Three sutras that are basic for life transformation, that are ultimate in a way.
The first: Be nonambitious.
UNLESS AMBITION IS KILLED, you will remain in misery. Ambition is the source of all miseries.
What is ambition? 'A' wants to be 'B', the poor wants to be rich, the ugly wants to be beautiful.
Everyone longs to be someone else, something other than what he is. No one is content with himself. That's what ambition is.
Whatsoever you are, you are not content with it. This is ambition. Then you are bound to be in misery, because you cannot be anything else. You can only be yourself; nothing else is possible. All else is just futile, harmful, dangerous. You can waste your whole life, your whole existence.
Whatsoever you are, you are. Accept it; don't desire it to be otherwise. This is what nonambition means. Nonambitiousness is basic to all spiritual transformation, because once you accept yourself, many things start happening. But the first thing.... If you accept yourself totally, the first thing that happens to you is a nontense life. There is no tension. You don't want to be anything else; there is nowhere else to go. Then you can be here and now. There is no comparison. You yourself are unique. You no longer think in terms of others.
Then there is no future. Ambition needs future, it needs space to grow. It cannot grow here and now; there is no space. This moment is so small, so atomic. Ambition needs the future; and the greater the ambition, the greater the future that is needed.
If your ambition is so great that it cannot be fulfilled in this life, then you will create an afterlife. You will create heaven, you will create moksha, you will create the concept of rebirth. I am not saying that there is no rebirth. I am saying that you believe in rebirth not because it is there but because your ambitions are so great that they cannot be fulfilled in one lifetime. Your belief in rebirth, reincarnation, is not because it is a fact. It is because of ambition and desire. Reincarnation may be a fact, but for you it is just a fiction. For you it is just a matter of the future, of more space to move in.
Remember, you cannot be ambitious in the present moment. It is impossible. There is no space.
The present moment is so atomic, so small, that you cannot move in it. You can be in it, but you cannot desire in it. It is long enough to be, but it is not long enough for desiring. To desire you need future, time. Really, time exists because of desire. For the trees here, there is no time. For the birds singing here, there is no time. For the stars and for the sun and for the earth, there is no time. Time exists because of human desire. If humanity was not on this earth, there would be no time; there would be no past and no future.
Your desire creates the future. Your memory creates the past. They are both parts of your mind.
Don't desire, and the future disappears. And when there is no future, how can you be tense? How?
There is no possibility of being tense if there is no future And if there is no past - if you know that it is simply memory, the dust collected on the way - how can there be any anxiety? With the past, anxiety enters. And with the future - plans, imaginations, projections - tension exists. When the past drops and the future is not open, you are here, now. No anxiety, no tension, no anguish.
Nonambition means to accept yourself as you are. But that doesn't mean that there is no possibility of growth. On the contrary, when you accept yourself as you are the transformation sets in. You start growing, but the dimension differs. Then the dimension is not in the future but in the eternal.
Know this distinction well. You can move in two ways. If you move in the future, you are moving in the mind: a fiction, a dream world. If you don't move in the future, then a different dimension becomes open for you from this very moment You are moving in the eternal. The eternal is hidden in the moment. If you can be here right now, in the moment, you have entered the eternal. If you go on thinking of the future and the past, you are living in the temporal. The temporal is the world, and the eternal is nirvana.
Buddha is reported to have said again and again that if you can be in the now, there is no need of any technique to meditate. It is enough. It will do all that is needed. But how can you be in the now if you are ambitious?
The ambitious mind cannot be in the now. It can be anywhere else but it cannot be in the now.
The ambitious mind always moves away from the present. It is thinking of that which is come; it is thinking of tomorrow. It is thinking of an afterlife; it is not interested in the life that is here. It is interested in something that should be. It is not interested in the 'is'; it is always interested in the 'ought', in the 'should'. That interest is nonreligious. A religious mind, a religious consciousness, is interested in existence as it is. The first sutra is KILL OUT ambition totally so that you can be here and now, so that you can enter the eternal.
KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE - the second sutra.
KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE. Life's laws are very paradoxical. If you desire life, you will miss it. That is the surest way to miss it. If you desire life, you will miss it; but if you don't desire it, abundant life will happen to you.
Through desire, you move against life. It looks paradoxical. It is. This paradoxical law has to be understood deeply.
