Osho on Joy

It is a pleasant surprise to meditate on these sutras of today. They go against the idea that prevails all over the world about Gautama the Buddha. He is represented by his enemies and even by his friends and followers as the pessimist PAR EXCELLENCE. He is not a pessimist at all; he is one of the most joyous persons ever. These sutras will give you immense insight into the heart of this awakened man:

LIVE IN JOY,

IN LOVE,

EVEN AMONG THOSE WHO HATE.

Joy is the keyword of all these sutras.

Joy is not happiness, because happiness is always mixed with unhappiness. It is never found in purity, it is always polluted. It always has a long shadow of misery behind it. Just as day is followed by night, happiness is followed by unhappiness. Then what is joy? Joy is a state of transcendence. One is neither happy nor unhappy, but utterly peaceful, quiet, in absolute equilibrium; so silent and so alive that his silence is a song, that his song is nothing but his silence. Joy is forever; happiness is momentary. Happiness is caused by the outside, hence can be taken away from the outside — you have to depend on others. And any dependence is ugly, any dependence is a bondage. Joy arises within, it has nothing to do with the outside. It is not caused by others, it is not caused at all. It is the spontaneous flow of your own energy. If your energy is stagnant there is no joy. If your energy becomes a flow, a movement, a river, there is great joy — for no other reason, just because you become more fluid, more flowing, more alive. A song is born in your heart, a great ecstasy arises.

It is a surprise when it arises, because you cannot find any cause for it. It is the most mysterious experience in life: something uncaused, something beyond the law of cause and effect. It need not be caused because it is your intrinsic nature, you are born with it.

It is something inborn, it is YOU in your totality, flowing. Whenever you are flowing, you are flowing towards the ocean. That is the joy: the dance of the river moving towards the ocean to meet the ultimate beloved.

When your life is a stagnant pool you are simply dying. You are not moving anywhere — no ocean, no hope. But when you are flowing, the ocean is coming closer every moment, and the closer the river comes, the more dance there is, the more ecstasy there is.

Your consciousness is a river. Buddha has called it a continuum. It is a continuity, an eternal continuity, an eternal flow. Buddha has never thought about you and your being as something static. In his vision, the word ‘being’ is not right. According to him, being is nothing but becoming. He denies being; he accepts becoming, because being gives you a static idea of something inside you like a rock. Becoming gives you a totally different idea: like a river, like a lotus opening, like a sunrise. Something is constantly happening. You are not sitting there like a rock, you are growing. Buddha changes the whole metaphysics: he replaces being by becoming, he replaces things by processes, he replaces nouns by verbs.

LIVE IN JOY…. Live in your own innermost nature, with absolute acceptance of whosoever you are. Don’t try to manipulate yourself according to others’ ideas. Just BE yourself, your authentic nature… and joy is bound to arise; it wells up within you. When the tree is taken care of, watered, looked after, it naturally blooms one day. When the spring comes there is great flowering. So is it with man. Take care of yourself. Find a right soil for your being, find a right climate, and go deeper and deeper into yourself. Don’t explore the world; explore your nature. Because by exploring the world you may have many possessions, but you will not be a master. But by exploring yourself you may not have many possessions, but you will be a master. It is better to be a master of yourself than to be a master of the whole world.

LIVE IN JOY, IN LOVE…. And one who lives in joy naturally lives in love. Love is the fragrance of the flower of joy. Inside there is joy; you cannot contain it. It is so much, it is unbearable. If you try to be miserly about it, you will feel pain. Joy can be so much that if you don’t share it, it can become suffering, it can become pain. Joy has to be shared; by sharing it you are unburdened, by sharing it new sources open up within you, new streams, new springs. That sharing of your joy is love. Hence one thing has to be remembered: you cannot love unless you have attained to joy.

And millions of people go on doing that: they want to love and they don’t know anything about what joy is. Then their love is hollow, empty, meaningless. Then their love brings despair, misery, anguish; it creates hell. Unless you have joy you can’t be in love. You have nothing to give, you are a beggar yourself. First you need to be a king — and your joy will make you a king.

When you are radiating joy…. Buddha says: When you have become the shining one, when your hidden secrets are no longer secrets but are flowering in the wind, in the rain, in the sun; when your imprisoned splendor is released, when your mystery has become an open phenomenon, when it is vibrating around you, pulsating around you, when it is in your breath, in your heartbeat — then you can love. Then you touch dust and the dust is transformed into the divine. Then whatsoever you touch becomes gold. Ordinary pebbles in your hand will be transmuted into diamonds, emeralds. Ordinary pebbles… people touched by you will not be ordinary anymore.

