Because the ego does not feel good, at ease, with molehills - it
wants mountains. Even if it is a misery, it should not be a
molehill, it should be an Everest. Even if it is miserable, the ego
doesn't want to be ordinarily miserable - it wants to be
extraordinarily miserable!
Bernard Shaw is reported to have said, 'If I am not going to be the
first in heaven, I would like to go to hell...but I would like to be
the first.' In Christianity there is only one hell and Bernard Shaw
never knew that in India we have a concept of seven hells. If he had
heard about Hindu hells he would have chosen the seventh, because in
the fifth he would have felt humiliated, others are still far ahead
of him in the seventh - the real sinners, the great sinners, are in
the seventh!
Either this way or that - but one wants to be the first. Hence one
goes on making mountains out of molehills.
The whole town felt relieved, the
whole medical profession felt relieved, because she was a constant
trouble to many people's heads, everywhere, all around. The family,
the doctors, the physicians - she had troubled everybody and nobody
was of any help. And she relished the idea that nobody knew anything
about the sort of disease she was suffering from - it was an
extraordinary disease. In fact there was no disease.
Then she died, and it was almost a celebration in the town. But when
they opened the will, she had written in her will that her request
had positively to be fulfilled. Her request was that a carved
tombstone had to be put on her tomb with these words inscribed on
it: Now will you believe I was sick?
In this way she would haunt the whole town again.
People go on and on, creating big problems out of nothing. I have
talked to thousands of people about their problems and I have not
come across a real problem yet! All problems are bogus - you create
them. Because without problems you feel empty... then there is
nothing to do, nothing to fight with, nowhere to go. People go from
one guru to another, from one master to another, from one
psychoanalyst to another, from one encounter group to another,
because if they don't go, they feel empty, and they suddenly feel
life to be meaningless. You create problems so that you can feel
that life is a great work, a growth, and you have to struggle hard.
The ego can exist only when it struggles, remember - when it fights.
And if I tell you, 'Kill three flies and you will become
enlightened, you will not believe me. You will say, 'Three flies?
There doesn't seem to be much to that. And I will become
enlightened? That doesn't seem to be likely. If I say you will have
to kill seven hundred lions, of course that looks more like it!
The greater the problem, the greater the challenge - and with
challenge your ego arises, soars high. You create problems. Problems
don't exist.
And now if you allow me, there are not even molehills. That too is
your trick. You say, 'Yes, there may not be mountains, but
molehills?' No, not even molehills are there - those are your
creations. First you create molehills out of nothing, then you
create mountains out of molehills. And the priests and the
psychoanalysts and the gurus, they are happy because their whole
trade exists because of you. If you don't create molehills out of
nothing and you don't make your molehills into mountains, what will
be the point of gurus helping you? First you have to be in a shape
to be helped.
The real masters have been saying something else. They have been
saying, 'Please look what you are doing, what nonsense you are
doing. First you create a problem, then you go in search of a
solution. Just watch why you are creating the problem, just exactly
in the beginning, when you are creating the problem, is the solution
- don't create it!' But that won't appeal to you because then you
are suddenly thrown flat upon yourself. Nothing to do? No
enlightenment? No satori? No samadhi? And you are deeply restless,
empty, trying to stuff yourself with anything whatsoever.
You don't have any problems - only this much has to be understood.
This very moment you can drop all problems because they are your
creations. Have another look at your problems: the deeper you look,
the smaller they will appear. Go on looking at them and by and by
they will start disappearing. Go on gazing and suddenly you will
find there is emptiness - a beautiful emptiness surrounds you.
Nothing to do, nothing to be, because you are already that.
Enlightenment is not something to be achieved, it is just to be
lived. When I say that I achieved enlightenment, I simply mean that
I decided to live it. Enough is enough! And since then I have lived
it. It is a decision that now you are not interested in creating
problems - that's all. It is a decision that now you are finished
with all this nonsense of creating problems and finding solutions.
All this nonsense is a game you are playing with yourself: you
yourself are hiding and you yourself are seeking, you are both the
parties. And you know it! That's why when I say it you smile, you
laugh. I am not talking about anything ridiculous - you understand
it. You are laughing at yourself. Just watch yourself laughing, just
look at your own smile - you understand it. It has to be so because
it is your own game: you are hiding and waiting for yourself to be
able to seek and find yourself.
