IF YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY, THERE IS NO OTHER WAY THAN ENLIGHTENMENT!

[Guest guest]

Question: Have I come to the wrong place? I just want to be ordinary

and

happy. I want a woman to love, and to love me; friends to spend time

with and enjoy. I don’t want enlightenment. Have I come to the wrong

place?

 

Osho: Centuries of wrong upbringing have completely confused your mind

about enlightenment. The very word seems to be unearthly,

other-worldly; the very word seems to be something which is after death

or for those who are already dead. This is absolutely wrong.

 

If you want to be happy there is no other way than enlightenment. If

you want to be ordinary nobody has ever been ordinary without

enlightenment. If you want to love and be loved it is impossible

without enlightenment. So you will have to understand my concept of

enlightenment. It is just to be ordinary, healthy, aware, whole. Total.

 

Every mind is seeking some extraordinariness. That is what the ego is:

always trying to be somebody in particular, always afraid of being

nobody, always afraid of emptiness, always trying to fill the inner

void

by anything and everything. Every human being is seeking

extraordinariness – and that creates misery. It is not possible.

Nobodiness is your very nature, non-being is the very stuff you are

made of. Howsoever you try you will never succeed; even Alexanders

fail. You cannot be somebody because that is not possible in the

nature

of things. You can only be nobody. But there is nothing wrong in

being

nobody; in fact, the moment you accept your nobodiness, immediately

bliss starts flowing from you in all directions – because misery

disappears. Misery is the shadow of the ego, the shadow of the

ambitious mind. Misery means you are doing something impossible and

because you are failing in it you are miserable. You are doing

something

unnatural, trying to do it and failing, so you feel frustrated,

miserable.

 

To me, enlightenment is all about this phenomenon, to recognize, to

realize to accept the fact that one is a nobody. Suddenly you stop

trying the impossible. Suddenly you stop pulling yourself up by your

shoelaces. You understand the absurdity of it – and you stop. And

laughter spreads over your being. Suddenly you are calm and collected.

The very effort of wanting to be somebody is creating trouble.

 

And when you try to be somebody you cannot love. An ambitious mind

cannot love. It is impossible, because he has first to fulfill his

ambition. He has to sacrifice everything for it. He will go on

sacrificing his love. Look at ambitious people – if they are after

money they always postpone love. Tomorrow when they have accumulated a

lot of money then they will be in love; right now it is impossible, it

is not in any way practical; right now they cannot afford it. Love is

a

relaxation and they are running after something to achieve – a goal.

Maybe it is money, maybe it is power, prestige, politics. How can they

love now? They cannot be here and now -–and love is a phenomenon of

here and now. Love exists only in the present, ambition exits in the

future; love and ambition never meet.

 

You cannot love. And if you cannot love, how can you be loved by

anybody else? Ambition will never be fulfilled. It is not the nature

of

it to be fulfilled. You can fulfill one ambition; immediately a

thousand other ambitions arise out of it. Ambition never stops. If you

follow it, if you understand, it can stop right now. But if you give

energy to it, how can you love? That’s why people are so miserable

trying to be somebody – miserable because they are not getting love,

miserable because they cannot love.

 

So if you want really to love and be loved…that is not possible right

now as you are; you have to disappear. You have to leave – so that a

clean nothingness is left, a fresh nothingness is left behind. Only

then can the flower of love bloom. The seeds are there, but the ego is

like a rock, and the seeds cannot sprout on it.

 

And you say you want to be ordinary? And you want to love? And you

want

friends? And you want to enjoy? This is exactly what enlightenment is

all about! But if you go to the priests and to the preachers and to

the

organized religions and the churches, their enlightenment is different.

They are against love, they are against ordinariness; they are against

friendship, they are against enjoyment, they are against everything

that

your nature naturally seeks. They are the great poisoners.

 

Enlightenment is a man who is fully aware of his inner emptiness and is

not fighting it; rather, he enjoys it, it is blissful. Through the

enjoyment of his own emptiness he becomes available to others; others

can enjoy, others can come and participate in his mystery. His doors

are open, he invites friends and lovers, and he is ready to share, he

is

ready to give. When you give out of your emptiness you are never

afraid

of giving because you cannot exhaust the emptiness. You go on giving,

you go on giving, you go on giving – it is always there, you cannot

exhaust it.

 

Enjoy! I am not for sadness and long faces. I am not here to make you

more miserable – you are already too miserable. I am not here to give

you more sadness. I am here to awaken you to the bliss that is your

birthright, that is naturally available to you. But you have forgotten

how to approach it, and you are going in the wrong directions; you seek

it somewhere where it is not; you seek it outside and it is inside; you

seek it far and away and it is near; you seek it in the distant stars

and it is just in front of you.

 

You have come to the right place. Your mind may like to escape from

here, because this is going to be a death to your mind. It is the right

place for you, but the wrong place for your mind. It is the absolutely

right place for your being, but for your ambitions, your ego, your

pride, your stupidities, it is the most wrong place you can find

anywhere on the earth at this moment.

 

So you decide. If you want to be stupid, escape, then the mind will go

on befooling you that you are in love and enjoying – and you know you

are not enjoying, and you know that you are not in love. Then the mind

may go on befooling you that you are indulging – you cannot indulge.

You are not even there to indulge. You don’t exist. You don’t have an

integrated being in any way. You may wander around and deceive

yourself

but if you really want to be loved and to love, you want friends, you

want to enjoy life – I am giving you the keys to it.

 

Osho, “ Tao, The Three Treasures”

 

--

Happy Days,

Judi

 

http://www.users.uniserve.com/~samuel/judi-1.htm

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