Don’t try to change the noise; change how you listen—be calm inside and the same sounds can feel friendly.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Are there no horrible noises if we listen from the center of the body? What about the screeching city noises that have been a source of irritation to us all of our lives: can we turn these into positive sound?
It depends on your mind. If you are positive, then everything becomes positive. If you are negative, then everything turns negative, everything turns sour. So please remember this -not only about noises, but about everything in life. If you feel that something negative exists around you, go and find the cause within. It is you. You must be expecting something, you must be desiring something, you must be making some conditions. Existence cannot be forced to go according to you; it flows in its own way. If you can flow with it, you will be positive. If you fight with it, you will become negative and the whole cosmos around you will turn negative. It is just like a person who is trying to float upstream: then the stream is negative. If you are trying to float upstream in a river, then the river will seem negative and you will…
13. Devi, imagine the sanskrit letters in these honey-filled foci of awareness, first as letters, then more subtly as sounds, then as most subtle feeling. Then, leaving them aside, be free.
14. BATHE IN THE CENTER OF SOUND, AS IN THE CONTINUOUS SOUND OF A WATERFALL. OR, BY PUTTING THE FINGERS IN THE EARS, HEAR THE SOUND OF SOUNDS. For example, in any language the word `mother' is somehow related with `ma'. It may be `mater', it may be `Mutter', it may be `mata', it may be `ma', -- anything -- but somewhere it is related with the sound "ma" in all the languages, more or less. The child can utter "ma" most easily. The first sound which the child can utter is "ma." Then the whole structure is based on this "ma." A child utters "ma" because it is the first sound which is easy for the child to utter. This is the case anywhere, in any part of the world, in any time. Just because of the structure of the throat and the body, "ma" is the easiest sound…
Listen to the song of life.
If you think that whatsoever you have interpreted is the fact and not just a projection, you will fall into deeper and deeper illusions. But if you can understand that it is not a fact but a fiction of the mind -- that it depends on you, not on existence itself -- then you can change. You can go through a mutation, an inner revolution can happen, because now it is up to you. The world can be a chaos if you are a chaos. The world can be a cosmos if you are a cosmos. The world can be dead if you are dead inwardly; the world can be alive, abundantly alive, if you are alive within. It depends on you. You are the world. Only you exist really, nothing else. Everything else is just a mirror. I remember one anecdote. An emperor, a very powerful emperor, created a…
"tantra says do not struggle or swim, but let go and float in the river of life. But experience shows that the modern city life of speed and heavy technology creates constant tensions and exertions physically and mentally. What will be tantra's attitude about it? Is it not good to avoid unnecessary exertions?"
Nothing disturbs unless you think that it disturbs. For example I will tell you that many things have disturbed humanity because there was a certain concept that they disturb. When the concept changes the things remain the same, but they don't disturb. For example, masturbation disturbed the whole world. Just half a century before, the whole world was disturbed by masturbation. Every teacher, every father, every mother was disturbed, and every child was disturbed. And still in the larger, ignorant world, the disturbance remains. And then physiologists and psychologists discovered that masturbation cannot disturb anyone; it is natural, and nothing is wrong with it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but the old teaching was that if you become mad, it was because of masturbation. Everything was forced down, reduced to masturbation. And more or less every child was doing it, every boy was doing it, so every boy…
Osho, to abide in oneself beyond the knower, knowledge, and the known—can one live in that state for an entire lifetime? Just as a lake is sometimes calm, sometimes playful, and sometimes stormy, does the self-realized one remain unaffected by worldly circumstances in the same way? Osho, dispel my ignorance!
Spring means harmony between season and mood. Meditation means harmony between you and the whole. You become harmonious. Whatever is, is perfectly okay—accepted. Nowhere any refusal, nowhere any opposition. Whatever is happening is auspicious. That is trust; that is meditation. Such meditation naturally takes you into an altogether new experience. Storms will rise; they will not stop because you meditate. Diseases will not stop coming to the body because you meditate. They will come. A thorn will sometimes pierce the foot. Raman had cancer; so did Ramakrishna—great storms came! Ramakrishna got cancer of the throat; he could neither eat nor drink. Vivekananda said to him, “What is not in your power! Why don’t you pray to the Lord at least to allow food and water to pass? We suffer watching you writhe.” Ramakrishna said, “Ah, it never even occurred to me to pray. How could it occur—to one whose prayer…