You can find yourself right now because it is you that is hiding.
That's why Zen masters go on hitting. Whenever somebody comes and
says, 'l would like to be a Buddha, the master gets very angry.
Because he is asking nonsense, he IS a Buddha. If Buddha comes to me
and asks how to be a Buddha, what am I supposed to do? I will hit
his head. 'Whom do you think you are befooling? You are a Buddha.'
Don't make unnecessary trouble for yourself. And understanding will
dawn on you if you watch how you make a problem bigger and bigger
and bigger, how you spin it, and how you help the wheel to move
faster and faster and faster. Then suddenly you are at the top of
your misery and you are in need of the whole world's sympathy.
One sannyasin, Marga, wrote me a letter. She said, 'Osho, I feel
very sad because when you talk, you look at everyone except me.'
Now, I am not looking at anybody, but I have got eyes, so they have
to be somewhere. It is not that I am looking at somebody, I am not
looking at anybody. And you can see in my eyes that they are empty,
they are vacant. But if you are trying to find your reflection in
them and you don't, great sadness comes to you. Now there is a new
problem. Now the ego feels hurt - looking at everybody else except
you! Just watch how you have made yourself an exception;
extraordinary you have become. I look at everybody, the ordinary
mass, except you. You have become unique. If I look at Marga - which
I am not going to do! Since I received her letter, I am never going
to look at her - if I look at her then the ego can have another
trip: that I look only at her. Then that will create a problem!
You are a great problem-creator... just understand this and suddenly
problems disappear. You are perfectly in shape; you are born
perfect, that is the whole message. You are born perfect; perfection
is your innermost nature. You have just to live it. Decide, and live
it.
But if you are not yet fed up with the game you can continue, but
don't ask why. You know. The why is simple: the ego cannot exist in
emptiness, it needs something to fight with. Even a ghost of your
imagination will do, but you need to fight with someone. The ego
exists only in conflict, the ego is not an entity, it is a tension.
Whenever there is a conflict, the tension arises and the ego exists;
when there is no conflict the tension disappears and the ego
disappears. Ego is not a thing - it is just a tension.
And of course nobody wants small tensions, everybody wants big
tensions. If your own problems are not enough, you start thinking
about humanity and the world and the future... socialism, communism,
and all that rubbish. You start thinking about it as if the whole
world depends on your advice. Then you think, 'What is going to
happen in Israel? What is going to happen in Africa?' And you go on
advising, and you create problems. People become very excited, they
cannot sleep because there is some war going on. They become very
excited. Their own life is so ordinary that they will have to reach
extraordinariness from some other source. The nation is in
difficulty so they become identified with the nation. The culture is
in difficulty, the society is in difficulty - now there are big
problems and you become identified. You are a Hindu and the Hindu
culture is in difficulty; you are a Christian and the church is in
difficulty. The whole world is at stake. Now you become big through
your problem.
The ego needs some problems. If you understand this, in the very
understanding the mountains become molehills again, and then the
molehills also disappear. Suddenly there is emptiness, pure
emptiness all around. This is what enlightenment is all about - a
deep understanding that there is no problem.
Then, with no problem to solve, what will you do? Immediately you
start living. You will eat, you will sleep, you will love, you will
have a chit-chat, you will sing, you will dance - what else is there
to do? You have become a God, you have started living.
If there is any God, one thing is certain: he will not have any
problems. That much is certain. Then what is he doing with all his
time? No problems, no psychiatrist to consult, no gurus to go and
surrender to... what is God doing? What will he do? He must be
getting crazy, whirling. No, he is living; his life is totally full
with life. He is eating, sleeping, dancing, having a love affair -
but without any problems.
Start living this moment and you will see that the more you live,
the less problems there are. Because now that your emptiness is
flowering and living there is no need. When you don't live, the same
energy goes sour. The same energy which would have become a flower,
is stuck; not being allowed to bloom it becomes a thorn in the
heart. It is the same energy.