A man who has attained to joy becomes a source of great transformation for many people. His flame has been lit, now he can help others. The unlit flames coming closer to the one who has become a fire with joy, can also become lit. That’s what SATSANG is, that’s what communion with a master is: coming closer to his fire, coming closer to his splendor, coming closer to his glory, coming closer to what has happened to him. And just by coming closer the flame jumps into you and you are never the same again.

Love is possible only when your flame is lit. Otherwise you are a dark continent — and you are pretending to give light to others? Love is light, hate is darkness. You are dark within and trying to give light to others? You will only succeed in giving them more darkness — and they are already in darkness. You will multiply their darkness, you will make them more miserable. Don’t try to do that, because it is impossible, it is not according to the nature of things. It can’t happen. You can hope, but all your hope is in vain. First be filled with joy.

LIVE IN JOY, IN LOVE, EVEN AMONG THOSE WHO HATE. And then it is not a question of what others do to you. Then one can love even those who hate him. Then one can live in love and joy even amongst enemies.

A disciple of Buddha became enlightened, and Buddha said to him, “Now that you have entered the temple, go and spread the message, because there are many who need a little help, there are many who are drowning in the river of sorrow. Now that you have learned how to swim — help others. Now you have the boat, you can take them to the other shore. Remember the way I helped you; now you go and help others.”

The disciple said, “Whatever you say I will do; I will go. It hurts to leave you. It hurts, it is painful to go away from you, but if you say so, I will go. If you had told me before….” See the love of a disciple, of a devotee! He says, “If you had told me before, I would not have tried for enlightenment at all, because to be with you is far more significant. I would have risked enlightenment, I would have dropped the very project, if I had known before that I would have to leave. But now it is too late. If you say so, I will go.”

Buddha said to him, “You can choose the direction, the place, where you would like to go.”

In Bihar there was one part where no disciple of Buddha had ever gone: Sukha was the name of the place. The disciple said, “I will go to Sukha.”

Buddha looked a little surprised. The disciple was young, very young, not only in age but young also in his enlightenment. He did not know the ways of the world. Buddha said, “You are not aware, it seems, that the people of Sukha are very dangerous people, murderers, thieves, robbers. That’s why no one has chosen to go there yet.”

The young man said, “But that’s why I am choosing to go there, because they also need your message. They also need you, and more so than others. Bless me so that I can go and help a few people there.”

Buddha said, “Then you will have to answer three questions. The first is: those people are so mischievous — I know them — if you go there they won’t listen to you. They will insult you, they will try to humiliate you, they are going to be very nasty to you. When they will insult you and be nasty to you, how are you going to respond?”

The young man said, “There is no need to ask me — you know how I am going to respond. I will thank them, will be grateful to them, because they are good people. They only insult me, they only humiliate me. They could have beaten me and they are not beating me. They could have thrown stones at me and they are not throwing stones at me. They are good people! I will be grateful to them that they are not harming my body.”

Buddha said, “And if they start hitting you, beating you, wounding you, throwing stones at you, then what will your response be?”

And the young man said, “I will still be tremendously grateful to them that they are only throwing stones at me, beating me, but are still leaving me alive, are not killing me. They could have killed me!”

Buddha said, “Now the last question. If they kill you, by the time you are dying, in those last moments when you are dying, what will be your response?”

The young man said, “I will still be grateful to them because they have only killed my body; they cannot kill me. And sooner or later my body is going to go anyway. And I will also be grateful that they have destroyed my body and now they have taken from me all opportunities of committing any error. I will not be able to commit any error, I will not be able to go astray. I will be thankful, I will die with great gratitude.”

Buddha said, “Now you can go anywhere. You can go to Sukha or wherever you choose, you are ready. If this is your response, you have become a Buddha — you are the shining one.”

It is not a question of loving those who love you. That is very ordinary, that is businesslike, a bargain. The real love is to love those who hate you. Right now even to love those who love you is not possible, because you don’t know what joy is. But when you know joy, the miracle happens, the magic. Then you are capable of loving those who hate you. In fact, it is no longer a question of loving somebody or not loving somebody, because YOU become love; you don’t have anything else left.

