everything leads to misery. If you are angry it leads to misery; if you are not
angry, that too leads to misery. It seems that misery is there and whatsoever
you do is irrelevant. Finally, you come to it.
I have seen poor people in misery, I have seen rich people in misery. I have
seen failures in misery, I have seen those who have succeeded in misery.
Whatsoever you do, finally you come to the goal and it is misery. Does every
road lead to hell? What's the matter? Then there seems to be no choice.
Yes, everything leads to misery - if you remain the same. I will tell you
another thing: if you change, everything leads to heaven. If you remain the
same, it is you, not what you do. What you do is irrelevant. Deep down, it is
you. Whether you hate - you will hate - or whether you love - you will love - it
is you who finally creates the phenomenon of misery or ecstasy, misery or bliss
- unless you change. Just changing from hate to love, from this woman to that
woman, this house to that house, won't help. You are wasting time and energy.
You have to change yourself. Why does everything lead to misery?
In life, everything is a flux. With such a flux of life you cannot expect anything. If you expect you will be in misery, because expectations are possible in a fixed and permanent world. In a fluctuating, flux-like world, no expectations are possible. You love a woman; she seems to be very, very happy, but next morning she is not. You loved her because of her happiness, you loved her because she was always smiling, you loved her because she had a quality of being cheerful. But next morning, the cheer has disappeared. The quality is there no more and she has just become the opposite of her own self. She is miserable, angry, sad, quarrelsome, bitchy - what to do? You cannot expect; everything changes, everything changes every moment. All your expectations will lead you into misery. You marry a beautiful woman, but she can fall ill and the beauty can disappear. Measles can appear and the face can become distorted. Then what will you do?
...Things change. A beautiful face becomes ugly, a happy person becomes unhappy, a very soft person becomes very hard. Singing disappears and quarrelsome attitudes appear. Life is a flux and everything changes. How can you expect? You expect, then there is misery.
...
If life were absolutely fixed and there were no change - you love a girl and the
girl remains always sixteen years of age, always singing, always happy and
always cheerful, and you also remain the same, fixed entities - of course then
you would not be persons, life would not be life. It would be stony, but at
least expectations would be fulfilled. But there is a difficulty: boredom will
come out of it, and that will create misery. Change will not be there, but then
there will be boredom.
If things don't change, then you get bored. If the wife goes on smiling and
smiling and smiling every day, every day, after a few days you will become a
little worried - 'What has happened to this woman? Is her smile real or is she
simply acting?'
In acting you can go on smiling. You can create such a discipline of the mouth.
I have seen people who even in sleep are smiling; politicians and those types of
people who have to continuously smile. Then their lips take a permanent shape.
If you tell them not to smile, they cannot do anything. They will have to smile,
it has become a fixed mode. But then boredom is created, and boredom will lead
you to misery.
In heaven everything is permanent, nothing changes; everything remains just as
it is - everything beautiful. Bertrand Russell in his autobiography writes, 'I
would not like to go to paradise or heaven because it would be too boring.' Yes,
it would be too boring. Just think of a place where all priests, prophets,
teerthankaras and Buddhas have gathered, and nothing changes.
Russell is right; one will get bored, bored to death. Russell says, 'If this is
going to be heaven, then hell is preferable. At least some change will be
there.'
In hell everything is changing, but then no expectations can be fulfilled. This
is the trouble with the mind. If life is flux, expectations cannot be fulfilled.
If life were a fixed phenomenon, expectations could be fulfilled so much that
one would feel bored. Then there would be no zest, enthusiasm. Everything would
become dull, tepid - no sensation, no excitement, nothing new happens. In this
life where you are living, change creates misery, anxiety. There is always
anxiety within you, always I say. If you are poor, there is anxiety: how to
attain to riches? If you become rich, there is anxiety: now how to retain that
which you have attained? There is always fear of thieves, robbers, and the
government - which is an organized robbery - taxation, and communists are always
coming. If you are poor you are in anxiety: how to attain to riches? If you have
attained you are in anxiety: how to retain that which you have attained? But
anxiety continues.
Without the woman, then loneliness be comes the anxiety. With the woman, the
other brings his or her own problems. And problems are not doubled when two
persons meet, they are multiplied. Man cannot live alone because loneliness
creates anxiety. Man cannot live with a woman, because woman creates anxiety.
The same is true for the woman also. Anxiety has become just the style of your
life; whatsoever happens, anxiety remains. Past experiences, samskaras, create
misery because whenever you move through an experience, it creates a groove in
you. If the experience is repeated many, many times, the groove becomes more and
more deep. Then if life moves in different ways, and the energy is not flowing
in that groove of your past experiences, you feel unfulfilled. But if life
continues the same, and the energy goes on flowing from the same groove, you
feel bored. Then you want excitement. If excitement is not there, you feel,
'What is the use of going on living?'
You cannot eat the same food every day. I can eat the same food; leave me out.
You cannot eat the same food every day. If you eat the same food you feel
frustrated, because the same food every day loses taste, excitement. If you
change food every day, that too will create anxiety and trouble, because the
body gets adjusted to the food. And if every day you change, the body chemistry
changes and the body feels uncomfortable. The body feels comfortable if you take
the same food, but then the mind doesn't feel comfortable.
If you live through your past habits the body will always feel comfortable,
because body is a mechanism. It doesn't hanker for the new, it simply wants the
same. The body needs routine. Mind always needs change, because mind itself is a
flux phenomenon. Not even for a single moment does mind remain the same; it goes
on changing.
The challenge creates anxiety because you have to fight your way. Then when you have attained, possessed, it creates another anxiety: the anxiety that you are finished. The whole affair is there no more. It is already boring, already dead. Anxiety is always there because the way you live creates anxiety. You cannot be satisfied.
...And the mind says that excitement is needed, change is needed. Then the whole body gets disturbed.
...
These are the reasons people are in misery. So what to do? - how can you change
these reasons? They are there, they cannot be changed. Only you can be changed.
Future misery is to be avoided. Don't think about the past. The past is finished
and you cannot undo it. But future misery can be avoided, has to be avoided. How
to avoid it? The link between the seer end the seen that creates misery, is to
be broken. You have to be a witness ... of the mind, tricks of the mind, games,
traps of the mind, habits, ... , past, changing situations, expectations: you
have to be aware of all these things. You have to remember only one thing: the
seer is not the seen. Whatsoever you can see, you are not that. If you can see
your habit of laziness, you are not that. If you can see your habit of constant
occupation, you are not that. If you can see your past conditionings, you are
not those conditionings. The seer is not the seen. You are awareness and
awareness is transcendental to all that it can see. The observer is beyond the
observed.
You are a transcendental consciousness. This is vivek, this is awareness. This
is what a Buddha attains to and remains in constantly. It will not be possible
for you to attain it constantly, but even if for moments you can rise to the
seer and beyond the seen, suddenly, misery will disappear. Suddenly, clouds will
not be in the sky and you can have a little glimpse of the blue sky - the
freedom that it gives and the bliss that comes through it.