Pleasure is dependent on others, and whatsoever is dependent on others will make you a slave, will create a bondage. And Buddha’s ultimate goal is freedom, nirvana — freedom from all bondage.

 

Hence all the awakened ones have been saying: Search for bliss. Don’t waste your time in ordinary pleasures. In the first place they are momentary; in the second place every pleasure brings pain. Pain is the other side of the same coin. It brings pain in the same proportion; the greater the pleasure, the greater the pain. So when you are enjoying something, be aware: soon the pain will follow; it is inevitable. Just as the day follows the night and the night follows the day, pain and pleasure follow each other. They are not separate, they are inseparable.

 

First, pleasures are momentary, they are just soap-bubbles. To waste your precious life for them is simply stupid, unintelligent. Second, every pleasure brings pain. But people are so foolish that they never look at the association. They think pain has come from some other source, they think pleasures can be forever. Again and again they are ditched by their pleasures into pain; again and again they go on thinking that there were some reasons why this pleasure was destroyed.

 

Whether reasons were there or not is irrelevant; every pleasure is momentary, it is going to disappear, and in its wake the pain…. You can rationalize it; that rationalization will only help you to continue in the same old rut. But see the fact. Seeing the truth is a great liberation; seeing that every pleasure is inevitably a bringer of pain, you will be freed from both.

 

And third: it is the same energy that is involved in pleasure which has to move towards bliss. Pleasure is dependent on others; bliss is totally independent, it is your own. It arises within your being, it is your self-nature; hence you are not dependent on anybody. And because it is your self-nature it is forever. There is no contrary, there is no opposite to bliss.

 

Happiness is just in between pleasure and bliss. In happiness something is independent and something is dependent; it is a mixture of both. Hence the man who lives in sheer pleasure is in a better condition in a way; he is healthy, as healthy as animals are. Animals live in sheer pleasure: when the pain comes they suffer, when the pleasure comes they enjoy. They go on rotating between pleasure and pain. The man who lives only in pleasures — a Don Juan — he is in a way healthy, normal, because he is part of the animal world; he is not yet human. In a way his life is clear, it has no complexity.

 

But the man who lives in happiness or tries to find happiness, lives for happiness, is far more confused because he is nowhere. He is neither the animal nor yet the divine; he is in a limbo. He is riding on two horses; he will be in very great difficulty. And that’s where almost all human beings are. It is very rare to find a human being who lives purely in pleasure — it is rare to find a Zorba the Greek who lives purely in pleasure. He is clear, there is no confusion in him. He simply walks on the earth; he has no idea of flying in the sky. He has accepted the law of gravitation and he knows no other law.

 

The man who lives for happiness, who knows the beauty of music, who knows the beauty of paintings, art, who knows something higher than the animals can know, is far more confused; he is in far more of a mess… because while you are listening to great music something is contributed by the music which is outside and something is contributed by the music which is inside; it is a meeting of two polarities. You are hanging in the middle and both are pulling you in separate directions. You will find more anxiety in your life.

 

That’s why poor people are less in anguish than rich people. Rich countries live in anguish because they have enough pleasure; they are fed up with it. Now they want something higher, and with the higher the problems arise. The animal part is well settled because it is your heritage of millions of years. It is in your chemistry, in your biology, in your physiology. Everything is settled, instinctive. You need not be aware, you need not do anything. But if you seek and search for happiness then you are going into a more shadowy world which is less substantial — higher but more shadowy.

 

And the third goal is bliss, which again is very clear, as clear as the first, in fact far more clear than the first because the first has a clarity, but the clarity is of a much lower kind. The third has a clarity of the highest quality. Only the awakened one knows the clarity of the third.

 

Buddha says: RESIST THE PLEASURES OF LIFE…. Become a little more mature. Don’t be childish, don’t remain animals. Put your energies towards the highest goal in life — let bliss be your goal. And people who live in pleasures also have one thing more in their life, and that is the desire to hurt others, because pleasures create competition. If you want more money, of course you have to snatch it from somebody else. If you want power, then somebody else will lose power. If you want to be the president, then somebody else will not be the president. Hence it is a constant struggle. You have to hurt many to succeed. You have to be very destructive, inhumanly destructive.

 

It is only the goal of bliss which can be nonviolent; otherwise pleasures are going to be violent. Buddha says: RESIST THE PLEASURES OF LIFE AND THE DESIRE TO HURT — TILL SORROWS VANISH. Be alert. He is not saying repress, he cannot say that. Be aware — so that pleasures don’t pull you downwards, so that slowly slowly you are freed from your animal heritage, so that slowly slowly you can transcend your biology.

 

And avoid the desire to hurt others. There is a certain joy in hurting others. We go on hurting people; it gives you the feeling of power. It helps you to feel that you are powerful when you can hurt somebody. It is a very ugly desire, egoistic, but everybody does that. Watch yourself, in how many ways you hurt people. You may not be doing anything in particular to hurt them, but your gesture may be enough. People walk in such a way, talk in such a way, that others are hurt. And nobody can blame them because what they are doing is so subtle. They use words which can hurt, and they use them with such skill that you cannot blame them. They can always find a way to rationalize.

 

A black gentleman was arrested for shooting a man. The next morning he was brought into court.

 

“Why did you shoot that man?” asked the judge.

 

“Because he called me a black sonofabitch!”

 

“You didn’t have any business shooting a man for that!”

 

“Well, Your Honor, what would you have done if he called you that?”

 

“Oh, he wouldn’t have called me that!”

 

“I know, Judge, but suppose he had called you the kind of a sonofabitch you are, then? Of course he cannot call you ‘a black sonofabitch’ — you are not black — but the kind of a sonofabitch you are, if he had called you that, what then?”

 

People can go on finding ways skillfully…. One has to remain aware until all sorrows vanish.

 

- Osho, “Dhammapada, Vol 11, #9”