Osho on Atisha Sutra - Don't seek sorrow for spurious comforts.

 

 

The first sutra:

DON'T SEEK SORROW FOR SPURIOUS COMFORTS.

 

Everybody seeks, searches for bliss, and almost everybody succeeds in finding just the opposite. I say "almost" because a few people have to be left out of the account -- a Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu, an Atisha. But they are so few and far between; they are exceptions, they only prove the rule. So I say almost everybody who searches for bliss finds misery and suffering. People try to enter into heaven, but by the time they have arrived suddenly they recognize the fact that it is hell.

 

There must be a great misunderstanding somewhere. The misunderstanding is that those who seek pleasure will find sorrow -- because pleasure is only a camouflage; it is sorrow hiding itself behind a curtain. It is a mask -- tears hiding behind smiles, thorns waiting for you behind flowers. Those who see it, and everybody can see it because it is so obvious... everybody comes to experience it again and again. But man is the animal who never learns.

 

Aristotle has defined man as a rational being. That is sheer nonsense! Man is the most irrational being you can find anywhere. Man can be rational, but is not. It is not the definition of man as he is, it is the definition of man as he should be. A Buddha, yes; a Mohammed, yes -- they are rational beings, rational in the sense that they live intelligently, they live wisely, they use each single opportunity to grow, to mature, to be. But as far as millions of human beings are concerned, ninety-nine point nine percent of people, they are not rational beings at all, they are utterly irrational.

 

Their first irrationality is that they pass through the same experience again and again, yet they learn nothing, they remain the same. How many times have you been angry, and what have you learned out of it? How many times have you been jealous, and what experience have you gained out of it? You go on moving through experiences without in any way being affected by them. You remain un-grownup; your way of life is very irrational, unintelligent.

 

The intelligent person will be able to see easily that, seeking pleasure, all that is found is sorrow. And what are those pleasures in fact? Very spurious ones. Somebody wants to make a big house, and how much trouble he takes and how much suffering he goes through and how many anxieties and how many nervous breakdowns!

 

They say that if you are really a successful person you are bound to have a heart attack somewhere between forty-two and forty-eight. If you don't have a heart attack before you are fifty your life is wasted, you are a failure; you have not tried to succeed, you have not been ambitious enough. Ambitious people are bound to have heart attacks; the more ambitious will have nervous breakdowns.

 

If you don't need the psychiatrist, that simply means you have not used your mind in the ways of ambition. And the whole society is geared towards ambition, the whole educational system produces only ambitious minds. That means potential patients for the psychotherapist. It seems as if there is a conspiracy -- that the whole educational system only creates people for doctors, for priests, for psychotherapists.

 

The whole system seems to be sick, sick unto death. It does not create the healthy, alive, radiant human being; it does not create the joyous, the celebrating, the festive being. It does not teach you how to make your life a festival. Whatsoever it teaches takes you deeper and deeper into hell. And you know it -- because I am not talking about some speculative systems of thought, I am talking simply about your psychology, your state of being.

 

Atisha is right. He says: DON'T SEEK SORROW FOR SPURIOUS COMFORTS.

How much suffering you have created -- for what? Somebody wanted a little bigger house, a little bigger bank balance, a little more fame, a little more name, more power. Somebody wanted to become the president or the prime minister. All are spurious, because death will take them away. That is the definition of the spurious.

 

Only that which cannot be taken away by death is real. Everything else is unreal; it is made of the same stuff dreams are made of. If you are running after things which will be taken away by death, then your life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." You will never attain to any significance.

 

And without significance how can there be a song? And without significance how can you ever say that "I have lived"? The tree has not bloomed, the tree has not been fruitful. What to say about fruits and flowers -- even leaves have not come. Millions are born as seeds and die as seeds. From the cradle to the grave, their story is just of drifting. Accidental it is, and the ultimate result is great sorrow. The idea of hell only symbolizes the great sorrow that you create by a wrong kind of living.

 

Atisha says: DON'T SEEK SORROW FOR SPURIOUS COMFORTS.

