According to Osho, the world’s suffering cannot be stopped; it has always existed and will persist. Only an individual’s suffering can end—through awakening. External fixes (bread, houses, prosperity) merely shift pain’s form, often deepening mental anguish. Rather than weeping over the world, end your own misery through awareness; from that clarity, compassionate action arises, but it doesn’t abolish collective suffering.
You can’t end all the world’s pain; wake up inside and end your own, then help wisely without believing you can erase it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I cry a lot when I see the world’s suffering. Can’t this suffering be stopped?
Social workers sometimes come to me. A gentleman has been serving the tribal people of Bastar for fifty years. He came to see me—an old man, around eighty. He said, “There is great restlessness in my life, great unease.” I said, “Fifty years of social service—and your restlessness and unease have not gone? Then who knows how many you have made restless and uneasy in these fifty years! Why are you after people?” He said, “I have not done anything wrong. I am working for tribal education.” I said, “First look at the state of your universities. Look at the lives of the educated. Why are you after the tribals? Where have the educated reached? Your universities are the dens of the greatest unrest. What joy is there in the lives of the educated? “The truth is, the educated become ambitious, and ambition increases suffering. Everyone educated wants to be…
Osho, is there only suffering in the world, or is there some happiness too?
Samsara is synonymous with suffering. This question is like asking, “In suffering, is there only suffering, or is there some happiness too?” There is hope for happiness. But happiness never actually happens; that hope proves delusive. The world assures you that happiness will come—but here assurances are never fulfilled. One promise breaks and the world gives you ten more. In giving promises the world is not miserly; it opens its heart and gives in plenty. However much you ask, it shows readiness to give a thousand times more. But it gives nothing. With these very promises as support, it takes your life from you. On the strength of these hopes it makes you run and run; exhausted, you fall into the grave. Even as you fall into the grave your trust in promises has not broken. Then you think, while falling into the grave—there is Vaikuntha, there is heaven; there…
Osho, why is there so much secrecy in the ashram?
The ashram is not a marketplace; it is not open to the crowd. Here I am available to those few who genuinely want to be transformed. Sightseers, passersby—there is no purpose in their coming here. The invitation is only for those who have truly come close to transformation, for that small number. Therefore there is privacy in every respect. And the privacy will increase. Because as I see that more of the unnecessary can be sifted out, I will sift them out—since they themselves gain nothing, and by their presence they do not let others gain either. I have remained open to all for a long time and have seen what happens. I found that the crowd of the pointless becomes so thick that the meaningful person gets no chance at all. The merely curious surround so much that the true inquirer is left standing at the back. The mumukshu—the…
Osho, what is the definition of God?
Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…
People in both the east and the west are suffering in every dimension of life. Will you diagnose this suffering for us: its causes, its preventions and its cures?
All the meanings that we look for, search for, desire for, are ego meanings. You must attain something otherwise you are no one. You only feel fulfilled if you achieve something. Through achievement the ego is fulfilled so you must achieve something -- maybe riches, maybe prestige, maybe knowledge. You must attain something, you must be able to attach something to yourself that you can claim as mine: my achievement. Only then is there an 'I', otherwise 'I am no one.' The mind feels anguish and the mind also feels suffering, dukkha. It feels anguish when there is mental disharmony and it feels suffering as far as ultimate suffering is concerned. This feeling, too, is of the mind. You must know the distinction clearly. Mind is in anguish as far as mental inner disharmony is concerned, and mind is in dukkha as far as the ego and ultimate destiny is…