Force a small child to sit in the corner and tell him to become
completely immobile, unmoving. Watch what happens...just a few
minutes before, he was perfectly at ease, flowing; now his face will
become red because he will have to strain, hold himself. His whole
body will become rigid and he will try to fidget here and there and
he will want to jump out of himself. You have forced the energy -
now it has no purpose, no meaning, no space to move, nowhere to
bloom and flower; it is stuck, frozen, rigid. The child is suffering
a short death, a temporary death. Now if you don't allow the child
to run again and move around the garden and play, he will start
creating problems, he will fantasize; in his mind he will create
problems and start fighting with those problems. He will see a big
dog and he will get afraid, or he will see a ghost and he will have
to fight and escape from him. Now he is creating problems. The same
energy that was just a moment before flowing all around, in all
directions, is stuck and becoming sour.
If people can dance a little more, sing a little more, be a little
more crazy, their energy will be flowing more, and their problems
will by and by disappear. Hence I insist so much on dance. Dance to
orgasm; let the whole energy become dance, and suddenly you will see
that you don't have any head - the stuck energy in the head is
moving all around, creating beautiful patterns, pictures, movement.
And when you dance there comes a moment when your body is no longer
a rigid thing, it becomes flexible, flowing. When you dance there
comes a moment when your boundary is no longer so clear; you melt
and merge with the cosmos, the boundaries are mixing.
Watch a dancer - you will see that he has become an energy
phenomenon, no longer in a fixed form, no longer in a frame. He is
flowing out of his frame, out of his form, and becoming more alive,
more and more alive. But only if you dance yourself will you know
what really happens. The head inside disappears; again you are a
child. Then you don't create any problems.
Live, dance, eat, sleep, do things as totally as possible. And
remember again and again: whenever you catch yourself creating any
problem, slip out of it, immediately. Once you get into the problem
then a solution will be needed. And even if you find a solution, out
of that solution a thousand and one problems will arise again. Once
you miss the first step you are in the trap. Whenever you see that
now you are slipping into a problem, catch hold of yourself, run,
jump, dance, but don't get into the problem. Do something
immediately so that the energy that was creating the problems
becomes fluid, unfrozen, melts, goes back to the cosmos.
Primitive people don't have many problems. I have come across
primitive groups in India who say they don't dream at all. Freud
would not be able to believe that it is possible. They don't dream,
but if sometimes somebody dreams - it is a rare phenomenon - the
whole village fasts, prays to God. Something has gone wrong,
something wrong has happened... a man has dreamed.
It never happens in their tribe because they live so totally that
nothing is left in the head to be completed in the sleep. Whatsoever
you leave incomplete has to be completed in your dreams; whatsoever
you have not lived remains as a hang-over and completes itself in
the mind - that's what a dream is. The whole day you go on thinking.
The thinking simply shows that you have more energy than you use for
living; you have more energy than your so-called life needs.
You are missing real life. Use more energy. Then fresh energies will
be flowing. Just don't be a miser. Use them today; let today be
complete unto itself; tomorrow will take care of itself, don't be
worried about tomorrow. The worry, the problem, the anxiety, all
simply show one thing: that you are not living rightly, that your
life is not yet a celebration, a dance, a festivity. Hence all the
problems.
If you live, ego disappears. Life knows no ego, it knows only living
and living and living. Life knows no self, no center; life knows no
separation. You breathe - life enters into you; you exhale you enter
into life. There is no separation. You eat, and trees enter into you
through the fruit. Then one day you die, you are buried in the
earth, and the trees suck you up and you become fruits. Your
children will eat you again. You have been eating your ancestors -
the trees have converted them into fruits. You think you are a
vegetarian? Don't be deceived by appearances. We are all cannibals.
Life is one, it goes on moving. It comes into you; it passes through
you. In fact to say that it comes into you isn't right, because then
it seems as if life comes into you, and then passes out of you. You
don't exist - only this life's coming and going does. You don't
exist - only life exists in its tremendous forms, in its energy, in
its millions of delights. Once you understand this, let that
understanding be the only law.
And start living as Buddhas from this very moment. If you decide
otherwise, it is for you to decide - but as I see it, it is a
decision: 'I am not going to befool myself anymore. Now I start
living as a Buddha, in emptiness. I will not try to find unnecessary
occupations. I dissolve.'