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The second thing Buddha says is: "EXISTENCE IS SORROW." To be is sorrow. The egois sorrow. First he says: See the world as dream, fluctuating, changing, moment tomoment new. Enjoy it, enjoy its newness, enjoy all the surprises that it brings. It isbeautiful that it is changing, nothing is wrong about it; just don't cling to it. Why do youcling? You cling because you have another fallacy: that YOU are.The first fallacy is that things are static. And the second fallacy is that YOU are, that youhave a static ego. They both go together. If you want to cling you need a clinger; if youhave no need to cling, there is no need for a clinger. Go deep into it. If you don't need tocling, the ego is not needed at all, it will be pointless. In fact, it cannot exist withoutclinging.The dancer can exist only if he dances. If the dance disappears, where is the dancer? Thesinger exists only in singing. The walker exists only in walking. So is the ego: the egoexists only in clinging, in possessing things, in dominating things. When there is nodomination, no desire to dominate, no desire to cling, no desire to possess, the egostarts evaporating. On the outside you start clinging and in the inside a new claritystarts arising. The ego with all its smoke disappears, the ego with all its cloudsdisappears. It can't exist because it cannot be nourished anymore. For it to exist it has tocling. It has to create "my" and "mine," and it goes on creating "my" and "mine" in everypossible and impossible way.The ego says, "This is MY country," as if you have brought it with your birth, as if theearth is really divided into countries. The earth is undivided, it is one. But the ego says,"This is MY country" -- and not only that this is my country, "this is the greatest countryin the world. This is the holiest land."Ask the Indians. "This is the most spiritual country in the world. Everybody else ismaterialist and we are spiritualists." And everybody else has his own ideas. They aregreat. Ask the Germans. Nobody is of pure blood, only they are -- Aryan blood, Nordicblood, purest blood. God has created them to rule the whole world. And ask theJapanese. They have descended from the sun god directly; they are not ordinarymortals. The sun is their source, and the sun is the source of all life. And you askanybody. Everybody has his own ideas how HIS country is great, how HIS religion isgreat. Religion also becomes your possession: "MY religion, MY Christianity, MYHinduism."Who can claim religion? Who can claim that religion is a possession? You can bereligious, but you cannot claim that Christianity is yours, you cannot claim thatHinduism is yours. But the ego is so stupid! It goes on claiming all kinds of things.Mr. Ginsberg came home one day from the garment district where he owned acompany and said that he must get a mistress."Why?" gasped Mrs. Ginsberg."Well," replied her husband, "all the owners have them and it looks bad for my businessthat I don't.""Well, if it is for business, alright," said Mrs. Ginsberg.Dhammapada Vol 8Osho

Sometime later Mr. and Mrs. Ginsberg were enjoying an evening at the opera whensuddenly Mr. Ginsberg said, "Look, Miriam, there is Mr. Pincus and his mistress sittingacross from us in a box."Mrs. Ginsberg studied the pair for a long time with her opera glasses and then said,"Ours is better!"Anything and everything will be claimed by the ego. And "ours is always better,"whatsoever it is. The ego exists only through such claims. The "I" exists only as anisland in the ocean of "my" and "mine." If you stop claiming things as "my" and "mine,"the ego will disappear on its own accord.Neither the wife is yours nor the husband nor the children. All belongs to the whole.Your claim is foolish. We come empty-handed into the world and we go empty-handedfrom the world. But nobody wants to know the truth -- it hurts. Empty-handed wecome and empty-handed we go. One starts feeling shaky, one starts feeling scared. Onewants to be full, not empty. It is better to be full of anything -- any garbage -- than to beempty. Emptiness looks like death, and we don't want the truth. Our whole effort is tolive in convenience, even if that convenience is based on illusions."I demand an explanation and I want the truth!" shouted the irate husband upondiscovering his wife in bed with his best friend."Make up your mind, George," she calmly replied. "You can't have both."Either you can have the explanation or the truth. And people are more interested in theexplanation than in the truth, hence so many philosophies. They are all explanations -explanations to explain away things, not to give you the truth; explanations to creategreat smoke so you need not see the truth. And Buddha's insistence is: SEE it! -- becausewithout seeing it you can't go above sorrow.James, to his wife: "I am in the mood and you are so beautiful!"Katherine: "What makes you think I am beautiful?"James: "When I am in the mood, everybody is beautiful!"The whole question is of your mood. If you are in the mood of an ego trip, then you willnot listen to buddhas, or you will listen in such a way that you can manage, distort,interpret those truths according to yourself, to support you. If you are still interested inthe ego you cannot understand these sutras.If you have become fed up with the ego, if you are tired of its games, if you have seenthat it brings only suffering and nothing else, then these truths are so simple tounderstand that in fact no explanation is needed. And I am not explaining them to you.I am simply hammering them on your head, from this side and from that side. You tryto dodge, you try to escape, you try to close your eyes, but I go on shouting in yourears, hoping that sooner or later you will be able to understand -- because without thisDhammapada Vol 8Osho