Why is it that when you desire life you miss it? Why? It should not be so. Logically, mathematically, it should not be so. If someone desires life, why should he miss it? The mechanism is such that when you desire, you have again moved into the future. And life is here! Life is already the case - how can you desire it? Only that which is not can be desired. And life is. How can you desire it? It already is; it is already happening. You are life.
If you desire life, you will miss it. Through desire, you are moving away from life. Every desire leads you further and further away. That's why there is so much insistence on desirelessness. It is not that Buddha or all those who talk about desirelessness are against life. Really, on the contrary, they are for life. But they say, "Don't desire," and to us U looks as though they are against life, life-negative.
They are not.
We are missing life through desire. That is why Buddha says, "Don't desire." What happens if you don't desire? Life will happen to you. It is already happening, but you cannot look at it because your eyes are fixed on the future. You are somewhere else; your mind is not here. Life is here and you are not here, so the meeting has become impossible. Then you will hanker for life, you will desire life, but you will go on missing it.
Allow life to happen to you. How can that be done? By being attentive here. By not being desirous of being somewhere else.
The moment you start desiring life, you become afraid of death. It is bound to be so, because the desire for life creates the fear of death. There is no death. In reality, nothing dies; nothing can. It is impossible. Death never happens; death is not. Then why do we feel death so much, and why are we so afraid of it? Why are we afraid of something that is not?
We are afraid of death because of our desire for life. The desire for life creates a counter fear: the fear of death. We don't know life, but we desire life. Then the fear comes in that life is going to be destroyed.
We see death happening... someone dies. Have you ever observed the fact that it is always someone else who dies, never you? It is always someone else. You see death from the outside; you have not seen it from the inside. You see someone dying but you don't know what is happening to him in his innermost core. You just know what is happening on the periphery. The periphery has gone dead; it is no longer alive, the man cannot breathe. But what has happened in the core, in the very being, in the center? You don't know.
No one has witnessed death. And no one can, because there is only one way to witness it: if you move to your own innermost core and witness it there. But death never happens there. That is why a Buddha laughs at death, a Krishna laughs.
Krishna says to Arjuna in the Gita, "Don't be afraid. Don't think that anyone is going to die." No one dies; you cannot kill anyone. It is impossible. In this world, nothing can be destroyed, not even a micro-organism can be destroyed. Destruction is not possible. Only change is possible.
Life goes on moving. One wave dies (appears to die) and then arises as another wave. Only forms disappear and new forms appear, but nothing dies and nothing is born.
If nothing dies then nothing is born, because death is possible only if something is born. Birth and death are two fallacies. You existed before your birth - otherwise birth would not have been possible - and you will exist after your death - otherwise it would not be possible for you to be here and now.
But the desire to cling to life creates the fear of death.
If you stop desiring life, the fear of death immediately disappears. And when the fear of death disappears, you can know what life is. A mind that is trembling with fear and anguish cannot know.
Knowing needs a very calm, unafraid, fearless consciousness.
Desire for life means fear of death. The sutra says KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE so that the fear of death disappears. And when there is no death, and no clinging to life, you will know what life is, because it has already happened to you. You are it! It is not something extrinsic; it is something intrinsic. It is happening already. You are breathing in it. You are just like a fish in the ocean of life, but you are not aware of it because your attention is obsessed with the future. Desire means obsession with the future. No desire means living here and now.
And the third sutra:
KILL OUT DESIRE OF COMFORT, desire for happiness.
Kill it out.
It appears very gloomy, sad, life-negating. It is not. The more you desire comfort, the more discomfort will be felt. The more you desire comfort, the more discomfort you are creating for yourself, because discomfort is relative to the desire for comfort.
The more you ask for happiness, the more you will be in suffering. The suffering is a shadow. The greater the desire for happiness, the greater will be the shadow. Ask for happiness and you will never get it. You will only suffer frustration. Why? Because there is only one way to be happy, and that is to be happy here, now. Happiness is not a result. It is a way of life.
Happiness is not the end result of desire. It is an attitude, not a desire. You can be happy here and now if you know how to be, but you will never be happy if you don't know how to be and you go on desiring it. Happiness is an art. It is a way of life.
This very moment, if you can be silent and aware of the life that is around you and within you, you will be happy. The birds are singing, the wind is blowing. The trees are happy, the sky is happy, everything in existence is happy except you. Existence is happiness, it is an eternal celebration, a festivity. Look at existence! Every tree is in a festive mood, every bird is in a festive mood. Except man, everything is in a festive mood. The whole existence is a festival, a constant, continuous festival. No sadness, no death, no misery exists anywhere except in the human mind. Something is wrong with the human mind, not with existence. Something is wrong with you, not with the situation.
