According to Osho, problems don’t belong to reality; they belong to the mind that clings. They multiply with people and their egos, but before a master who is a choiceless emptiness, they find no surface to stick to and disappear. Their significance is diagnostic and transformative: they expose attachment, and by surrendering them into awareness, one discovers the abyss-like freedom where problems cannot survive.
Problems only stick to a clinging mind; let go into empty awareness (or a master’s emptiness) and they drop away.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is a problem?
Always be ready to change your mind because life cannot be changed just because of your ideologies. And we have learned ways how to look at life, how to interpret life, and we become fixated in certain routines. Let me tell you one anecdote. A mousy little man used to be very frightened of his boss. One day he told a fellow worker that he was sick. His friend said, "Why don't you go home?" "Oh, I couldn't do that!" "Why not? Don't be silly, he will never know. He is not even here today." Finally the man was convinced and went home. When he got there, he looked in the window -- and there was his boss, kissing and hugging his wife. So he ran all the way back to the office. "A fine friend you are!" he said to his pal. "I nearly got caught." Just an old…
Question: OSHO, WHAT IS THE GREATEST PROBLEM IN THE WORLD? Any small problem, just look at it, at how you have been trying to solve it, and it goes on becoming worse and worse. Certainly in your doing there is something which is becoming a nourishment to it rather than a killer. You are not poisoning it, you are nourishing it, feeding it. And don't try to work on so many knots together. Just choose one small knot, the smallest you can find in yourself; by smallest, I mean the most insignificant. People have the tendency to choose the most significant; even when they are choosing to solve their problems, they choose the greatest problem first. Now, that is simply foolish. Just become a little aware, alert. Start from the small things, very small things.
Asked by Dr. Rajendra I. Desai. Dr. Desai, sannyas has nothing to do with solving problems. I do not solve problems. I do not solve personal problems; I show the way to dissolve the person from whom all problems arise.
One day Mulla Nasruddin was walking down the road—dragging his feet, irritable, hurling abuses. I asked, “Nasruddin, what’s the matter?” He said, “Can’t you see? My feet are swelling; these shoes are too small.” I said, “I’ve heard this many times before. It’s the same rigmarole every day. Why don’t you buy another pair of shoes? Why did you buy shoes two sizes too small?” He said, “I will never do that. You don’t understand—these shoes are the only joy of my life. All day I swear at them; it keeps my mind occupied. It gives me something to do. And then there is a great delight: when I return home in the evening, tired, harassed by these shoes, and I take them off and throw them away and lie down on the bed, I say, ‘Oh Lord!’ There is such bliss in taking off these shoes! If I give…
Sometimes as I watch people playing the same old games over and over, my eyes feel ancient and jaded and my heart weary and cynical. I guess it's because I'm seeing more and more my own games and tricks and I hear your maddening voice between my ears saying,'that's okay -- just you have to accept and love yourself; and there is no problem.' just???! I think if you say this word again I will scream. Wasn't I happier when I thought there was a goal?
So it depends on you whether you create a problem or you don't create a problem but problems are not there. Problems are not in existence: they are in the psychology of man. Just look next time you are having some trip and riding a problem just watch. Just stand aside and look at the problem. Is it really there? or have you created it? Look deeply into it, and you will suddenly see it is not increasing, it is decreasing; it is becoming smaller and smaller. The more you put your energy into observation, the smaller it becomes. And a moment comes when suddenly it is not there... and you will have a good laugh. Whenever you are having a problem, just look at it. Problems are fictitious, they don't exist. Just go around the problem, look from every angle -- how can it be? It is a ghost!…
Why do I make mountains out of molehills?
If people can dance a little more, sing a little more, be a little more crazy, their energy will be flowing more, and their problems will by and by disappear. Hence I insist so much on dance. Dance to orgasm; let the whole energy become dance, and suddenly you will see that you don't have any head -- the stuck energy in the head is moving all around, creating beautiful patterns, pictures, movement. And when you dance there comes a moment when your body is no longer a rigid thing, it becomes flexible, flowing. When you dance there comes a moment when your boundary is no longer so clear; you melt and merge with the cosmos, the boundaries are mixing. Watch a dancer -- you will see that he has become an energy phenomenon, no longer in a fixed form, no longer in a frame. He is flowing out of…