understanding happening to you, your life will be a nightmare. And many lives youhave wasted in nightmares. It is time to wake up!"EXISTENCE IS SORROW." UNDERSTAND, AND GO BEYOND SORROW. THIS ISTHE WAY OF BRIGHTNESS. Buddha says: This is the way of intelligence. This is notfor dull, unintelligent, mediocre minds.The way of the Buddha is for those who are intelligent. And who is not intelligent? Ifyou decide to be intelligent, you are intelligent. You are born with great intelligence, butyou keep it repressed. You are afraid of your own intelligence because your ownintelligence will disturb your settled routine of life. Somehow you have managed tosettle, and your own intelligence will keep you moving forward. It will go on tellingyou, "This is not the truth. Again you have fallen a victim of a dream. Move on. Unlessyou reach the truth, there is no way to rest in peace. Move on!" Because intelligencegoads you to move on, you repress it.Everybody is born intelligent. I have never come across a child who is not intelligent,but it is very rare later on to find intelligent people. What happens in the meantime?Every child turns out to be stupid later on. By the time you come from the universityyou are fully established in your stupidities. The university is a guarantee that now youare intelligence-proof. Nobody can make you intelligent again -- they have sealed you.Socrates says: Know thyself. Buddha also says: Know thyself. And both have beenmisunderstood, Socrates more than Buddha. When Socrates says: Know thyself, peoplethink there is someone inside who has to be known. There is nobody inside. WhenSocrates says: Know thyself, he is simply saying, "Go in and see what is there." He is notsaying that there is someone that you will come to know; he is simply saying go in. Buthe does not make you so scared.Buddha says clearly that there is no one: Go in and see. There is only seeing, but not aseer. There is understanding but nobody who understands, knowing but not a knower.This has to be understood. This is Buddha's very emphatic message: that there areprocesses, certainly, but there is no center to those processes. Yes, there is love but nolover, and there is meditation but no meditator, and there is liberation, but nobody isliberated. It looks very strange, but now modern science agrees with it.As far as objective reality is concerned, modern science agrees with Buddha more thanwith anybody else. Hence Buddha has a great future, because science will come closerand closer every day to Buddha. Science is going to speak in the same language asBuddha. Science says there is energy but no matter. That's what Buddha is saying forthe inner world: There is energy, movement, processes, but no entity, no ego."Know thyself" means: know that you are not. Great courage is needed to know this.People want to know that they are immortal souls. Then they are very happy: "We areimmortal souls." And Buddha says, "Don't talk nonsense! You are simply not.Immortality is there, but you are not immortal. When YOU disappear completely,whatsoever is left behind. that cleanliness, that purity, that innocence, that nobodiness,that nothingness, that SHUNYA -- that is immortal. It has no beginning and no end, nobirth and no death."Dhammapada Vol 8Osho