In the Koran, I have heard, there is a statement, “Hate the Devil.” A great Sufi mystic woman, Rabiya, canceled that line from HER Koran. Hassan, another famous mystic, was staying with Rabiya; he saw Rabiya doing it. He said, “What are you doing? The Koran cannot be corrected — that is blasphemy. You cannot cut any statement from the Koran; it is perfect as it is. There is no possibility of any improvement. What are you doing?”

Rabiya said, “Hassan, I have to do it! It is not a question of the Koran, it is something totally different: since I have known God I cannot hate. It is not a question of the Devil, I simply cannot hate. Even if the Devil comes in front of me I will love him, because now I can only love; I am incapable of hate — that has disappeared. If one is full of light he can give you only light; whether you are a friend or an enemy does not matter.

“From where,” Rabiya says, “can I bring darkness to throw on the Devil? It is no longer anywhere — I am light. My light will fall on the Devil as much as on God. Now, for me, there is no God and no Devil, I cannot even make a distinction. My whole being is transformed into love; nothing is left.

“I am not correcting the Koran — who am I to correct it? — but this statement is no longer relevant to me. And this is MY copy; I am not correcting anybody else’s Koran. I have the right to put my copy right according to myself. This statement hits me hard whenever I come across it. I cannot make any sense out of it; hence I am crossing it out.”

A man who is full of joy and love can’t help it. He loves friends, he loves enemies. It is not a question of decision on his part; love is now his nature, like breathing. Will you stop breathing if an enemy comes to see you? Will you say, “How can I breathe in front of my enemy?” Will you say, “How can I breathe because my enemy is also breathing and his air which has passed through his lungs may enter into me? I can’t breathe.” You will suffocate, you will die. It will be suicide and utterly stupid. On the way a moment comes when love is just like breathing — the breathing of your soul. You go on loving. In this light you can understand Jesus’ statement: Love your enemies as yourself. If you ask Buddha, he will say: There is no need to do such a thing, because you can’t do otherwise. You have to love. In fact YOU ARE LOVE, so wherever you are — in flowers, in thorns, in the dark night, in the full noontide, in misery surrounding you like an ocean or in great success — it does not matter. You remain love; everything else becomes immaterial. Your love becomes something of the eternal, it continues. One may accept it, one may not accept it, but you can’t hate; you have to be your true nature.

LIVE IN JOY, Buddha repeats,

IN HEALTH,

EVEN AMONG THE AFFLICTED.

By health Buddha means wholeness. Health comes from the same root as ‘healing’. A healed person is a healthy person, a healed person is a whole person. By “health” Buddha does not mean the ordinary, medical meaning of the term; his meaning is not medicinal, it is meditational — although you will be surprised to know that the words ‘meditation’ and ‘medicine’ both come from the same root. Medicine heals you physically, meditation heals you spiritually. Both are healing processes, both bring health. But Buddha is not talking about the health of the body; he is talking about the health of your soul. Be whole, be total. Don’t be fragmentary, don’t be divided. Be an individual, literally: indivisible, one piece.

People are not one piece; they are many fragments, somehow holding themselves together. They can fall apart at any moment. They are all Humpty-Dumpties, just bundles of many things. Any new situation, any new danger, any insecurity, and they can fall apart. Your wife dies or you go bankrupt or you are unemployed — any small thing can prove the last straw on the camel’s back. The difference is only of degrees. Somebody is boiling at ninety-eight degrees, somebody at ninety-nine; somebody may be ninety-nine point nine degrees, but the difference is only of degrees, and any small thing can change the balance. You can go insane at any moment, because inside you are already a crowd. So many desires, so many dreams, so many people are living in you. If you watch carefully, you will not find one person there but many faces, changing every moment. It is as if you are just a marketplace where so many people are going and coming, so much noise, and nothing makes sense…

This is a very sad state of affairs: that you cannot be trusted at all, because you say one thing and you are totally something else. And it is not that you deliberately try to deceive; deception has almost become your second nature. That’s why you immediately forget your dreams; it is a strategy of the mind. Within five seconds of waking up… when you wake up there is a little lingering, a little memory — just a few fragments, the last parts of your dreams. But within five seconds they are gone. By the time you are out of bed all your dreams have disappeared, you have forgotten all about them. Unless you make a very conscious effort you will not be able to remember them. This is a strategy of the mind, it simply closes the door, because your dreams can be a disturbance to you. If you come to know that in your dream you killed your father it will be heavy on you, you may feel guilty. If you are a very very moralistic, puritanical person and you see that in your dream you had eloped, escaped with the wife of your neighbor and you were enjoying it, you will be disturbed. You will become suspicious about your morality, about your purity. It will hang over you like a dark cloud.

