Your suffering makes you special
Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO GET RID OF PAIN, MISERY, SUFFERING OR ANGUISH, WHILE
KNOWING PERFECTLY WELL THAT ONE HAS JUST TO UNDERSTAND AND DROP THEM?
It is difficult to get rid of pain, misery, and suffering for the simple reason that they have been your
companions for your whole life. Except them, you don’t have any friends in the world.
It is easier to be in pain, misery, suffering, than to be utterly lonely, because there are ways you can
have pain-killers, you can have drugs, as an escape from misery. You can get engaged in all kinds
of stupidities to forget your suffering. But there is no way – no painkiller is going to help you out of
your loneliness, no drug, no stupidity.
Loneliness is so deep that all these superficial methods cannot reach to it, cannot touch it. That’s
why it is so difficult to get rid of these few friends that you have got. This is your world, your family.
In my professorial days in the university, I had lived for a few months in the university campus. My
neighbor was a newly-married man, a professor of physics, Nityanand Mukhopadhyaya – a very
sharp, intelligent teacher, with a great future ahead, because he had such a grip on physics that
even older professors of physics used to come and ask him things about new physics.
He had been married not more than two or three months, but the marriage was finished. They
were constantly fighting, quarreling. The wife was also educated, a postgraduate, and in a beautiful subject, in music. The walls that separated me from this couple were not very thick – so thin that it
was impossible not to hear what was going on.
It was almost thirty years ago. I was only their neighbor for a few months; since then I have not seen
them, but they have given me one thing to which I have become addicted: earplugs. Even today
when I don’t have any neighbors for miles ... and even those who live miles away don’t consider
me their neighbor. In the whole of America I don’t have a neighbor. And anyway, tourists are not
supposed to have neighbors.
But I cannot get rid of those earplugs. I cannot go to sleep without earplugs. I have tried. The
moment I think of dropping them I start thinking of Nityanand Mukhopadhyaya. From morning till
midnight they were quarreling, on every point, on every single thing. There was no agreement on
anything. And almost every night it ended with them throwing things – a pillow fight. I even heard
them slapping each other.
Once or twice I interfered. I just knocked on their door in the middle of the night, and they opened the
door. I looked at the scene – things all over the floor – and I said, ”Don’t be embarrassed, because
I have been hearing the whole thing since the morning. I know every detail of it, so you do not have
to be hypocrites before me.
”This is perfectly good – it is supposed to happen between every husband and wife sooner or later.
You are intelligent people: it is happening sooner. But one thing I cannot understand: once in a while
you both say to each other, ‘I love you, darling, I love you.’ That, I cannot understand. Everything
else is understandable to me.
”I had to interfere in the middle of the night because just now, after a big pillow fight, you said, ‘I love
you, I love you, my darling.’ It simply disturbs my whole sleep. Everything else I accept, but how, out
of this pillow fight, and throwing things and shouting and screaming, does the conclusion come, ‘I
love you, darling’?”
They looked at each other. They had no answer because .... Then the professor said, ”I have never
thought about it but certainly you are right. After all this, this should not be the conclusion. I can
understand – you are a man of logic. I cannot understand too much logic but physics is also based
on logic; I can see the contradiction.”
The wife said, ”I have never thought about it, but it is true that .... Can you help us to understand
why?”
I said, ”That’s why I have come. This happens with husband and wife: they hate each other, and
then they hate themselves for hating each other. And then to cover up the whole thing – that ‘I hate
you,’ that, ‘I hate myself for hating you’ – this is the cover: ‘I love you, darling.’
”This manages both things. You are no longer hating yourself, because you love your wife. But this
is only a cover, a very thin cover which cannot stand the strong winds of life. Tomorrow morning
again you have forgotten. The same story begins, comes to the same conclusion. Why don’t you
just separate?”
Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO GET RID OF PAIN, MISERY, SUFFERING OR ANGUISH, WHILE
KNOWING PERFECTLY WELL THAT ONE HAS JUST TO UNDERSTAND AND DROP THEM?
It is difficult to get rid of pain, misery, and suffering for the simple reason that they have been your
companions for your whole life. Except them, you don’t have any friends in the world.
It is easier to be in pain, misery, suffering, than to be utterly lonely, because there are ways you can
have pain-killers, you can have drugs, as an escape from misery. You can get engaged in all kinds
of stupidities to forget your suffering. But there is no way – no painkiller is going to help you out of
your loneliness, no drug, no stupidity.
Loneliness is so deep that all these superficial methods cannot reach to it, cannot touch it. That’s
why it is so difficult to get rid of these few friends that you have got. This is your world, your family.
In my professorial days in the university, I had lived for a few months in the university campus. My
neighbor was a newly-married man, a professor of physics, Nityanand Mukhopadhyaya – a very
sharp, intelligent teacher, with a great future ahead, because he had such a grip on physics that
even older professors of physics used to come and ask him things about new physics.
He had been married not more than two or three months, but the marriage was finished. They
were constantly fighting, quarreling. The wife was also educated, a postgraduate, and in a beautiful subject, in music. The walls that separated me from this couple were not very thick – so thin that it
was impossible not to hear what was going on.
It was almost thirty years ago. I was only their neighbor for a few months; since then I have not seen
them, but they have given me one thing to which I have become addicted: earplugs. Even today
when I don’t have any neighbors for miles ... and even those who live miles away don’t consider
me their neighbor. In the whole of America I don’t have a neighbor. And anyway, tourists are not
supposed to have neighbors.
But I cannot get rid of those earplugs. I cannot go to sleep without earplugs. I have tried. The
moment I think of dropping them I start thinking of Nityanand Mukhopadhyaya. From morning till
midnight they were quarreling, on every point, on every single thing. There was no agreement on
anything. And almost every night it ended with them throwing things – a pillow fight. I even heard
them slapping each other.
Once or twice I interfered. I just knocked on their door in the middle of the night, and they opened the
door. I looked at the scene – things all over the floor – and I said, ”Don’t be embarrassed, because
I have been hearing the whole thing since the morning. I know every detail of it, so you do not have
to be hypocrites before me.
”This is perfectly good – it is supposed to happen between every husband and wife sooner or later.
You are intelligent people: it is happening sooner. But one thing I cannot understand: once in a while
you both say to each other, ‘I love you, darling, I love you.’ That, I cannot understand. Everything
else is understandable to me.
”I had to interfere in the middle of the night because just now, after a big pillow fight, you said, ‘I love
you, I love you, my darling.’ It simply disturbs my whole sleep. Everything else I accept, but how, out
of this pillow fight, and throwing things and shouting and screaming, does the conclusion come, ‘I
love you, darling’?”
They looked at each other. They had no answer because .... Then the professor said, ”I have never
thought about it but certainly you are right. After all this, this should not be the conclusion. I can
understand – you are a man of logic. I cannot understand too much logic but physics is also based
on logic; I can see the contradiction.”
The wife said, ”I have never thought about it, but it is true that .... Can you help us to understand
why?”
I said, ”That’s why I have come. This happens with husband and wife: they hate each other, and
then they hate themselves for hating each other. And then to cover up the whole thing – that ‘I hate
you,’ that, ‘I hate myself for hating you’ – this is the cover: ‘I love you, darling.’
”This manages both things. You are no longer hating yourself, because you love your wife. But this
is only a cover, a very thin cover which cannot stand the strong winds of life. Tomorrow morning
again you have forgotten. The same story begins, comes to the same conclusion. Why don’t you
just separate?”
No comments:
Post a Comment