Buddha is reported to have said, “If you want to get rid of death, get rid of birth.” There is no other way. If you want to get rid of misery, get rid of the lust for happiness. And when there is no misery, there is happiness. But it is not because you desire it; it is because you don’t have any desire. In a deep desire-less state, you are full of bliss.
Desiring is a wall, no-desiring is a bridge. This is the very essence of Buddha’s teaching. This is his basic message to the world. Bliss is a state of no-desire, misery is a state of desire.
When you are blissful, really blissed out, ego disappears. You are, but there is no ego, no idea of I, no idea of separation. In bliss there is a merger with the whole; in misery you are alone and separate. Misery makes you an island and bliss takes all your boundaries away from you. In bliss, the river disappears in the ocean. And we are very afraid to disappear as an ego. We want to keep our identity intact.
Misery is a by-product, so is bliss. Misery is a by-product of being asleep, bliss is a by-product of being awake. Hence you cannot seek and search for bliss directly, and those who seek and search for bliss directly are bound to fail, doomed to fail. Bliss can be attained only by those who don’t seek bliss directly; on the contrary, they seek awareness. And when awareness comes, bliss comes of its own accord, just like your shadow, unshakable.
Bliss is true happiness. What you call happiness is just misery in disguise. What you call happiness is nothing but entertainment, pleasure. It is momentary — it cannot be true. Truth has to have one quality, and the quality is of eternity. If something is true it is eternal; if it is untrue it is momentary. True happiness is found only when the mind completely ceases functioning. It does not come from the outside. It wells up within your own being, it starts overflowing you. You become luminous. You become a fountain of bliss.
Do whatsoever you want to do, but you will end in the same way. Everything ends in misery, everything ends in death. People make tremendous effort, but what can you do? — all your efforts are doomed, because you don’t do the fundamental thing that can bring a radical change. You don’t create consciousness. That is the only radical transformation of life: from misery to bliss. You do everything else except meditate. You will earn money and you will become more and more powerful and you will have all that the world can provide.
Man lives in misery — not because he is destined to live in misery but because he does not understand his own nature, potential, possibilities of growth. This non understanding of oneself creates hell. To understand oneself is to be naturally blissful, because bliss is not something that comes from the outside, it is your consciousness resting in its own nature. Remember this statement: your consciousness resting in itself is what bliss is all about. And to be relaxed in one’s own being is to be wise.
Truth is very simple, and because it is very simple you don’t look at it. You will have to learn, you will have to become aware, of the simplicity and obviousness of truth. There is nothing more to it. It is simply this: consciousness is bliss, unconsciousness is misery.
Put it aside. Dismantle the whole ego! In destroying the ego, you will discover your being. And that discovery is the greatest discovery possible, because it starts a totally new pilgrimage towards ultimate bliss, towards eternal life. You can choose: either frustration, suffering, misery — then go on holding the ego, nourishing it. Or peace, silence, bliss — but then you have to recover your innocence.
The law is that bliss or misery both arise in the innermost core of your being. Nobody can give you bliss or misery. You need not go to anybody; you are enough unto yourself. Just go in. Dive deep in your consciousness. And the more conscious you become, the more full of light your life is, the more and more benediction goes on showering on you. The more dark you are, the more unconscious, the more misery is bound to happen.
The very idea that ‘I am separate from the world’ is hell. Separation is hell. Drop the ego and see suddenly — all misery disappears, all conflict disappears.
All that is needed is a deep insight into your own inwardness. Look into your interiority — that’s what meditation is all about — look in, and you will not find any self there. And when you don’t find any self — it disappears like a shadow in the light — all selfishness disappears on its own accord. Then a totally new quality comes to your existence. You are no longer concerned with creating misery for others; hence you can come out of YOUR misery. And the moment you see inwards, great intelligence is released, great creativity is released. That intelligence brings bliss and, ultimately, even takes you beyond bliss — beyond mind and beyond meditation. It brings you to the ultimate core of existence; peace, tranquility, silence, stillness.
Misery gives you a sense of the ego. Misery separates you from existence, defines you. Bliss is a merger, a melting. Your definitions disappear, your ego is found no more. So those who want to feel “I am,” they have to choose misery, there is no other way. The ‘I’ feeds on misery; you may not like misery but you like the ego, and that is the subtle motive for choosing misery. You like bliss, but you don’t want to melt.
If I am responsible for my misery, that also means, automatically, that I am responsible for my bliss. If I am responsible for my misery, I can stop it immediately. Let me repeat the word ‘immediately’ — not even for a single moment does one have to wait. It is not a question of changing your past lives, it is not a question of changing the whole society, it is not a question of bringing the dictatorship of the proletariat, and it is not a question of going into years and years of psychoanalysis. It is a simple question of accepting the responsibility that “Whosoever I am, I have created my climate, my being.”
