Chapter 10

Bodha means awareness, ananda means bliss - awareness, bliss. Misery consists of unawareness.

Misery has no outer cause for it, the cause is inner. You go on throwing the responsibility outside, but that is just an excuse. Yes, it is triggered from the outside but the outside does not create it.

Somebody insults you: the insult comes from the outside but the anger is inside you. The anger is not caused by the insult, it is not the effect of the insult. If there were no anger-energy in you the insult would have remained impotent. It would have simply passed, you would not have been disturbed by it.

In fact, when you are carrying anger-energy you are waiting for somebody to insult you, you are searching for somebody to insult you, because without finding somebody to insult you it will be so difficult to be angry. If you cannot find anybody who can trigger it then you will become a self- triggerer: you will imagine something or you will think of the past or even of the future and you will trigger it yourself. But then it looks more neurotic, so the rational mind always tries to find an excuse for it; and there are millions of excuses available.

A woman may be there who can create passion in you, but the passion is in you. She may be just an instrument in bringing it to the surface of your consciousness. She may be a catalyst but she is not the cause.

Causes don't exist outside human consciousness, causes exist inside you. You are the cause of your life, and to understand this is to understand one of the most basic truths. To understand this is to start a journey of transformation.

Misery is caused by your unawareness, bliss is caused by your awareness; and between the unaware mind and the aware mind is the whole of life - the world and nirvana. Unconscious you are in the world conscious you are in nirvana. Unconscious you belong to Caesar, conscious you belong

to Christ. You are the same person, and the energy that becomes conscious or remains unconscious is also the same. When consciousness is asleep - it is unconscious. It can be provoked, it can be brought to awareness, it can burn as a bright light. Consciousness burning like a flame, like a bright light, is bodha. And when your whole being becomes full of light you have become awareness.

That's why Siddharth Gautama is called Buddha; the name comes from the root 'bodha'. Bodha is the process, buddha is the ultimate result.

So from this moment start thinking in terms of yourself being the cause of your life and your world.

This is the meaning of sannyas: to take total responsibility for one's own being. And once the responsibility is accepted you will see that things are so easy, because you are master. If you want to create misery, you can, but then there is no need for weeping and crying; it is you who have created it. You can only be thankful to those who have helped you in creating it, but the decisive factor is within you. And if you want to be blissful you can create that too. But bliss is not produced directly: it comes as a shadow of awareness. Misery comes as a shadow of unawareness.

So the work will consist of finding how to become more and more aware. This will be your work with me, this will be my work with you. This is possible, and vou have the capacity, you have the potential.

Anand means bliss, satyam means truth - the truth of bliss. And there is no other truth: only bliss is the criterion of whether you are arriving closer to truth or not. The closer you come to truth, the more blissful you become; the farther away from truth, the more miserable. Misery is nothing but distance from truth; bliss is closeness, intimacy. And when one has become one with truth there is the ultimate bliss which cannot be taken away, because all distance has disappeared, all space between you and truth has disappeared.

The truth exists at the central core of our being, but we exist on the periphery, we live on the periphery. We live in the porch of a palace and we have forgotten the palace completely. We have decorated our small porch and we think this is all that is there. We are self-condemned beggars.

Nature intends everybody to be an emperor, nature creates only kings, but we never accept that; it looks too good to be true. We are happy in our misery. Misery gives something, that is the ego.

Misery gives ego and bliss takes it away.

We would like to be even if we are miserable; we don't want to disappear. And that is the stake, that is the gamble: one has to disappear, only then is bliss and truth possible. On the periphery we can be great egos; it is possible to be on the periphery. The closer you move to the centre, the more light there is and the less you are. A moment comes when you are and yet you are not; that is the point where everybody becomes frightened. The work of a master consists of helping you in that moment. Before that even teachers can help teachers can teach you how to meditate.

That is the difference between a master and a teacher: a teacher can teach you, but there comes a moment where no teaching is of any help. Only the being of the master can give you the ultimate push. You hesitate there. It is almost like standing facing an abyss, and the fear is natural. A master is needed then who can throw you tumbling into the abyss. He will look like the enemy in that moment, but once you have fallen into the abyss, you have become the abyss, you will feel grateful.

So start moving from the periphery to the centre of your being. All ways of meditation are nothing but methods to move from the periphery to the being. The periphery consists of thoughts and the being,

the centre consists of no-thought. So move from thoughts to no-thought; drop as many thoughts as possible. Neglect them, ignore them. Don't feed them anymore, don't nourish them anymore, don't relish them, don't welcome them; just be indifferent. They will come out of old habit but don't pay any attention; don't even say hello. Just sit there indifferent, and slowly slowly, when they are not received, just as guests disappear when they are not received, thoughts also disappear. You have to be a host to them, only then do they go on continuing to come to you. So don't be a host anymore.

And when you are empty you become a host to god; then the real guest comes.

[The new sannyasin says he can stay a year. He has been in several therapy groups in the west.

Osho recommends he do groups here. Then the sannyasin says: It's taken a year and a half to get here.]

It has been long, but you have come and you have come in the right moment; you have not missed the train. Much is going to happen, and you have done whatsoever is needed as a preparation.

All these groups are immensely valuable for the modern mind. They were not needed in the ancient days because people were not cluttered with culture. Now a new need has arisen: people are so cluttered with culture that first they have to be unburdened; that is a new need. Buddha never knew about it so Buddhist methods are of no use right now. First you have to unburden yourself then Buddhist methods can be used, otherwise not. And that is one of the problems that the West has to face. The East has exploded on the West. All the ancient methods and techniques are becoming available, and the people who are making them available are completely unaware about the modern mind. Those methods were developed five thousand years before, some methods even ten thousand years before. Then there was a totally different kind of mind in the world, a very innocent, childlike mind. Those methods were perfectly in tune with that mind. Now man is no more a child, man has come of age, and the problems that naturally come with growth are there. Man is no more innocent.

Those methods were developed before Adam ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Modern man is full of apples, he is continuously eating from the tree of knowledge. He is so burdened, that unless he is defrosted those ancient methods cannot work. So humanistic psychology, psychoanalysis, psychosynthesis, and encounter, psychodrama and gestalt are of immense help; they are a basic need today. But they are incomplete, mm? they only prepare the ground, they don't create the garden.

Man's pathology is there because man has to transcend. If you cannot transcend humanity you will become pathological. All the psychological diseases are there because man has an inner capacity to go beyond humanity, to surpass humanity. And that energy is there - if you don't allow it, it will turn upon you, it will be destructive. All creative people are dangerous people, because if they are not allowed creativity they will become destructive.

Man is the only animal on the earth who is creative; no other animal is so dangerous because no other animal creates. They simply live, they have a programmed life: they never go off the track. A dog lives like a dog and dies like a dog. He never tries to become a Buddha, and of course he never goes astray and becomes an Adolf Hitler. He simply follows the track. He is very very conservative, orthodox, bourgeois; all animals except man are bourgeois. Man has something of the freak in him.

He wants to do something, to go somewhere, to be; and if it is not allowed, if he cannot be a rose,

then he would like to be a weed - but he would like to be something. If he cannot become a Buddha, he will become a criminal. If he cannot create poetry, he will create nightmares. If he cannot bloom, he will not allow anybody else to bloom.

So this is the work. And you have come half-ready: weeds are not there and the ground is ready.

Just co-operate with me and the roses will come!