Jesus said: BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO HAS SUFFERED; HE HAS FOUND LIFE.
From the most ancient days, man has asked again and again why there is suffering in life. If God is the father, then why is there so much suffering? If God is love and God is compassion, then why does existence suffer? And there has not been a satisfactory answer to it. But if you understand Jesus you will understand the answer. Man suffers because there is no other way to mature, to grow. Man suffers because only through suffering can he become more aware. And awareness is the key.
Observe your own life: whenever you are comfortable, at ease, happy, awareness is lost. Then you live in a sort of sleep, then you live as if hypnotized, you live as if in a sleepwalk; you move and do things– but somnambulistically. That’s why, whenever there is no suffering, religion disappears from your life. Then you never go to the temple, it carries no sense for you; then you don’t pray to God, because why? There seems to be no reason.
Whenever there is suffering you move towards the temple, your eyes move towards God, your heart moves towards prayer. There is something hidden in suffering which makes you more aware who you are, why you are, where you are going. In a moment of suffering your awareness is intense.
Nothing can be meaningless in this world. It is a cosmos, it is not a chaos. You may not be able to understand– that’s another thing– because you know only fragments, you don’t know the whole. Your experience of life is just as if you have only one tattered page of a novel: you read it but it makes no sense because it is just a small fragment, you don’t know the whole story. Once you know the whole story, then this page will become comprehensible, then this page becomes coherent, meaningful.
Cut a piece out of a Picasso painting: it is meaningless, it is just a fragment and a fragment is dead. Put it back into the painting and suddenly the meaning appears; it has become coherent because now it has become part of the whole.
Only when you are part of the whole are you meaningful. And if the modern man continuously seems to feel that he has become meaningless, it is because God has been denied– or forgotten. Without God, man can never be meaningful, because God means the whole and man is just a fragment. You are just a line of poetry– alone, you are just gibberish. With the whole poem significance appears, because significance lies in relationship to the whole. Remember this.
Jesus on the cross is just a symbol of the final suffering, the absolute suffering, of the peak of suffering. When Jesus was on the cross, at the last moment he wavered a little. The suffering was too much. It was no ordinary suffering, not ordinary bodily pain, it was anguish – not only physical, but deep psychological anguish. And the anguish was this: that suddenly he started feeling, ”Am I abandoned by God? Why should this happen to me? I have not done anything wrong. Why should I be crucified? Why this pain? Why this crucifixion? Why this anguish to ME?” And he asked God, ”Why?” He questioned.
It must have been a very deep moment of anguish, when all the foundations are shaken and even your faith is shaken. The pain was so much – the humiliation of the whole thing. The same people for whom he had lived, for whom he had worked, whom he had served, to whom he had been a healer – they were murdering him, and for no reason at all. He asked God, ”Why? Why is this happening to me?” Then suddenly he realized why, because he became very much aware; at the moment of crucifixion he came to the perfect awareness.
I always say that before that moment he was Jesus, after that moment he became Christ. At that moment the total transformation happened. Before it he was coming nearer, nearer, nearer, coming closer and closer and closer, but the last jump happened in that moment: Jesus disappeared and there was Christ – suddenly a transmutation.
What happened? He said, ”Why this suffering to me? Have you forsaken me? Am I abandoned?”
And immediately after this anguish he said, ”No! Thy WILL should be done.” He accepted it. The ’why’ was a rejection, because questioning means doubt. Immediately he understood and he said, ”I accept, and I understand. Thy will should be done, not mine, because my will is going to be wrong.”
Then he relaxed, then there was a let go, the final surrender. At the moment of death, he accepted death also. In that acceptance, he became life eternal – the key was found. That’s why he says: BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO HAS SUFFERED; HE HAS FOUND LIFE.
Whenever you suffer, next time don’t complain, don’t create an anguish out of it. Rather, watch it, feel it, see it, look at it from all possible angles. Make it a meditation and see what happens: the energy that was moving into the disease, the energy that was creating suffering, is transformed, the quality changes. The same energy becomes your awareness, because there are not two energies in you, the energy is one. You can make it sex, you can transform it and make it into love; you can transform it still higher and make it into prayer, and you can transform it still higher and make it into awareness – the energy is the same.