Why is man unhappy? No animal is so unhappy, no bird is so unhappy, no fish is so unhappy as man. Why is man so unhappy? Because man desires happiness, and the birds are happy right now; the trees are happy right now. Man desires happiness; he is never happy here and now. He always desires happiness and goes on missing it. Happiness is here. It is happening all around you. Allow it to enter within.
Be part of existence. Don't move into the future. Existence never moves into the future; only mind does.
This is what I call meditation: to be here, to not move into the future. Be nonambitious, kill all desire for life, don't desire happiness and then you will be happy and no one can destroy your happiness.
Then it will be impossible for you to be unhappy. And then you will be deathless and eternal life will have happened to you. In fact, it has already happened but you are not aware of it. Then you will be fulfilled. Nonambitious, you will be fulfilled.
You are unique. Everything, every peak experience that is possible to anyone, is possible to you also; but it will happen in a unique way. It has happened to a Buddha, to a Jesus, to a Zarathustra and it will happen to you also. But it never happens in the same way. It is not going to happen to you like it happened to Buddha. It is not going to happen to you like it happened to Jesus. It will happen to you in a unique, individual way. When it happens to you it will be absolutely new. The innermost core of the experience will be the same - the same bliss, the same silence, the same enlightenment - but on the periphery everything will be different.
So don't imitate anyone. That is part of ambition. Don't imitate Buddha, don't imitate Jesus. Try to be yourself. Rather, even trying is futile. Just be yourself. When you are yourself, you are open to all possibilities. When you are yourself, the whole existence starts helping you. You are not fighting it.
When you are not fighting.... This is what trust means. When you are not fighting, existence happens to you. If you are fighting with existence you are simply destroying yourself, destroying your possibilities, your energy, your life, your existence. Don't fight! Surrender to existence. Accept yourself as the whole wishes you to be, don't try to be anything else, and enlightenment can happen any moment. This very moment it can happen; there is no need to wait.
From: Osho book - The New Alchemy To Turn You On.
Source: oshoworld
Feel free to Share.
The first: Be nonambitious.
UNLESS AMBITION IS KILLED, you will remain in misery. Ambition is the source of all miseries.
What is ambition? 'A' wants to be 'B', the poor wants to be rich, the ugly wants to be beautiful.
Everyone longs to be someone else, something other than what he is. No one is content with himself. That's what ambition is.
Whatsoever you are, you are not content with it. This is ambition. Then you are bound to be in misery, because you cannot be anything else. You can only be yourself; nothing else is possible. All else is just futile, harmful, dangerous. You can waste your whole life, your whole existence.
Whatsoever you are, you are. Accept it; don't desire it to be otherwise. This is what nonambition means. Nonambitiousness is basic to all spiritual transformation, because once you accept yourself, many things start happening. But the first thing.... If you accept yourself totally, the first thing that happens to you is a nontense life. There is no tension. You don't want to be anything else; there is nowhere else to go. Then you can be here and now. There is no comparison. You yourself are unique. You no longer think in terms of others.
Then there is no future. Ambition needs future, it needs space to grow. It cannot grow here and now; there is no space. This moment is so small, so atomic. Ambition needs the future; and the greater the ambition, the greater the future that is needed.
If your ambition is so great that it cannot be fulfilled in this life, then you will create an afterlife. You will create heaven, you will create moksha, you will create the concept of rebirth. I am not saying that there is no rebirth. I am saying that you believe in rebirth not because it is there but because your ambitions are so great that they cannot be fulfilled in one lifetime. Your belief in rebirth, reincarnation, is not because it is a fact. It is because of ambition and desire. Reincarnation may be a fact, but for you it is just a fiction. For you it is just a matter of the future, of more space to move in.
Remember, you cannot be ambitious in the present moment. It is impossible. There is no space.
The present moment is so atomic, so small, that you cannot move in it. You can be in it, but you cannot desire in it. It is long enough to be, but it is not long enough for desiring. To desire you need future, time. Really, time exists because of desire. For the trees here, there is no time. For the birds singing here, there is no time. For the stars and for the sun and for the earth, there is no time. Time exists because of human desire. If humanity was not on this earth, there would be no time; there would be no past and no future.
