Suffering?

[Guest guest]

When I say suffer joyfully it looks paradoxical and your mind starts thinking

how to compromise both, because to you they are contradictory. They are not,

they only appear contradictory. You can enjoy suffering.

 

What is the secret -- how to enjoy suffering? The first thing is: if you don't

escape, if you allow the suffering to be there, if you are ready to face it, if

you are not trying somehow to forget it, then you are different. Suffering is

there but just around you; it is not in the center, it is on the periphery. It

is impossible for suffering to be in the center; it is not in the nature of

things. It is always on the periphery and you are the center.

 

So when you allow it to happen, you don't escape, you don't run, you are not in

a panic, suddenly you become aware that suffering is there on the periphery as

if happening to someone else, not to you, and you are looking at it. A subtle

joy spreads all over your being because you have realized one of the basic

truths of life, that you are bliss and not suffering.

 

So when I say enjoy it I don't mean become a masochist; I don't mean create

suffering for yourself and enjoy it. I don't mean: go on, fall down from a

cliff, have fractures and then enjoy it -- no. There are people of that type and

many of them have become ascetics, tapasvis, and they are creating suffering for

themselves. They are masochists, they are ill. They are very dangerous people.

They wanted to make others suffer but they were not so courageous. They wanted

to kill others, be violent with others, cripple others, but they were not so

courageous, so their whole violence has turned within. Now they are crippling

themselves, torturing themselves, and enjoying it.

 

Osho, A Bird on the Wing