The mind simply cuts you off from your dreams. It has created two kinds of worlds: one, the dreaming world, totally separate, and one, the so-called waking world, totally separate. You live in compartments. When you enter into dreaming you forget all about waking; when you enter into waking you forget all about dreaming. The buddha is awake even while he is asleep. He has no compartments in his being. He is not many, he is one. Because he is one and he has no clinging to memories and no desires for the future, the present is enough for him. Then he lives moment to moment in its totality; he does not go on living partially. Your dreams simply show that you live partially, and the unlived parts have to be lived in your dreams. If you live totally each moment, then there is no possibility of any dreams…

Buddha says: LIVE IN JOY, IN HEALTH, EVEN AMONG THE AFFLICTED.

This is a very important sutra to be remembered — more so because the Christians are creating a totally wrong approach to life. They say: When there is so much misery in the world, how can you be joyous? Sometimes they come to me and they say, “People are starving and people are poor. How can you teach people to dance and sing and be joyous? There are so many people afflicted with so many diseases, and you teach people meditation? This is selfishness!”

But that’s exactly what Buddha is saying. He is saying: LIVE IN JOY, IN HEALTH, EVEN AMONG THE AFFLICTED…

He is not saying don’t help them, but by being ill yourself you cannot help them. By being poor yourself you cannot help the poor, although the poor will worship you because they will see how great a saint you are. They worshipped Mahatma Gandhi for the sheer reason that he tried to live like a poor man. But just by living like a poor man you are not going to help the poor. If the doctor also falls ill to help his patients, will you call him a saint? You will call him just stupid, because this is the time he needs all his health so that he can be helpful to people.

This is strange logic, but it has prevailed down the centuries: that if you want to help the poor, be poor, live a poor life, live just like the poor. Of course the poor people will give you great respect and honor, but that is not going to help the poor, it will only fulfill your ego. And any ego fulfilled creates misery for you, not joy.

LIVE IN JOY, IN HEALTH, EVEN AMONG THE AFFLICTED. LIVE IN JOY, IN PEACE, EVEN AMONG THE TROUBLED. That is the only way to help, the only way to serve. First be selfish, first transform yourself. Your life in peace, in joy, in health, can be a great source of nourishment for people who are starving for spiritual food. People are not really starving for material things. Material richness is very simple: just a little more technology, a little more science, and people can be rich. The real problem is how to be inwardly rich.

And when you are outwardly rich you will be surprised — for the first time you become more acutely, more keenly aware of your inner poverty. For the first time all meaning in life disappears when you are outwardly rich, because in contrast, the inner poverty can be seen more clearly. Outside there is light all around and inside you are a dark island. The rich man knows his poverty more than the poor person, because the poor person has no contrast. Outside there is darkness, inside there is darkness; he knows darkness is what life is. But when there is light outside you become desirous of a new phenomenon: you long for inner light. When you see that richness is possible outside, why can’t you be rich inside?

LIVE IN JOY,

WITHOUT POSSESSIONS,

LIKE THE SHINING ONES.

Buddha says: Enjoy the world, enjoy the sun, the moon, the stars, the flowers, the sky, the earth. Live in joy and peace, without possessiveness. Don’t possess. Use, but don’t possess — because the possessor cannot use. The possessor really becomes possessed by his own possessions. That’s why so many rich people become very miserable, they live a poor life. They have all the money in the world, but they live in a poor way. The richest man in the world, just fifty years ago, was the nizam of Hyderabad — the richest man in the world. In fact, his riches were so great that nobody has ever been able to estimate how much he had. His treasuries were full of diamonds; everything was made of diamonds. Even his paperweight was the biggest diamond in the world; even the Kohinoor is only one third the size of his paperweight. When he died, his paperweight was found in his shoe. The diamonds were not counted because there were so many. They were weighed, not counted — how many kilos, not how many diamonds — who could count? Each year the diamonds were brought out of the basements. He had the biggest palace in India, but all the roofs were not enough, because his diamonds were spread on the roofs of his palace just to give them a little sunlight every year.

