Fwd: Why are my Sundays changing?
Anurag Sharma
From: Placement Cell- MNIT Jaipur <ptp....@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 11:17 PM
Subject: Fwd: Why are my Sundays changing?
To: BC2012 <mnitb...@googlegroups.com>
From: Advait <awar...@advait.org.in>
Date: Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 6:25 PM
Subject: Why are my Sundays changing?
To: ptp....@gmail.com
Question – As a child, Sundays have been something very special to me. But now, since a few days, i wake up every morning and go out, see the Sun shining through the trees, hear the birds singing and get this feeling, ‘Ah! another Sunday!!’ I put on my best clothes and have Sunday the entire week. What is happening to me?
Osho – Don’t make a problem out of it. The mind is constantly searching for something to pounce upon — even happiness. It makes a problem out of happiness also. If you are feeling happy, you ask, ‘Why?’ That question is dangerous.
If you are suffering it is good to ask ‘why?’ because the suffering has to be dissolved, transcended; ways and means have to be found to get out of it — so the ‘why?’ is relevant. But when you are happy, then to ask ‘why?’ is to disturb it. There is no need to ask any questions. When happiness surrounds you accept it totally without any questioning. If you are ill, diagnosis is needed, analysis is needed, because the disease has to be found. But if you are healthy you don’t go to the doctor to ask, ‘Why am I healthy? Diagnose my health. What is happening to me?’ You don’t go.
It is a habit of the mind because it has been always living in misery, unhappiness, and always the ‘why?’ has been relevant. So when clouds disappear for the first time and the sun shines in your life, the old question goes on persisting — ‘Why?’ Learn to accept happiness, learn to enjoy it without any questioning, learn to trust happiness, don’t doubt it, because the very doubt will be a poisoning. Happiness rarely happens. Those moments are very few and far between. When they come, welcome them, open your door, receive them with your full heart, don’t withhold anything. Even a question will become a very, very strong wall between you and your happiness.
Every day is a Sunday. It should be so. Every day is a holiday. It should be so. Because all days belong to him. Each moment is holy. Once you understand it, you will stop asking questions like this. Don’t think that any particular day is needed for you to be happy — only a particular mind. It has nothing to do with time; everything depends on the attitude, how you look at life. There are people for whom even a Sunday is not a Sunday. There is no light, no sun rising — even on a Sunday. They are clouded in their own darkness, shrouded in their own misery. They carry their hell around them. Even if you force them into heaven, they will go on carrying their hell. They will live in their hell. Nobody can force them out of their hell unless they decide to drop it. It is your decision to be happy or to be unhappy.
I have heard about a Sufi mystic who was always happy, always and always. Nobody had ever seen him unhappy. It was as if he did not know that language, as if the only way he knew how to be was happy.
He became very old and one day a man asked him, ‘Will you please tell me your secret? How you remain so happy? How you remain so unperturbed? How each moment you can be so blissful? It is impossible. It is unbelievable. What is your secret?’
The old man laughed and he said, ‘Long before, I found one simple thing: that each morning, when I opened my eyes, there are two alternatives to choose for that day — either to be happy or to be unhappy. And I always chose to be happy. Simple is my secret: each day gives me only two alternatives to choose — to be happy or to be unhappy. And I always choose to be happy, that’s all. There is nothing more to it.’
But you will not believe in this. You will say this old man is deceiving. He must have some other secret. But I also tell you this is the secret. All great truths are simple truths, very simple. Try tomorrow morning. Before you open your eyes have a clear-cut vision of two alternatives: being in hell or in heaven. Visualise misery on one hand, visualise blissfulness on another hand. See deeply into both. Don’t be in a hurry. Look into both as deeply as possible and wait — then decide. If you want to be unhappy then decide, let it be your decision — and then be truly unhappy the whole day. Be committed to your decision and don’t try to escape from it. Whatsoever happens, you remain miserable. And if you decide to be happy, then stick to it and soon you will realise that your life is your decision.