Your desire creates the future. Your memory creates the past. They are both parts of your mind.
Don't desire, and the future disappears. And when there is no future, how can you be tense? How?
There is no possibility of being tense if there is no future And if there is no past - if you know that it is simply memory, the dust collected on the way - how can there be any anxiety? With the past, anxiety enters. And with the future - plans, imaginations, projections - tension exists. When the past drops and the future is not open, you are here, now. No anxiety, no tension, no anguish.
Nonambition means to accept yourself as you are. But that doesn't mean that there is no possibility of growth. On the contrary, when you accept yourself as you are the transformation sets in. You start growing, but the dimension differs. Then the dimension is not in the future but in the eternal.
Know this distinction well. You can move in two ways. If you move in the future, you are moving in the mind: a fiction, a dream world. If you don't move in the future, then a different dimension becomes open for you from this very moment You are moving in the eternal. The eternal is hidden in the moment. If you can be here right now, in the moment, you have entered the eternal. If you go on thinking of the future and the past, you are living in the temporal. The temporal is the world, and the eternal is nirvana.
Buddha is reported to have said again and again that if you can be in the now, there is no need of any technique to meditate. It is enough. It will do all that is needed. But how can you be in the now if you are ambitious?
The ambitious mind cannot be in the now. It can be anywhere else but it cannot be in the now.
The ambitious mind always moves away from the present. It is thinking of that which is come; it is thinking of tomorrow. It is thinking of an afterlife; it is not interested in the life that is here. It is interested in something that should be. It is not interested in the 'is'; it is always interested in the 'ought', in the 'should'. That interest is nonreligious. A religious mind, a religious consciousness, is interested in existence as it is. The first sutra is KILL OUT ambition totally so that you can be here and now, so that you can enter the eternal.
KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE - the second sutra.
KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE. Life's laws are very paradoxical. If you desire life, you will miss it. That is the surest way to miss it. If you desire life, you will miss it; but if you don't desire it, abundant life will happen to you.
Through desire, you move against life. It looks paradoxical. It is. This paradoxical law has to be understood deeply.
Why is it that when you desire life you miss it? Why? It should not be so. Logically, mathematically, it should not be so. If someone desires life, why should he miss it? The mechanism is such that when you desire, you have again moved into the future. And life is here! Life is already the case - how can you desire it? Only that which is not can be desired. And life is. How can you desire it? It already is; it is already happening. You are life.
If you desire life, you will miss it. Through desire, you are moving away from life. Every desire leads you further and further away. That's why there is so much insistence on desirelessness. It is not that Buddha or all those who talk about desirelessness are against life. Really, on the contrary, they are for life. But they say, "Don't desire," and to us U looks as though they are against life, life-negative.
They are not.
We are missing life through desire. That is why Buddha says, "Don't desire." What happens if you don't desire? Life will happen to you. It is already happening, but you cannot look at it because your eyes are fixed on the future. You are somewhere else; your mind is not here. Life is here and you are not here, so the meeting has become impossible. Then you will hanker for life, you will desire life, but you will go on missing it.
Allow life to happen to you. How can that be done? By being attentive here. By not being desirous of being somewhere else.
The moment you start desiring life, you become afraid of death. It is bound to be so, because the desire for life creates the fear of death. There is no death. In reality, nothing dies; nothing can. It is impossible. Death never happens; death is not. Then why do we feel death so much, and why are we so afraid of it? Why are we afraid of something that is not?
We are afraid of death because of our desire for life. The desire for life creates a counter fear: the fear of death. We don't know life, but we desire life. Then the fear comes in that life is going to be destroyed.
We see death happening... someone dies. Have you ever observed the fact that it is always someone else who dies, never you? It is always someone else. You see death from the outside; you have not seen it from the inside. You see someone dying but you don't know what is happening to him in his innermost core. You just know what is happening on the periphery. The periphery has gone dead; it is no longer alive, the man cannot breathe. But what has happened in the core, in the very being, in the center? You don't know.
No one has witnessed death. And no one can, because there is only one way to witness it: if you move to your own innermost core and witness it there. But death never happens there. That is why a Buddha laughs at death, a Krishna laughs.
Krishna says to Arjuna in the Gita, "Don't be afraid. Don't think that anyone is going to die." No one dies; you cannot kill anyone. It is impossible. In this world, nothing can be destroyed, not even a micro-organism can be destroyed. Destruction is not possible. Only change is possible.