But rather than going in and finding the basic illusion of the ego, rather than going inand finding the root cause of all your misery, you go on throwing the responsibility onothers.Murphy's famous maxim: The man who can smile when things go wrong has thoughtof someone he can blame it on.Everybody is trying to blame his misery on somebody else. And that's how we remainin misery, because this blaming is not going to help. In the first place it is wrong -nobody else is the cause of your misery; the cause is within you. You are living with afallacy. But even if you are living with a fallacy, the mind enjoys the idea that somebodyelse is responsible -- "I am not responsible"; you feel a relief."Doctor, you've got to do something about my husband.""What seems to be the problem?""He's convinced that he is a refrigerator.""That's terrible!""You're telling me!" snapped the wife. "He sleeps with his mouth open, and the lightkeeps me awake all night."A woman called a psychiatrist on the phone and cried, "Doctor, you've got to help me.My husband is driving me crazy. He keeps insisting that he is Moses.""That sounds serious," replied the psychiatrist. "I think you should bring him to myoffice tomorrow.""Ah, I will," she replied, "but in the meantime how do I keep him from parting the waterevery time I try to take a bath?"Even if you are mad, the mind would like to believe that somebody else is responsible -somebody else is mad. People are ready to believe that the whole world is mad, but notthemselves. In fact, a madman never accepts that he is mad. You can go to a madhouseand you can ask all the mad people, and you will be surprised: not a single mad personwill agree that he is mad. The whole world is mad, he is perfectly sane.In fact, those who understand mad people, they say that once a madman accepts that heis mad he is no longer mad; sanity has started coming into his being.That's what all the buddhas have been saying: the moment you understand that "I amignorant," the first glimpse of knowing has happened. The moment you say that "I amnot," for the first time, real existence has penetrated you. The first time you say that "Idon't possess anything," the whole world is yours. The first time you say that "I am notseparate," that "I am one with the whole," you become the whole. The dewdrop doesnot really disappear; it becomes the ocean. By knowing one's emptiness, one'segolessness, one loses nothing, one gains all.And the third sutra:Dhammapada Vol 8Osho

"EXISTENCE IS ILLUSION."UNDERSTAND, GO BEYOND.THIS IS THE WAY OF CLARITY.Buddha does not give you doctrines, he does not give you dogmas. He is not a bitinterested in giving you philosophies of life. His whole concern is one: how to makeyour mind clear, how to impart clarity to you so that you can see unhindered, so youreyes no more carry any dust, so your eyes are without dust and you can see throughand through as things are.Ordinarily whatsoever you see is your projection. That's what you call existence -- youproject. The existence functions only as a screen and the projector is inside you, and yougo on projecting your desires, your imaginations, your hopes, your dreams, and you goon seeing things which are not there.People go on to the very end projecting. Even if you meet them after their death youwill find them in the same mess.Business had been terrible for Blum and he cut down on his help. In a month he had tocut down still further, and everyone said that this terrible strain became a fixation thathastened his death a few weeks afterwards.As they were carrying his body down the aisle of the chapel, Blum suddenly sat up inthe coffin and asked, "How many man are carrying me?""There are eight pallbearers, Mr. Blum," said the undertaker."Better lay off two," said Blum, lying down again.Even after death the old obsession continues! And don't take it as a joke -- this is howthings are. People go on believing in the same things after death; they go on continuingthe same desires. That's how they go on coming back again and again to the earth tofulfill the same unfulfilled desires. And those desires are unfulfillable, so they go oncoming again and again, millions of times.Buddha calls it a vicious circle, a wheel which goes on moving. You are just like a spokein the wheel. Sometimes you come up and sometimes you go down. But the wheel goeson moving up and down, up and down; life and death, life and death; one moment ofsuccess, another moment of failure; one moment of hope, another moment of despair. Itgoes on and on, and it has been going on for eternity. And this whole thing is your ownprojection -- this is not reality.Reality can only be known when you have nothing to project. That state ofnonprojection Buddha calls clarity. Clarity means you have no desire, you don't wantthings to be in a certain way, you are ready to see them as they are. You are simply amirror, not a projector.When you are a mirror, this is samadhi, this is satori. You simply reflect like the silent,clear, cool water of a lake reflects the full moon and the stars. When you are absolutelyclear, no dreams, no desires, no imaginations, no memories, the whole mind put aside -the mind is a mechanism to project -- then there is clarity and things are reflected asDhammapada Vol 8Osho

