Bliss

 

 

Bliss needs great courage. Any courage can afford misery — that’s why there are so many miserable people. It costs nothing to be miserable, it is not a risk at all. It is very convenient to be miserable; in fact, comfortable to be miserable. It feels secure to be miserable. But to be blissful is dangerous, risky. It is dangerous because it is going into the unknown. It is taking your small boat onto the uncharted sea. One knows nothing of the other shore — it may be, it may not be. Even if it is, one has no map, one can’t be certain that one will ever be able to reach it. The boat is small, our energies limited, and the ocean is vast. It really needs guts to get into the boat one day and just move, not looking back, not looking at all the securities on this shore.

 

This shore is familiar; altough there is misery we have become familiar with it. We have lived together for so long that it is almost difficult to say goodbye to it. We are “married” to misery. It needs great courage to divorce misery because it is divorcing the known, the familiar, the accustomed, the conventional. It is divorcing that which nobody else is divorcing. The whole crowd is living in it. One has to learn how to be alone; for miles and miles there is nobody. One has to learn how to be alone; hence bliss needs courage, the courage to die to the past and be reborn.

 

Sannyas is a great leap into the unknown. Gather yourself together for a great journey. Yes, there is risk but with risk is life. Yes, there is insecurity but insecurity is adventure. Yes, there is danger but with danger millions of thrills arise, and you are always in for a surprise because you are moving into unknown territory. Danger is there, risk is there, but boredom — never. In hell you will have great company. The path to heaven is of deep aloneness.

 

Remember it, because entering onto the path is a momentous phenomenon. Buddha used to say that to enter into the river — “srotaapanna”, that was his word — to enter into the river that is going to the ocean is risky, dangerous. But those who dare are the blessed ones. Once you enter the river sooner or later you will reach the ocean. This is entering the river.

 

Bliss is not something that you can think about; you cannot philosophize about it. There is no way to speculate about it, and whatsoever you think about it is going to be wrong. It is an existential experience. It is just as a blind man cannot think anything about light. Unless his eyes are cured he will never know what light is. He can go on guessing, inferring, listening to great dialogues on light, reading books on light, talking to people about light, accumulating great information and knowledge about light — but still he will not have any glimpse of what it is. The only way to know light is to open your eyes and see it.

 

That exactly, precisely the case with bliss: one has to experience it. One has to prepare oneself for the great experience. Meditation simply prepares the ground, it helps you to open your eyes, it is medicinal. And once your eyes are cured you know what it is.

 

Many times many people asked Buddha “What is bliss?” and he would always say “Just be with me and be silent for a few months, a few years, and whenever you are right, ripe, mature enough to know it, I will tell you.” Many stayed with him and he would never tell them what it was. One day he would ask them “Now do you want to know what bliss is?” And they would say “It can’t be said, but we ourselves know we are grateful that you tricked us into bliss. You never said anything about it but you helped us to be silent, to be still.”

 

When you are silent and still something wells up within you — that is bliss. It is your innermost nature. But remember it is an experience; it is not a theory, it is not a dogma, it is not contained in any scriptures. Though it is written all over existence, on each leaf of a tree, on each pebble on the seashore, you will only be able to see it when you have experienced it in the innermost shrine of your being. Then you will see it everywhere. Then the whole existence is made of bliss and nothing else. Let bliss be a song that resounds in you.

 

-Osho, “Scriptures in Silence and Sermons in Stones, #1”