But the man lived a life of such misery, you cannot believe it; even beggars live far better. He used to collect cigarettes which others had already smoked and thrown away — just cigarette ends. He would not purchase cigarettes for himself, he would collect these cigarettes and smoke them. Such a miser! For fifty years he used only one single cap — it was so dirty and stinking! He died in the same cap. He never used to change his clothes. And it is said that he used to purchase his clothes from the secondhand marketplace where old, rotten things, used things, are sold. His shoes must have been the dirtiest in the world, but he would only send them once in a while for repair, he would not purchase new shoes.

Now, the richest man in the world living in such misery and miserliness — what had happened to this man? Possessiveness! Possessiveness was his disease, his mania. He wanted to possess everything. He would purchase diamonds all over the world; wherever there were diamonds his agent was there to purchase them. Just have more and more! But you cannot eat diamonds — and he was eating the poorest kind of food. He was so afraid that he was unable to sleep at all — constant fear that somebody might steal from him. That’s how the paperweight — the costliest diamond that he had, three times more in weight than the Kohinoor — was found in his shoe. When he was dying he had hidden it in his shoe so nobody could steal it — otherwise the paperweight would be too visible, too much in the eyes of people. Even dying he was more concerned with the diamond than with his own life. He could never give anything to anybody. This happens to people who become possessive: they don’t use things, they are used by things. They are not masters, they are servants of their own things. They go on accumulating and they die without ever having enjoyed all that they had.

Buddha says: LIVE IN JOY, WITHOUT POSSESSIONS, LIKE THE SHINING ONES. Live like the buddhas, who don’t possess a thing but can use everything. The world has to be used, not possessed. We come empty-handed and we go empty-handed, so there is no point in possessing anything. To be possessive is ugly — but use everything! While you are, use the world, enjoy everything that the world makes available, and then go without looking back, without clinging to things. This is the way of the buddhas. AES DHAMMO SANANTANO: this is the inexhaustible law of the buddhas. Then a buddha can be a beggar if he chooses to be so — if that is his way — or a buddha can be an emperor. There have been emperors who were buddhas.

In India there has been one man, Janaka, the father of Sita, Rama’s wife, who was a buddha. He lived in the palace with all the richness of a great king and yet he was absolutely nonpossessive, he possessed nothing. It was just as if you are staying in a hotel; you don’t possess anything. You stay for a few days and then you are gone. You use.

The intelligent person uses life and uses it beautifully, aesthetically, sensitively. Then the world has many treasures for him. He never becomes attached, because the moment you become attached you have fallen asleep.

THE WINNER SOWS HATRED

BECAUSE THE LOSER SUFFERS.

LET GO OF WINNING AND LOSING

AND FIND JOY.

How to find joy? Let your ambition disappear; ambition is the barrier. Ambition means an ego trip, “I want to be this, I want to be that — more money, more power, more prestige.”

But remember, Buddha says: THE WINNER SOWS HATRED BECAUSE THE LOSER SUFFERS. LET GO OF WINNING AND LOSING AND FIND JOY. If you want to find joy, forget about winning and losing. Life is a play, a game. Play it beautifully, forget all about losing and winning. The real sportsman’s spirit is not that of winning or losing, it is not his real question. He enjoys playing; that is the real player. If you are playing to win, you will play with tension, anxiety. You are not concerned with the play itself, its joy and its mystery; you are more concerned with the outcome. This is not the right way to live in the world.

Live in the world without any idea of what is going to happen. Whether you are going to be a winner or a loser, it doesn’t matter. Death takes everything away. Whether you lose or win is immaterial. The only thing that matters, and has always been, is how you played the game. Did you enjoy it? — the game itself — then each moment is of joy. You never sacrifice the moment for the future.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.

Discourse Series: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 6

Chapter #5

Chapter title: Live in joy

25 October 1979 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘Joy, love, happiness, energy, transformation, transcendence, meditation, consciousness’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

The Book of Wisdom
Dang Dang Doko Dang
The Diamond Sutra
The Hidden Splendor
The Razor’s Edge
Sufis: The People of the Path
Tao: The Pathless Path
The Tantra Vision
Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance
Zen: The Path of Paradox
From Death to Deathlessness
The Invitation
The Path of the Mystic
Sermons in Stones