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Bliss: Living beyond happiness and misery

Book by Osho · 15 quotes · Bliss, Enlightenment, Shiva Sutra

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Bliss: Living beyond happiness and misery Quotes

“Always remember that you are the observer and not the doer. Do not take life to be anything more than acting. Don’t identify yourself too much with the action. Whether you are a wife or husband, a businessman or client, don’t get too involved. Don’t lose yourself in it, for you are simply playing a role in the play. Keep outside of it, and within yourself. These are all necessary parts of life. You must go to work, it is necessary. The play is delightful if you see it as play, but it is fatal if you take it to be life. There is no reason so disrupt your life. You have to play the part that life has given you.”

“Shiva is saying: the body is a product of nature and your will to do. The nature is merely the source, the womb. Your ego functions like a seed in it. Your will to do this or that, to achieve this or that, to become this or that – acts like a seed. And the moment the art of your doing meets the womb of nature, a body is formed. Therefore, buddhas say: ”Give up all desires, only then will you be liberated.: If you desired for heaven, you will become an angel, but that won’t be liberation either. Because as long as desires persist, there can never be any liberation. All desires lead to the formation of bodies.”

“So as long as you have not attained to desirelessness, as long as you have not renounced desires completely, you will go on taking births and wandering in different bodies. And howsoever different the forms of the body may be, their basic condition is always the same. The ills of the body are the same, regardless whether it’s a bird’s body or man’s. There is no difference in their miseries, because the fundamental misery is only one: the soul becoming confined in the body, the entering of the soul into the prison of body. A prison after all is a prison; it makes no difference whether its walls are circular or angular no matter what you think.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that the last thought before your falling asleep at night becomes the first thought on waking up in the morning? All night long, while you remain asleep, the thought stays within you in a seed form. And so, that which is the last thing at night becomes first in the morning. At the moment of your death all your desires will come together and become a seed. That very seed will consequently be the new life in the womb. You start fresh from where you left off. Whatsoever you are is of your own making. Don’t blame others. As a matter of fact, there is no one whom you can blame. Basically it is the cumulative effect of your own actions. Whatsoever you are – beautiful or ugly, happy or unhappy, man or a woman – it is all a result of your actions. You are the architect of your life. Don’t blame on your stars – you’ll be simply fooling yourself. This way you are dumping the responsibility on to someone else. No need to say God has sent you – don’t dump the responsibility on God. That’s just a strategy to avoid your own responsibility. You alone are the cause for being imprisoned in this body. One who understands perfectly that he himself is responsible for being in this world, a transformation takes place in his life.”

“Your body is made of two things: your will to do, your ego, and the physical form you have received from the prakriti, the nature. If the will to do is present within you, then the nature will go on providing you with an appropriate body. This is how you have been born again and again. Sometimes you were an animal, sometimes a bird, a tree some other time, and sometimes a man. Whatsoever you wished to achieve, it has happened. Your desire to achieve becomes the actuality; thoughts become real things. So beware when you desire, because all desires are fulfilled – sooner or later. If you are of the habit of watching the birds fly in the sky and wonder, ”How free the birds are, I wish I were a bird.” it will not be long before you become a bird. You see dogs mating, and if that moment a thought arises in you, ”What freedom! What happiness!” – soon you will become a dog. Whatever desire you keep within you, it becomes a seed.”

“Do not focus your gaze on things that are wrong, for what you see, slowly begins to penetrate you. You are addicted to fixing your eyes on the wrong; you pay attention only to what is wrong inside you. The angry man concentrates on his anger, and how to get rid of it. Though he wants to get rid of the anger, he is actually concentrating on that white line of anger within him; the more he concentrates the more he is hypnotized by it. Don’t worry! Everybody is! Don’t focus your eyes on the anger, but concentrate on compassion. Concentrate on what is right. As the right gets more and more energy, the strength of the wrong gets weaker and weaker. Ultimately it will disappear. This happens because energy is one; you cannot use it in two ways. If you have utilized your energy in becoming peaceful, you would have no energy for restlessness. All your energy has moved towards peace, and if you have had a taste of peace and serenity, why bother to become restless? You can maintain your restlessness only if you have never known the flavour of serenity. You can dive into the pleasures of the world only if you have not tasted the divine.”

“Tapascharya, spiritual practice means: accepting the truth that you are alone; that there is no way one can have a friend, a companion. No matter how much you long for it, regardless of how much you close your eyes and dream of them – you will still remain alone. For lives you built a home, you built a family, and then you lost it – and all through that you have always remained alone. Not even slightly has your aloneness been ever affected. So one who has known, one who has accepted that he is alone, for him there is an indication in this sutra: CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE BEING. Only being is yours, nothing else.”