Then what has to be done? Think of something higher -- something that is beyond death, something that cannot be destroyed, something that is indestructible, something that transcends time -- and sorrow will not be created.

 

If you search the ultimate, each moment of your life will become more and more peaceful, calm, quiet, cool, fragrant. If you search for the ultimate, if you search for the truth, or God or nirvana or whatsoever you want to call it; if you are in search for the deepest in life and the highest in life and you are not after spurious things, then your very search will bring a new quality to your being. You will feel rooted, integrated; you will feel together. And you will feel a new joy arising in your heart, not coming from the outside.

The real joy never comes from the outside, it is the spurious that comes from the outside -- death can take away only that which has come from the outside.

 

Death happens only on the without, it never happens within. Death happens on the outside, never on the inside; the inside is eternal. Your interiority is beyond death -- it has always been here, will always be here, but you are unaware of it. You go on running after shadows, and the real waits for you to look in, to turn in, to tune in. So the first thing: seek that which is deathless, and sooner or later you will knock on the doors of heaven.

 

The second thing is: why in the first place do you run after spurious pleasures? This woman, that man... why do you run after spurious pleasures? What is the rationale behind it? The rationale is that you are already in sorrow. You want somehow to forget all about it; you want to drown yourself in alcohol, in sex, in money, in power politics -- you want somewhere to drown yourself.

 

Politicians can easily say that prohibition is needed, because they have a far more dangerous intoxicant available to them. Morarji Desai can insist for prohibition, because he is drinking out of his power politics; he is drowning himself in a very subtle kind of intoxicant. In fact, no alcohol is more dangerous than politics. If anything has to be prohibited from the world, it is not alcohol, it is politics. And how many people drink alcohol in India? Not more than seven percent. And how many more people are political? I don't think you can find any person who is not political -- very difficult.

 

You may not be actually in politics, but politics is far more subtle. The husband is trying to dominate over the wife -- this is politics. The wife is trying to manipulate the husband in her own way -- this is politics. The child is in a tantrum and wants a toy immediately -- this is politics. Politics means an effort to dominate the other. And it is very intoxicating; it is the worst kind of alcohol available in the world.

 

A few people drown in power politics, a few seek shelter in sexuality, a few go to the pub, but many more simply go on searching spurious comforts, go from one comfort to another. When they have achieved one and found that it gives nothing, no nourishment, immediately they start seeking something else. Their life becomes a constant occupation so they need not look at the inner sorrow that is gathering like a cloud, a dark cloud.

 

So the second meaning of the sutra is: rather than seeking spurious comforts, the best way is to go into your sorrow. Meditate, go deep into it. Don't escape from your misery, because by escaping you will never learn what it is and you will never learn how to transcend it. The beauty is: if you really know the cause of your misery, in that very knowing misery is transcended -- because the cause is always and always ignorance and nothing else.

 

Jesus says: Truth liberates. This is one of the most important statements ever made, very fundamental for every seeker to understand. Truth liberates -- not the truth that you gather from scriptures but the truth that you come across through your own experiencing.

 

You are sad. Go into your sadness rather than escaping into some activity, into some occupation, rather than going to see a friend or to a movie or turning on the radio or the tv. Rather than escaping from it, turning your back towards it, drop all activity. Close your eyes, go into it, see what it is, why it is -- and see without condemning it, because if you condemn you will not be able to see the totality of it.

 

See without judging. If you judge, you will not be able to see the whole of it. Without judgment, without condemnation, without evaluation, just watch it, what it is. Look as if it is a flower, sad; a cloud, dark; but look at it with no judgment so that you can see all the facets of it. And you will be surprised: the deeper you go into it, the more it starts dispersing. If a person can go into his sorrow deeply he will find all sorrow has evaporated. In that evaporation of sorrow is joy, is bliss.

 

Bliss has not to be found outside, against sorrow. Bliss has to be found deep, hidden behind the sorrow itself. You have to dig into your sorrowful states and you will find a wellspring of joy.

 

-Osho, "The Book of Wisdom, #17"