How can one avoid preferring bliss to a life of suffering?

Question: Third question: Osho, how can one be free from suffering? Suffering has not bound you; you are bound to suffering. Suffering is not a chain someone else has put on your hands. Suffering is an ornament you have chosen to wear yourself. Understand this first point clearly. For here both sorrow and joy are present. Choosing either is wrong. Non-choice—choosing nothing; becoming without alternatives. Joy is outside, suffering is outside. Both come and go. I am separate from both, distinct, different—a mere witness. That state is supreme bliss.

Is it that there are only two alternatives before man -- a life of abiding sorrow and suffering or one of divinity and bliss -- and this choice lies with him? How is it that most have chosen the path of sorrow and suffering?

The only one thing deep down within you is your witnessing self, your consciousness -- that remains the same; everything else changes. And if you cling to any object of the world of change, you will suffer. Nothing can be done about it. You are trying to do the impossible, that's why you suffer. I know you never choose, but that is not the point. If you suffer, you have chosen it indirectly. Once you become aware of this indirectness of life, this paradoxical quality of life, you will stop choosing. When choice falls, the world has disappeared. When choosing falls, you have entered the absolute. But that is possible only when the choosing mind disappears completely. A choiceless awareness is needed and then you will be in bliss. Rather, you will be the bliss. And I will repeat again: suffering will continue to happen, but now nothing can make…

Osho, we know suffering; the Buddhas know bliss. Do we really know suffering? If we truly know suffering, then why do we not move toward bliss?

One of Buddha’s monks, Sariputta, asked him, “How may I find bliss?” Buddha said, “Drop the search; just be present here and now. There is no need to seek. Bliss is here. You are the one who has run away; therefore you fail to meet that which is here.” Bliss is not an object that will be attained in the future; it is embedded in the heartbeat that comes with our birth. Bliss is our very nature. There is no need to search for it. It is precisely because we search that we miss. Do not search; seize it this very moment. Do not postpone it till tomorrow. The unhappy person is the one who seeks happiness tomorrow, and the blissful person is the one who does not postpone—who dives into it this very moment. This diving is called dhyana, samadhi. So when you learn the art of diving into…

You tell us again and again not to desire enlightenment and yet you also remind us again and again how impoverished and what rubbish our lives are, and tell us how blissful and rich enlightenment is. How can one avoid preferring bliss to rubbish?

This comes only by experience. Many times you will fall. But don't be discouraged. Get up again, and be going. Many times you will fall and you will start desiring. It is so subtle that you may even be thinking you have not chosen, you have not preferred, and you have preferred. But the more alert you are, one day or other it will happen. It has happened to me, and I was in the same plight, and the same was the difficulty for me -- how not to desire that which is blissful. How simply NOT to desire, and remain desireless, not preferring anything to anything else, just being, without any preference. I know, it is almost impossible -- but it happens. Impossibles happen. They are the real miracles. It has happened. And so I know it is going to happen to you. Just persist. Don't get discouraged by…

One who has attained to the eternal absolute shall remain so even after death. So, oh innocent, attain samadhi, the highest state of unity with the supreme, and be free of the choices. The knot of ignorance in the heart is destroyed, the moment one achieves self-realization, through nirvikalp samadhi, choiceless awareness.

ONE SHOULD GIVE UP THE SELF BASED ON EGO BY STEADYING ONESELF IN UNITY WITH THE HIGHER SELF. AND ONE SHOULD BE INDIFFERENT TO EGOISM, ET CETERA, AS ONE REMAINS INDIFFERENT TO POTS, CLOTHES, AND OTHER THINGS. FROM BRAHMA THE CREATOR, DOWN TO THE STONE, ALL APPEARANCES ARE FALSE; THEREFORE, SEE EVERYWHERE YOUR OWN EXCELLENT SELF, WHICH IS EVER-UNCHANGING. THE SELF IS THE BRAHMAN, THE SELF IS VISHNU, THE SELF IS INDRA, THE SELF IS SHIVA, THE SELF IS THE WORLD, AND THE SELF IS EVERYTHING; AND THERE IS NOTHING OTHER THAN THE SELF. This sutra is concerned with choicelessness. Mind is always choosing -- choosing this against that. Mind is the mechanism of choice. Have you observed this? Observe: Mind is always choosing this against that. There is not a single moment when the mind is not in a state of choosing. We go on choosing -- choosing pleasure…