The really religious person is one who stops finding excuses for his misery. It needs guts to accept that “I am responsible,” that “This is my choice, I have chosen my life this way,” that “My freedom is there, has always been there, to choose whatsoever I want. I can choose misery, I can choose bliss.” Man’s soul consists of freedom. I teach you freedom. But freedom means taking the responsibility, total responsibility for your life, on your own shoulders, not throwing it onto somebody else.
Ego needs continuous fight, because it feeds on fight. The more you fight, the stronger your ego becomes. It is a fighter. That’s why surrender is so difficult. But unless you surrender you will remain in misery. Surrender is the door to bliss, to beauty, to truth, to love, to life, to God. Surrender is the door. And when I say ‘surrender’, I don’t mean that surrender has to be towards someone. That is just an excuse; because you cannot surrender unless you have someone to surrender to — that’s why someone is needed. Otherwise there is no need; you can simply surrender, and the door is open.
Whenever you are total the ego disappears. The ego exists only when you are partial. If you have experienced it in some way, sometime… and I see that everybody has experienced it sometime, somewhere. Because it doesn’t fit with your style of life you have forgotten; because it does not fit with your own pattern you do not pay much attention to it; because it doesn’t fit, you by and by forget it, throw it into the unconscious, into the basement of the mind. Otherwise, it has happened to everybody, unknowingly, unawares. Sometimes, just swimming, and suddenly you are filled with an unknown bliss. It happens only if the swimming becomes total. When the swimmer disappears, then the cause of all misery disappears, and then suddenly, God is there.
When you feel blissful you are right, moving in exactly the way you should move. Because bliss increases only when you are approaching closer to God, and in no other way. If you are going away from God, anguish arises. You feel more and more frustrated, more and more bored, more and more miserable. Misery is an indication that you are going astray, a natural indication that you have lost track of truth. Bliss simply says that you are falling in line with the whole. Things are becoming harmonious, the garden of the Beloved is coming closer: the air feels cooler, winds bring the fragrance of the flowers, freshness, a new thrill, a new enthusiasm. Then you are moving towards the garden of the Beloved. Maybe you cannot see yet, but the direction is right.
You die in misery. Only a few people die blissfully. And when death becomes a bliss, it is a samadhi. When death is a relaxation…real relaxation. Deep inside you surrender, you welcome. You have known life, now you want to know death also. You have lived life, you have enjoyed it. A great trust has arisen in you about life — and you know death is the culmination of life, the crescendo. It must be beautiful! When the whole journey has been beautiful, why not the goal? There is no reason to be afraid. When the whole journey has been such a tremendous joy, why not the end? It is the culmination. You have come home. You welcome, you are ready to embrace death. You relax, you simply slip into death. And that’s the moment! If you can die without any fight, you don’t die — and you are never born again. You have simply slipped out of the body confinements — of the world. You live! — you live eternally. But then you live as an un-embodied existence, with no limitations, with no boundaries.
you cannot let go of things that are causing you misery because you have not yet seen the investments, you have not yet looked deeply into them. You have not seen that there is some pleasure you are deriving out of your misery. You will have to drop both — and then there is no problem. In fact, misery and pleasure can only be dropped together. And then arises bliss. Bliss is not pleasure, bliss is not even happiness. Happiness is always bound together with unhappiness and pleasure is always bound together with pain. Dropping both…. You want to drop misery so that you can be happy — that is an absolutely wrong approach. You will have to drop both. Seeing that they are together, one drops them; you cannot choose one part. In life, everything has an organic unity. Pain and pleasure are not two things. Really, if we make a more scientific language, we will drop these words: pain and pleasure. We will make one word: painpleasure, happinessunhappiness, daynight, lifedeath. These are one word because they are NEVER separable. And you want to choose one part: you want to have only the roses and not the thorns, you want only the day and not the night, you want only love and not hate. This is not going to happen — this is not the way things are. You will have to drop both, and then arises a totally different world: the world of bliss. Bliss is absolute peace, undisturbedness, neither disturbed by pain nor disturbed by pleasure.
People go on saying that they want to become happy, but I rarely come across a person who really wants to be happy. People cling to their misery. Again the same game. With the misery you have something to do. With the misery, some occupation. With the misery you can avoid yourself, you are engaged. With joy there is nothing with which to be engaged, there is nowhere to go. In joy you again disperse and disappear. In misery you are there — you are very much there. Misery gives you a very solid experience that you are. When you are happy, you start disappearing. When you are really happy, you are not, again you are not. In a state of bliss, again you disappear.
Intoxicants will disappear from the world only when meditation has become a world-wide phenomenon, when each single individual has created some meditativeness in his being; when each single individual has become aware, “There is no need to be miserable. Misery is created by me. Life is not misery: life’s nature is bliss. It is my stupidity that I am creating misery out of it.” Misery needs great efforts, bliss is natural — you cannot create bliss, you can only create misery. And if you don’t create misery, bliss comes of its own accord. Bliss comes effortlessly — you cannot practice it. But for misery you have to make great efforts — and you ARE making great efforts to remain miserable. You have invested much in your misery.
Osho Quotes on Misery to Bliss