they are. And for the first time you know what is the case; otherwise: "EXISTENCE ISILLUSION."Understand this: that whatsoever you think as existence is illusion. Understand it, andgo beyond. THIS IS THE WAY OF CLARITY.YOU ARE STRONG, YOU ARE YOUNG.IT IS TIME TO ARISE.SO ARISE!LEST THROUGH IRRESOLUTION AND IDLENESSYOU LOSE THE WAY.In ancient India, when Buddha was delivering these sutras to his disciples, this was theaccepted tradition, that a man should become a seeker only in the last stage of his life. Ifyou assume life to be a hundred-year span, then the Hindu idea is to divide life in fourparts of twenty-five years each.The first twenty-five years are for education, BRAHMACHARYA. You go to theuniversity, you live with a master to learn the skills of the world, the arts, the craft, thescience. And after twenty-five years you come back into the world, you get married.And for twenty-five years now -- the second stage -- you live as a householder, as ahusband, as a father, fulfilling the duties of life.And then comes the third stage, twenty-five years again: you prepare to renounce theworld. The third stage is called VANPRASTHA. First is brahmacharya -- celibacy -- sothat you can devote your whole mind to your studies, no distractions. Your wholesexual energies have to be concentrated in studies. Then the second stage is calledGARHASTHYA -- the stage of the householder. You devote your whole energies to thefamily life: make a house, create a big business, earn money, raise children. And thenthe third is called vanprastha. Vanprastha means "facing towards the forest." Nowprepare yourself to leave the world -- prepare for twenty-five years! Live still in thehouse, but turn towards the forest. Slowly slowly, disconnect yourself. Go on givingyour responsibilities to your children, who will now be coming back from theuniversity.And the fourth stage -- after seventy-five years -- the last twenty-five years, you becomea sannyasin. This was the routine, accepted, conventional thing in India.In the first place, people don't live a hundred years, and particularly in those days not atall. All the scientific research that has been gone into proves that people in Buddha'stime lived at the most an average of forty years; forty years was the average life. And itdoes not seem too bad because even now in India, thirty-six years is the average life.With all the new medicine, medical help, hospitals, if India has only thirty-six years asaverage age, then in those days, with no science, with no medical facilities, if peoplelived forty years average they were doing perfectly well! So people were not living for ahundred years. By the time one was seventy-five, one was gone. So for the majority ofthe people, the time for sannyas will never come.Dhammapada Vol 8Osho

It seems it was just an effort to postpone it. And even if somebody lived after seventyfive -- a few people lived, Buddha himself lived for eighty years -- if a few people livedafter seventy-five, their life will be almost without energy. They will be dead, walkingcorpses. They won't have energy enough to meditate, to rise to the highest peaks ofconsciousness. They will not be able to transform their beings into buddhahood; thatwill be impossible for them.Buddha brought a great revolution and India has never forgiven him for that. Hedestroyed the whole nonsense idea of stages. It is nonsense, because there are a fewintelligent people who can be sannyasins even while they are young, and there are afew superintelligent people who can be sannyasins even while they are small children.Shankaracharya became a sannyasin when he was only nine

The way of Gautama the Buddha is the way of intelligence, understanding, awareness, meditation. It is not the way of belief; it is the way of seeing the truth itself. Belief simply covers up your ignorance; it does not deliver you from ignorance. Belief is a deception you play upon yourself; it is not transformation.