You are suffering because you go on deciding in that way; you are suffering because you go on clinging to your suffering. You have made a habit out of it. It is just mechanical. Good, you should feel grateful that it is happening to you — that every day is becoming a holiday. Holidays are disappearing from the world. In the legal sense people have more holidays. Workdays are being reduced all over the world, from six to five, from five to four, and soon even that will not be so — in the very highly developed technological societies, one day of the week will do and for six days people can have holidays. But ‘holiday’ is disappearing — that quality of sacredness, that quality of holiness is disappearing.
I have heard about a very reformed temple. Of course it is in Southern California because everything in California is a little far-out, even religion. There is a reformed temple in Beverley Hills that is so reformed that on the holiest of the days, Yom Kippur, there is a sign on the door saying: Closed for the Jewish Holidays.
That quality, that consciousness is disappearing from the world. People have more leisure — that is another thing. But what do they do with their leisure? They create more misery for themselves or for others. Finding nothing to do, they do harm to themselves or to others. More accidents happen on the holidays — more car accidents, more murders, more suicides. And after the holiday people are so tired that they need a whole week’s rest to recuperate, to recover. They do a thousand and one things on holidays just to keep busy, because not to be busy is to be with oneself and that has become almost impossible.
To be with oneself and to be happy with oneself — that dimension is completely lost. That’s what a holiday is, or should be. One is so full of God, so full of being, that there is no need to do anything, there is no need to be occupied. Occupation is just an escape. It is a good way to avoid encountering yourself, encountering life. Holidays are disappearing. It is good that every day a feeling arises in you that this is a holiday. It is. If it was not so before, then you were missing something. Now it has started happening, don’t make it a question.
I used to know a man who was an atheist. Once I heard that he had become a theist. I could not believe it. So when I came across him I asked him, ‘How come you decided to become a theist?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I used to be an atheist but I gave it up.’
‘Why?’ I enquired.
He said, ‘No holidays.’
Many people go on working and working and working and one day they die…because their work is not creative. When is the work creative? The work is creative when you love it, the work is creative when you feel in tune with it, the work is creative when you enjoy it, the work is creative when you choose it, when it fits with your being and there is a great harmony between you and your work.
If you are creative only then can you have holidays, not otherwise. If you want to have holidays become more and more creative. I am not saying be creative in the eyes of others — that is irrelevant — just be creative in your own eyes, whatsoever you do. If you love it then do it, otherwise don’t do it — choose some other way. Life is vast. Says Jesus, ‘There are many mansions in my God’s house.’ There are many dimensions in life. There is enough opportunity to choose.
If you are not feeling fulfilled in something that you are doing, then don’t do it, because this will be a sheer wastage and you will not have earned holidays. A man who has lived according to his being, who has done his own thing, earns death. Then he dies, but the death is a Sunday; then he dies, but he dies fulfilled. He has no complaints. He lived the way he wanted to live.
If you die and God asks you, ‘If you are sent back to the world what changes would you like to make in your life?’ Will you be able to say that you would like to live the same way, absolutely the same way? If not, then you are doing something wrong with your life. Then you are dragging your life, then you are not living it. Then you are simply killing time — as they say. Then you are simply wasting your energies, they are simply dissipated. They will not become an integral force and there is not going to be any blossoming — your tree is going to remain without any fruits and flowers. Then how can you be happy and how can you enjoy?
Time as holy opportunity, that is the meaning of holiday — a holy day, a day which is not profane, a day which is not ordinary. And once you know how to be creative, each moment becomes holy. In creativity, each day is a holiday, and you do not require a special day to relax. Whenever you create something you participate with the creator — you have become a small creator in your own right. If you write a small poem or you sing a song, maybe nobody likes it, nobody applauds it, but that is irrelevant. You enjoyed it. Singing, you were happy, you participated in that moment with God, you helped him to create a song, you became instrumental. In fact, whatsoever is created is created by him — you allowed him to create a small song through you. Then you feel tremendously good, good about yourself.
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