When you suffer you are dissipating energy; in your anguish you are dissipating energy, the energy is leaking out. Whenever there is suffering, shake yourself. Close your eyes and look at the suffering.
Whatsoever it is – mental, physical, existential – whatsoever it is look at it, make it a meditation. Look at it as if it is an object.
When you look at your suffering as an object you are separate, you are no longer identified with it, the bridge is broken. And then the energy which was going to move into suffering will not move, because the bridge is no longer there. The bridge is identification: you feel you are the body, then the energy moves into the body. Wherever you feel any identification, your energy moves there.
You may not have known this, but you can try a simple experiment: if you love a woman, just sit by her side and feel identified, as if you are the woman, the beloved; and let the woman feel that she is you, the lover. Just wait and feel identified. Suddenly you will both have a shock of energy. You will both feel that some energy has moved from the other to you. Lovers have felt as if an energy jumps just like an electric shock and reaches the other. Whenever you are identified with something there is a bridge, and the energy can move through that bridge.
When a mother is feeding her child, she is not only giving milk as was always thought. Now biologists have stumbled upon a deeper fact, and they say she is feeding energy – milk is just the physical part. And they have done many experiments: a child is raised, food is given – as perfect as possible, whatsoever medical science has found. Everything is given, but the child is not loved, not cuddled; the mother does not touch the child. The milk is given through mechanical devices, injections are given, vitamins are given – everything is perfect. But the child stops growing, starts shrinking, as if life starts moving away from the child. What is happening? … Because whatsoever the mother was giving is being given.
When a mother hugs a child, energy is flowing. That energy is invisible – we have called it love, warmth. Something is jumping from the mother to the child, and not only from the mother to the child, from the child to the mother also. That’s why a woman is never so beautiful as when she becomes a mother. Before, something is lacking, she is not complete, the circle is broken. Whenever a woman becomes a mother, the circle is complete. A grace comes to her as if from some unknown source.
So not only is she feeding the child, the child is also feeding the mother. They are happily ’into’ each other.
And there is no other relationship which is so close. Even lovers are not so close, because the child comes from the mother, from her very blood, her flesh and bones; the child is just an extension of her being. Never again will this happen, because nobody can be so close. A lover can be near your heart, but the child has lived inside the heart. The mother’s heart has been beating, and that was the heartbeat of the child, he had no other heart; the mother’s blood circulated in him, he had no independence, he was just part of her. For nine months he remained as part of the mother, organically joined, one. The mother’s life was his life, the mother’s death would have been his death.
Even afterwards it goes on: a transfer of energy, a communication of energy exists.
Whenever there is suffering, become aware; then the bridge is broken, then there is no transfer of energy to suffering. And by and by suffering shrinks, because the suffering is your child. You have given birth to it, you are the cause; and then you feed it, you water it, and then it grows and then you suffer more. Then you complain, then you are miserable, then your whole attention becomes identified with the suffering.
I have heard, once it happened: Two old women met in a market. One asked the other how she was feeling, because she was always feeling ill. There are women who always feel ill. Something has gone wrong; it is not illness, it is something deeper, a neurosis, because they cannot feel at ease if they are not ill; illness has become part of their ego. She asked, ”How are your feeling?”
The woman who was always ill or talking about illness, started. She said, ”Very bad – never has it been so bad. The arthritis is acting up, I have a severe headache, and the stomach ache is terrible, and my legs hurt…” and on and on she went.
The other said, ”Then go and see a doctor.”
The first woman said, ”Yes, yes, I will go when I feel a little better.”
But this is happening: you will go to the doctor when you feel a little better. But nobody goes – when one feels a little better there is no need. Go to the doctor when you are suffering, pray when there is suffering, meditate when there is suffering. Don’t say, ”I will meditate when I feel a little better.” That won’t help – you won’t meditate and you will have missed a blissful moment, a moment of suffering.
Meditate, become alert and aware. Don’t miss the opportunity, it is a blessing.
Use all your suffering for meditation, and soon you will come to know that the suffering disappears because the energy starts moving inwards. It is not moving to the periphery, to the suffering, you are not feeding your suffering. It looks illogical, but this is the whole conclusion of all the mystics of the world: that you feed your suffering and you enjoy it in a subtle way, you don’t want to be well – there must be some investment in it.
