Pleasure is momentary, of time, for the time being; bliss is nontemporal, timeless. Pleasure begins and ends; bliss abides forever. Pleasure comes and goes; bliss never comes, never goes -- it is already there in the innermost core of your being. Pleasure has to be snatched away from the other; you become either a beggar or a thief. Bliss makes you a master. Bliss is not something that you invent but something that you discover. Bliss is your innermost nature. It has been there since the very beginning, you just have not looked at it, you have taken it for granted. You don't look inwards.

 

This is the only misery of man: that he goes on looking outwards, seeking and searching. And you cannot find it in the outside because it is not there.

 

One evening, Rabiya was searching for something on the street in front of her small hut. The sun was setting; slowly slowly darkness was descending. A few people gathered. They asked the old woman -- she was a famous Sufi mystic -- "What are you doing? What have you lost? What are you searching for?"

 

She said, "I have lost my needle."

 

The people said, "Now the sun is setting and it will be very difficult to find the needle, but we will help you. Where exactly has it fallen? -- because the road is big and the needle is so small. If we know the exact place it will be easier to find it."

 

Rabiya said, "If you don't ask me that question, that will be better -- because in fact it has not fallen on the road at all! It has fallen inside my house."

 

The people started laughing and they said, "We had always thought that you are a little insane! If the needle has fallen inside the house, then why are you searching on the road?"

 

Rabiya said, "For a simple, logical reason: inside the house there is no light and on the outside a little light is still there."

 

The people laughed and started dispersing.

 

Rabiya called them and said, "Listen! That's exactly what you are doing; I was just following your example. You go on seeking bliss in the outside world without asking the first and primary question: Where have you lost it? And I tell you, you have lost it inside. You are looking for it on the outside, for the simple, logical reason that your senses open outwards -- there is a little more light. Your eyes look outwards, your ears hear outwards, your hands reach outwards; that's the simple reason why you are searching there. Otherwise, I tell you, you have not lost it outside -- and I tell you on my own authority. I have also searched on the outside for many, many lives, and the day I looked in I was surprised. There was no need to seek and search; it has always been there."

 

Bliss is your innermost core. Pleasure you have to beg from others; naturally you become dependent. Bliss makes you a master. Bliss is not something that happens; it is already the case.

 

Buddha says: THERE IS PLEASURE AND THERE IS BLISS. FORGO THE FIRST TO POSSESS THE SECOND. Stop looking on the outside. Look within, turn in. Start seeking and searching in your own interiority, into your own subjectivity. Bliss is not an object to be found anywhere else; it is your consciousness.

 

In the East we have always defined the ultimate truth as SAT-CHIT-ANAND. SAT means truth, CHIT means consciousness, ANAND means bliss. They are all three faces of the same reality. This is the true trinity -- not God the Father, and the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost; that is not the true trinity. The true trinity is truth, consciousness, bliss. And they are not separate phenomena, but one energy expressing in three ways, one energy having three faces. Hence in the East we say God is TRIMURTI -- God has three faces. These are the real faces, not Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh. Those are for the children -- spiritually, metaphysically, for the immature. Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh: those names are for the beginners.

 

Truth, consciousness, bliss -- these are the ultimate truths. First comes truth; as you enter in, you become aware of your eternal reality: sat, truth. As you go deeper into your reality, into your sat, into your truth, you become aware of consciousness, a tremendous consciousness. All is light, nothing is dark. All is awareness, nothing is unawareness. You are just a flame of consciousness, not even a shadow of unconsciousness anywhere. And when you enter still deeper, then the ultimate core is bliss -- anand.

 

Buddha says: Forgo everything that you have thought up to now meaningful, significant. Sacrifice everything for this ultimate because this is the only thing that will make you contented, that will make you fulfilled, that will bring spring to your being... and you will blossom into a thousand and one flowers.

 

Pleasure will keep you a driftwood. Pleasure will make you more and more cunning; it will not give you wisdom. And it will make you more and more a slave; it will not give you the kingdom of God. It will make you more and more calculating, it will make you more and more exploitative. It will make you more and more political, diplomatic. You will start sucking people; that's what people are doing.

 

The husband says to the wife, "I love you," but in reality he simply uses her. The wife says she loves the husband, but she is simply using him. The husband may be using her as a sexual object and the wife may be using him as a financial security.

 

Pleasure makes everybody cunning, deceptive. And to be cunning is to miss the bliss of being innocent, is to miss the bliss of being a child.

 

At Lockheed, a part was needed for a new airplane and an announcement was sent around the world to get the lowest bid. From Poland came a bid of three thousand dollars. England offered to build the part for six thousand. The asking price from Israel was nine thousand. Richardson, the engineer in charge of constructing the new plane, decided to visit each country to find the reason behind the disparity of the bids.

 

In Poland, the manufacturer explained, "One thousand for the materials needed, one thousand for the labor, and one thousand for overhead and a tiny profit."

 

In England, Richardson inspected the part and found that it was almost as good as the Polish-made one. "Why are you asking six thousand?" inquired the engineer.

 

"Two thousand for material," explained the Englishman, "two thousand for labor, and two thousand for expenses and a small profit."

 

In Israel, the Lockheed representative wandered through a back alley into a small shop and encountered an elderly man who had submitted the bid of nine thousand dollars. "Why are you asking that much?" he asked.

 

"Well," said the old Jew, "three thousand for you, three thousand for me, and three thousand for the schmuck in Poland!"

 

Money, power, prestige -- they all make you cunning.

 

Seek pleasure and you will lose your innocence; and to lose your innocence is to lose all. Jesus says: be like a small child, only then can you enter into my kingdom of God. And he is right. But the pleasure-seeker cannot be as innocent as a child. He has to be very clever, very cunning, very political; only then can he succeed in this cut-throat competition that exists all around. Everybody is at everybody else's throat. You are not living amongst friends. The world cannot be friendly unless we drop this idea of competitiveness.

 

But we bring every child.... From the very beginning we start poisoning every child with this poison of competitiveness. By the time he will be coming out of the university he will be completely poisoned. We have hypnotized him with the idea that he has to fight with others, that life is a survival of the fittest. Then life can never be a celebration. Then life can never have any kind of religiousness in it. Then it cannot be pious, holy. Then it cannot have any quality of sacredness. Then it is all mean, ugly.

 

-Osho, "The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 8, #5"