Osho Quotes on Suffering

1. Instead of your life being in an oceanic love, it is suffering in a gutter of dirty jealousy. But unless you start looking inwards and finding the roots, you will not be able to transform it.
2. Everybody can be freed from nightmares, from sufferings, from miseries, but of course not directly. The problem is that you cannot be freed from your suffering directly because you are clinging to it. It is not the suffering that is the problem, it is you who are clinging which is the problem. You don’t want to leave it. You brag about it, you talk about it. You even talk about how to get out of this misery. But one who has eyes can see that you are clinging to the misery as hard as possible. Just the presence of a master can help you to see whether the misery is clinging to you, or you are clinging to the misery. That is a very decisive point. Once you see that you are clinging to the misery, you are freed. Just the seeing of it, the very understanding, is freedom.
3. Life cannot grow without challenges; and pains, miseries, sufferings bring challenges. You cannot become aware without suffering. Suffering evokes awareness in you.
4. The most important thing in life is to learn that you are not the body. That will give you such freedom from pain and from suffering. Not that suffering will disappear, not that there will not be any pain or cancer, they will be there but you will not be identified with them. You will be just a watcher. And if you can watch your own body as if it is somebody else’s body, you have attained something of tremendous importance. Your life has not been in vain. You have learned the lesson, the greatest lesson that is possible for any human being.
5. You have looked everywhere, you have walked thousands of ways in thousands of lives, but you have never reached to yourself. This is the basic suffering: not to know yourself. Not to be aware of your eternity is the only misery — all miseries are small expressions of it.
6. You will be thankful only when you have been completely renewed: you have been killed, and you are reborn — only then. Before that there is going to be much pain. Growth goes through pain, much suffering. Growth is not cheap.
7. It is easy when you are suffering to stand aloof, to be aware. It is easy when you are miserable to be aware, because who wants to be miserable? Who wants to be in suffering? The experience of suffering, anguish, misery, itself helps you to get out of it.
8. When suffering is acute, not just a tantrum, not just an act that you are putting on, not just a habit but a real suffering, a despair; when you see that life has no meaning, that each breath seems to be simply unnecessary… Why do you go on living, for what? — nothing is going to happen, and there is no exit either. When the pain of it becomes so intense that it goes beyond the limit of human toleration, suddenly you may come out of a nightmare. Then this so-called waking state will prove to be only a different kind of sleep, with open eyes.
9. This is a very unconscious state. You are SUFFERING from desire, but you think you are suffering from things. People think they are suffering from their wives, from their husbands, children, society, people. No. Not at all. You are suffering only from one thing: desire.
10. It looks very difficult to trust that all that you are suffering is just a dream created by yourself — but it is so. Because all those who have become awakened say so! Not a single awakened person has said otherwise. And in lucid moments of awareness you will also feel the same.
11. To be miserable, to be in suffering, is our own effort, it is our own creation. Suffering has the signature of man, blessing has the signature of God. Suffering has to be earned — when you are able to see you will be surprised: suffering needs much more work, much more effort, because to suffer is almost making the impossible possible. It is not your nature to suffer, and still you create it. It needs arduous effort. Going against nature needs much work — and people are working day in, day out, year in, year out, life in, life out, people are working hard to create more and more suffering for themselves.
12. If you are suffering, remember, you must be creating it. There is no other way to suffer. But if you feel blessed, then it is not your doing: it is a showering from the beyond. Suffering is man-made, bliss is god-made — bliss is your nature, your very nature, your very ground of being. When this has been seen, you have come home.
13. I teach you to be selfish, because only out of true selfishness is altruism born. A really selfish person cannot be against anybody, a really selfish person cannot hurt anybody — because hurting somebody you have to hurt yourself first. You cannot create suffering for others without creating suffering for yourself. Before you are angry with someone, you have to be angry within yourself. Before you are violent with somebody, you have to go through many nightmares.
14. UNDERSTAND WELL: you are the cause of your suffering, nobody else. To recognize this is the first step into being a religious person. You don’t throw your responsibility onto others, you simply recognize the fact that “I am the cause of my suffering.” And with that, of course, you will feel a little sad, you will look a little stupid. If you are the cause, then why do you go on creating suffering for yourself?

