The End Of All Trouble

'I' - the problem

And Buddha was teaching how to be nothing! People have asked him, "What kind of teaching is this? At least right now we are. We may be in misery, we may be in trouble, but at least we are. Teach us how not to be in trouble, how not to be miserable.... Rather than that you teach us just to disappear!"

But Buddha knows better. He knows that as long as you are, you are going to be in misery, you are going to be in trouble. The very separation from the cosmos is the source of all your miseries. It may take different forms, but the real form, the reality, is that you have taken yourself apart from this vast existence.

So Buddha said, "I am trying so that you will not have any trouble, any misery. Just be nothing; then how can you be troubled? Who will be troubled?"

He has found one of the greatest truths ever found: that you and your misery are not two things. You are the misery, you are the problem. Your mind tells you that this is not so: "We can change the misery." That is true.... The misery you can change, but you will change it for another misery. You can go on changing -- everybody is doing that -- from one misery to another misery. But you never come to realize that the real misery is that you are. You are separate from existence.

Buddha is hard, but absolutely true: until you dissolve yourself into the totality, you will be troubled. The very separation is the cause of your hell.

Osho, excerpts from The Buddha: The Emptiness of the Heart #4

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Osho book recommendations

The Zen Manifesto; Freedom from Oneself

The Book of Wisdom: The Heart of Tibetan Buddhism. Commentaries on Atisha's Seven Points of Mind Training

No Water No Moon: Talks on Zen Stories

Gold Nuggets: Messages from Existence

The Heart Sutra: Talks on Buddha

The Empty Boat: Talks on the Sayings of Chuang Tzu

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