Buddhas, Jesuses, Zarathustras have been talking in vain, you don’t listen to them. They say there is a possibility of ultimate bliss. You listen to them and say, ”Okay, I will see sometime, when I feel better.” But whenever you are happy what is the need? That is why Buddha goes on insisting: Your whole life is suffering, dukkha – don’t wait! There is going to be no happiness in the life that you are living. Be awake, watch. It is anguish itself that you call ’life’. People think that he must have been a pessimist. He was not, he was just emphasizing. And you have become so much attached to your suffering that you don’t know it.
Remember how to drop that association: one, never talk about your suffering. Suffer it, but don’t talk about it. Why do you talk about it? Why do people go on talking and boring others about their suffering? Who is interested? But just not to offend you, if you start talking about illnesses and anguish, others have to tolerate it – but they start escaping, they start wanting somehow to get rid of you. Nobody wants to hear, because everybody has too much suffering of his own. Who bothers about your suffering? Don’t talk about it, because talking creates associations.
Don’t complain, because then you are asking for affection, pity, compassion, love. Don’t ask, don’t sell your suffering – bring back your investment. Suffer privately, don’t make it public – then it becomes a tapascharya, it becomes an austerity, one of the best. But look at your saints: if they do tapascharya, austerities, they make it very public. And I am saying make your suffering private, then it becomes tapa, austerity. They make it public, they announce that they are going on a long fast – everybody must know.
Suffering belongs to the realm of death, awareness belongs to the realm of life. Break the bridge and you will know that something in you, around you, is going to die – it belongs to death; and something in you, your awareness, is not going to die, it is deathless, it belongs to life. That’s why suffering can give you the key to life.
JESUS SAID: LOOK UPON THE LIVING ONE AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, LEST YOU DIE AND SEEK TO SEE HIM AND BE UNABLE TO SEE.
These are techniques: LOOK UPON THE LIVING ONE…. In you there is one who is a living one and one who is already dead. In you two worlds meet, the world of matter and the world of spirit – you exist on the boundary. In you two realms meet, the realm of death and the realm of life – you exist in between. If you pay too much attention to that which belongs to death you will always remain afraid, suffering, fearful. If you pay attention to your center, which belongs to life, to eternal life, to immortality, fear will disappear.
These are the two dimensions in you. You are the tree. And the lower is always disturbed. The lower is your body and the bodily needs and the bodily desires, and if you forget yourself completely into it then you become one with it. On the higher branch, at the top of the tree, sits the other bird who is a witness, who simply looks down at this foolish bird jumping, moving in anguish, anxiety, anger, sex. Everything happens to it; this other bird is simply a witness, he simply looks on and on, he is just a spectator. You are the tree.
Osho: The Mustard Seed: My Most Loved Gospel on Jesus: CHAPTER 14. HURRY SLOWLY
शुक्रिया ऐ मिरे क़ातिल ऐ मसीहा मेरे
ज़हर जो तू ने दिया था वो दवा हो बैठा……….फ़रहत शहज़ाद
shukriya ai mire qātil ai masīhā mere
zahr jo tū ne diyā thā vo davā ho baiThā…………..FARHAT SHAHZAD
Gratitude to you, my killer, my Messiah—
the poison you gave me has turned into medicine.
I am loving this song “Tu jo mila to ho gaya main kaabil, tu jo mila to ho gaya sab haasil” from the film Bajrangi Bhaijaan. It captures, in poetic simplicity, the very essence of the journey from Jesus to Christ. Kaabil does not mean achievement; it means worthiness discovered. Haasil does not mean possession; it means fulfillment through surrender. On the cross, when Jesus ceased striving, ceased questioning, and said “Thy will be done,” nothing was earned — yet everything was attained. In that meeting with the divine will, effort dissolved into grace. Jesus, the seeker, disappeared; Christ, the realized presence, remained. This is the song’s truth: when Truth is met, one does not become more — one becomes complete. (written by Kausar Munir, composed by Pritam and sung by Javed Ali.)
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!