Misery is a state of unconsciousness. We are miserable because we are not aware of what we are doing, of what we are thinking, of what we are feeling. So we are continuously contradicting ourselves each moment. Action goes in one direction, thinking goes in another, the feeling is somewhere else. We go on falling apart, we become more and more fragmented; that’s what misery is—we lose integration, we lose unity. We become just a periphery. And naturally, a life which is not harmonious is going to be miserable, tragic, a burden to be carried somehow, suffering. At the most one can make this suffering less painful. And there are a thousand and one kinds of pain killers available.
People are living in suffering. There are only two ways out of it: either they can become meditators—alert, aware, conscious—that’s an arduous thing. It needs guts. The cheaper way is to find something that can make you even more unconscious than you are, so you cannot feel the misery.
Find something that makes you utterly insensitive, some intoxicant, some pain killer that makes you so unconscious that you can escape into that unconsciousness and forget all about your anxiety, anguish, meaninglessness.
The second way is not the true way. The second way only makes your suffering a little more comfortable, a little more tolerable, a little more convenient, but it does not help, it does not transform you. The only transformation happens through meditation because meditation is the only method that makes you aware. To me, meditation is the only true religion. To be in a rage is to be in a temporary madness. And that’s how people are falling in love, killing each other, committing suicide, doing all kinds of things. My effort here is to take you beyond suffering; there is no need to adjust to suffering. There is a possibility to be totally free of suffering.
Abridged from The old pond, plop! By Osho
Osho is known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, with an approach to meditation that acknowledges the accelerated pace of contemporary life.