EVEN SUFFERING CAN TURN IN TO CELEBRATION

Beloved master on enjoying suffering.....

Osho - "When I say enjoy it I don’t mean become a masochist; I don’t mean create suffering for yourself and enjoy it. I don’t mean: go on, fall down from a cliff, have fractures and then enjoy it. No.

I am not saying be a masochist; I am simply saying suffering is there, you need not seek for it. Enough suffering is there already, you need no go in search. Suffering is already there; life by its very nature creates suffering. Illness is there, death is there, the body is there; by their very nature suffering is created. See it, look at it with a very dispassionate eye. Look at it — what it is, what is happening. Don’t escape.

Immediately the mind says, “Escape from here, don’t look at it.” But if you escape then you cannot be blissful. Next time you fall ill and the doctor suggests to remain in bed. Close your eyes and rest on the bed and just look at the illness. Watch it, what it is. Don’t try to analyze it, don’t go into theories, just watch it, what it is. The whole body tired, feverish — watch it.
Suddenly, you will feel that you are surrounded by fever but there is a very cool point within you; the fever cannot touch it, cannot influence it. The whole body may be burning but that cool point cannot be touched.

So when you are lying on your bed, feverish, on fire, the whole body burning, just watch it. Watching, you will recede towards the source. Watching, not doing anything.... What can you do? The fever is there, you have to pass through it; it is no use unnecessarily fighting with it. You are resting, and if you fight with the fever you will become more feverish, that’s all. So watch it.

Watching fever, you become cool; watching more, you become cooler. Just watching, you reach to a peak, such a cool peak, even the Himalayas will feel jealous; even their peaks are not so cool. This is the Gourishankar, the Everest within. And when you feel that the fever has disappeared.... It has never really been there; it has only been in the body, very, very far away.

Infinite space exists between you and your body — infinite space, I say. An unbridgeable gap exists between you and your body. And all suffering exists on the periphery. Hindus say it is a dream because the distance is so vast, unbridgeable. It is just like a dream happening somewhere else — not happening to you — in some other world, on some other planet.

When you watch suffering suddenly you are not the sufferer, and you start enjoying. Through suffering you become aware of the opposite pole, the blissful inner being. So when I say enjoy, I am saying: Watch. Return to the source, get centered. Then, suddenly, there is no agony; only ecstasy exists.

Those who are on the periphery exist in agony. For them, no ecstasy. For those who have come to their center no agony exists. For them, only ecstasy.

When I say break the cup it is breaking the periphery. And when I say be totally empty it is coming back to the original source, because through emptiness we are born, and into emptiness we return. Emptiness is the word, really, which is better to use than God, because with God we start feeling there is some person. So Buddha never used “God” he always used shunyata — emptiness, nothingness. In the center you are a nonbeing, nothingness, just a vast space, eternally cool, silent, blissful. So when I say enjoy I mean watch, and you will enjoy. When I say enjoy, I mean don’t escape.

Source: "A Bird on the Wing " - Osho