Osho Quotes on Suffering

1. You would like to live a life where there is no suffering, but that life is not possible if you continuously carry the ego with you. You cannot make a life around you so that suffering disappears. If you carry the ego, again and again you will bump into some reality which will hurt the unreal. Whenever there is an encounter between reality and unreality, the unreal causes suffering.
2. Use every opportunity in life for raising your intelligence, your consciousness. Ordinarily what we are doing is using every opportunity to create a hell for ourselves. Only you suffer, and because of your suffering, you make others suffer. And when so many people are living together, and if they all create suffering for each other, it goes on multiplying. That’s how the whole world has become a hell. It can be instantly changed. Just the basic thing has to be understood, that without intelligence there is no heaven.
3. If you really want to get rid of misery and suffering then you will have to understand — you don’t have a self. Then it will be not just a small relief but a tremendous relief. And if you don’t have a self, the need for the other disappears. It was the need of the unreal self to go on being nourished by the other. You don’t need the other. And listen carefully: when you don’t need the other, you can love. And that love will not bring misery. Going beyond needs, demands, desires, love becomes a very soft sharing, a great understanding. When you understand yourself, that very day you have understood the whole of humanity. Then nobody can make you miserable. You know that they are suffering from an unreal self, and they are throwing their misery on anybody who is close by. Your love will make you capable of helping the person you love to get rid of the self.
4. Opposites are complementaries. If you can suffer your suffering in totality, in great intensity, you will be surprised: Saul becomes Paul. You will not be able to believe it when it happens for the first time, that your own suffering absorbed willingly, welcomingly, becomes a great blessing. The same energy that becomes hate becomes love, the same energy that becomes pain becomes pleasure, the same energy that becomes suffering becomes bliss.
5. The moment you become identified with your suffering you want to discard it, you want to get rid of it, it is so painful. But if you are a witness then suffering loses all thorns, all stings. Then there is suffering, and you are a witness to it. You are just a mirror; it has nothing to do with you. Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes, it is a passing show; you are just there, a mirror reflecting it. Life comes and goes, death comes and goes; the mirror is not affected by either. The mirror reflects but remains unaffected; the mirror is not imprinted by either.
6. Remember, one who enjoys more is bound to suffer more because he becomes very sensitive. But suffering is not bad. If you understand it rightly, suffering is a cleansing. If you understand it rightly, sadness has a depth to it which no happiness can ever have. A person who is simply happy is always superficial. A person who has not known sorrow and has not known sadness, has not known the depths. He has not touched the bottom of his being; he has remained just on the periphery. One has to move within these two banks. Within these two banks flows the river.
7. Each suffering should be started in celebration. Then you change the quality of suffering itself. Each suffering should be welcomed through celebration; then the suffering is no more suffering.
8. Suffering is there. It is part of life and part of growth; nothing is bad in it. Suffering becomes evil only when it is simply destructive and not creative at all; suffering becomes bad only when you suffer and nothing is gained out of it. But I am telling you the divine can be gained through suffering; then it becomes creative. Darkness is beautiful if the dawn is coming out of it soon; darkness is dangerous if it is endless, leads to no dawn, simply continues and continues and you go on moving in a rut, in a vicious circle. This is what is happening to you.Just to escape from one suffering you create another; then to escape from another, another. And this goes on and on and all those sufferings which you have not lived are waiting for you. You have escaped but you escape from one suffering to another, because a mind which was creating a suffering will create another. So you can escape from this suffering to that, but suffering will be there because your mind is the creative force.Accept the suffering and pass through it; don’t escape. This is a totally different dimension to work in. Suffering is there: encounter it, go through it. Fear will be there, accept it. You will tremble, so tremble. Why create a facade that you don’t tremble, that you are not afraid? If you are a coward, accept it.