“THE CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE ATMAN, THE SOUL. The first meaning is: in this world, only consciousness is yours. The word atman means: that which is your own. Regardless of how much the rest may appear to you as your own, it is alien. All of that which you otherwise claim as yours – friends, loved ones, family, wealth, fame, high position, a great empire – it is all a deception. Because one day death will snatch it all away from you. So death is the criterion for determining who is your own and who is the stranger. That which death can separate you from, know that it didn’t belong to you, and that which it can’t, was indeed your own.”

“you feel what else is there to do in life apart from living? And even that is out of your control; it depends on an infinite number of factors. Everything is in your unconscious mind. Why sex desire arose in you, why you raised a family, how greed and anger entered you, why you were dishonest, why you accumulated wealth, why you made enemies – you have no idea! You are just like a puppet, whose strings are being pulled by someone else. You imagine you are dancing, but in fact it is someone else who is making you dance. Look closely at your life and you will find that you are nothing more than a puppet. How can anything real happen in the life of a man who is not his own master, but merely a puppet?”

“What is it that makes you cry? It is only your attachments. What is it that you miss when it is lost? It is the object of your attachment. Ponder over this. Find out what it is that grips your very life, without which you feel miserable and destitute; that is the center of your attachment. Here is what you should do: make an effort to find out what things it would hurt you to lose. Then, before they are lost, open your hands little by little, relax your grip on them. This is the method for conquering attachment. There is bound to be pain, but you must bear it; this is your penance. It is not necessary to renounce anything. It is not that you should leave your wife and run away to the Himalayas. Remain there, where you are, but gradually stop depending on her. There is no need to cause any pain; your wife need not even know it. There is no need to tell her. Seek out the attachments. Try gradually to live without the things that you now think you cannot live without. Create such a state within yourself that if and when these things are lost, there is not the slightest tremor within you. Then you will have attained victory over these attachments. This can be possible. It has been possible. And if it has happened to even one, it can happen to all.”

“Understand this first and foremost that you are the center of your existence; nobody else is responsible. No matter how burdensome it feels, but you alone are responsible. If you accept this truth all sorrow will soon disappear. Because once it is clear that I am making this game, how long will it take you to destroy it?”

“Start with very small experiments. When anger arises, stop! What is the hurry? When you feel hatred, wait! There should be some interval. Reply only when you are fully conscious – not until that. You will find that all that is sinful in life has fallen away from you; all that is wrong is banished forever. You will suddenly discover, there is no need to respond to anger. Perhaps you might feel like thanking the man who insults you. Because he has obliged you. He gave you an opportunity to awaken. Kabir has said stay near the one who is critical of you. Look after him and serve him who is abusing you because it is he who gives you the opportunity to awaken. All the occasions that drown you in unconsciousness can be turned into stepping stones to awareness if you wish so. Life is like a huge boulder lying in the middle of the road. Those who are foolish, see the stone as a barrier and turn back. For them the road is closed. Those who are clever, climb the stone and use it as a step. And the moment they make it a stepping stone greater heights are available to them. A seeker should keep in mind only one factor, and that is: to utilize each moment to awaken awareness. Then be it hunger or anger or lust or greed, every state can be utilized towards awareness.”

“The man who had abused him would ask, ”I abused you yesterday, why did you not reply yesterday? You are very strange.” No one waits for a second when you abuse him. He retorts immediately.” Junnaid answered, ”My master taught me not to hurry in anything. Take some time. I must wait a little when someone insults me. If I were to give an immediate answer, the heat of the happening would catch hold of me; the smoke would blind my eyes. So I have to wait and let the cloud pass. When twenty-four hours have passed and the skies are clear again, then I can give my reply in full consciousness. Now I realize how tricky my guru was. Because I have never been able to answer my opponents since then.” Is it possible to hold on to anger for twenty-four hours? It is impossible to maintain it for twenty-four minutes or even twenty-four seconds. The truth is that, even if you hold back and watch for a single second, the anger vanishes. But you do not wait even for a moment. A person abuses you – as if someone switches the button, and the fan starts whirring. There is not the slightest gap between the two, no distance! And you pride yourself in your alertness! You have no control of yourself. How can an unconscious person be master of himself? Anybody can push the button and goad him into action. Someone comes and flatters you, and you are filled with joy; you are happy. Someone insults you, you are full of tears. Are you your own master or anyone can manipulate you? You are the slave of slaves. And those who are manipulating are not their own masters either! And the irony is that everyone is expert in manipulating others and none of them is conscious. What greater insult can there be for your soul than the fact that anyone can affect you?”