Life goes on moving. One wave dies (appears to die) and then arises as another wave. Only forms disappear and new forms appear, but nothing dies and nothing is born.
If nothing dies then nothing is born, because death is possible only if something is born. Birth and death are two fallacies. You existed before your birth - otherwise birth would not have been possible - and you will exist after your death - otherwise it would not be possible for you to be here and now.
But the desire to cling to life creates the fear of death.
If you stop desiring life, the fear of death immediately disappears. And when the fear of death disappears, you can know what life is. A mind that is trembling with fear and anguish cannot know.
Knowing needs a very calm, unafraid, fearless consciousness.
Desire for life means fear of death. The sutra says KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE so that the fear of death disappears. And when there is no death, and no clinging to life, you will know what life is, because it has already happened to you. You are it! It is not something extrinsic; it is something intrinsic. It is happening already. You are breathing in it. You are just like a fish in the ocean of life, but you are not aware of it because your attention is obsessed with the future. Desire means obsession with the future. No desire means living here and now.
And the third sutra:
KILL OUT DESIRE OF COMFORT, desire for happiness.
Kill it out.
It appears very gloomy, sad, life-negating. It is not. The more you desire comfort, the more discomfort will be felt. The more you desire comfort, the more discomfort you are creating for yourself, because discomfort is relative to the desire for comfort.
The more you ask for happiness, the more you will be in suffering. The suffering is a shadow. The greater the desire for happiness, the greater will be the shadow. Ask for happiness and you will never get it. You will only suffer frustration. Why? Because there is only one way to be happy, and that is to be happy here, now. Happiness is not a result. It is a way of life.
Happiness is not the end result of desire. It is an attitude, not a desire. You can be happy here and now if you know how to be, but you will never be happy if you don't know how to be and you go on desiring it. Happiness is an art. It is a way of life.
This very moment, if you can be silent and aware of the life that is around you and within you, you will be happy. The birds are singing, the wind is blowing. The trees are happy, the sky is happy, everything in existence is happy except you. Existence is happiness, it is an eternal celebration, a festivity. Look at existence! Every tree is in a festive mood, every bird is in a festive mood. Except man, everything is in a festive mood. The whole existence is a festival, a constant, continuous festival. No sadness, no death, no misery exists anywhere except in the human mind. Something is wrong with the human mind, not with existence. Something is wrong with you, not with the situation.
Why is man unhappy? No animal is so unhappy, no bird is so unhappy, no fish is so unhappy as man. Why is man so unhappy? Because man desires happiness, and the birds are happy right now; the trees are happy right now. Man desires happiness; he is never happy here and now. He always desires happiness and goes on missing it. Happiness is here. It is happening all around you. Allow it to enter within.
Be part of existence. Don't move into the future. Existence never moves into the future; only mind does.
This is what I call meditation: to be here, to not move into the future. Be nonambitious, kill all desire for life, don't desire happiness and then you will be happy and no one can destroy your happiness.
Then it will be impossible for you to be unhappy. And then you will be deathless and eternal life will have happened to you. In fact, it has already happened but you are not aware of it. Then you will be fulfilled. Nonambitious, you will be fulfilled.
You are unique. Everything, every peak experience that is possible to anyone, is possible to you also; but it will happen in a unique way. It has happened to a Buddha, to a Jesus, to a Zarathustra and it will happen to you also. But it never happens in the same way. It is not going to happen to you like it happened to Buddha. It is not going to happen to you like it happened to Jesus. It will happen to you in a unique, individual way. When it happens to you it will be absolutely new. The innermost core of the experience will be the same - the same bliss, the same silence, the same enlightenment - but on the periphery everything will be different.
So don't imitate anyone. That is part of ambition. Don't imitate Buddha, don't imitate Jesus. Try to be yourself. Rather, even trying is futile. Just be yourself. When you are yourself, you are open to all possibilities. When you are yourself, the whole existence starts helping you. You are not fighting it.
When you are not fighting.... This is what trust means. When you are not fighting, existence happens to you. If you are fighting with existence you are simply destroying yourself, destroying your possibilities, your energy, your life, your existence. Don't fight! Surrender to existence. Accept yourself as the whole wishes you to be, don't try to be anything else, and enlightenment can happen any moment. This very moment it can happen; there is no need to wait.
From: Osho book - The New Alchemy To Turn You On.
Source: oshoworld
Feel free to Share.
No comments:
Write comments