According to Osho, Buddha sees unhappiness (dukkha) not as life’s only reality but as a process born of clinging and avoidance. Pleasure and pain continually transform into each other; when we grasp at pleasure or resist pain, suffering results. Understanding this impermanence and dropping attachment dissolves misery. Thus Buddha discusses suffering to reveal the way beyond it—awareness, acceptance, and non‑clinging.
We feel unhappy when we cling to nice things or fight bad ones; if we relax and let things change, the pain eases.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Questioner: before you go ahead with the discussion, I would request that you explain something we seem to have missed so far. If buddha's concept of unhappiness is a fact of life, then how is it wrong to bring it into focus? Isn't life, as it is, full of pain and misery?
Besides, what is happiness for me may be a matter of suffering for you. If I own ten million and I lose five, I will be miserable in spite of the fact that I still own five million. But if you have nothing and you come across five million, you will be mad with joy and happiness. Although both of us will be in the same situation financially -- we have five million each -- I will be beating my head against the wall and you will be dancing and celebrating. But also remember, your celebration will not last long, because someone who comes to own five million will also be faced with the fear of losing it. In the same way, my sufferings will soon wither away, because one who loses five million soon becomes engaged in recovering that loss -- which is quite possible for him. Strange are…
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…
Buddha has talked about four noble truths. The first he calls 'dukkha', suffering. All is suffering, everybody is in anguish, in misery. The second he calls 'samudaya'. The cause of suffering is desire: people are suffering because they desire. When you desire, there are two possibilities: either the desire will be fulfilled or not fulfilled. If the desire is not fulfilled you will be frustrated and you will suffer. If the desire is fulfilled, then too you will suffer, because the desire will be fulfilled but you will still remain unfulfilled. You don't have one million dollars; one day you can have it but the day you achieve one million dollars you suddenly see that that is not going to help. The mind says,'Have two million dollars.' So whether you succeed or fail in desire, you fail all the same.
Osho, “Life is suffering”—why does Bhagwan Buddha put so much emphasis on this? Is life really nothing but suffering, nothing else at all besides suffering?
Life is suffering; that is why Buddha puts so much emphasis on it. He emphasizes it because you are so stupefied that, though you are mired in suffering, you do not see it. Therefore Buddha keeps shouting that life is suffering—birth is suffering, youth is suffering, old age is suffering—everything is suffering. He shouts so much because you are deaf. If one speaks softly, you don’t hear at all; even when he shouts, you still don’t listen. And look—you are asking it upside down: “Life is suffering—why does Bhagwan Buddha insist so much on it?” It seems you are a bit annoyed too, as if to say, “Why does this man keep shouting that life is suffering! We are enjoying ourselves counting our money, looking after our wife and children, and this man goes on saying, ‘Life is suffering!’ He spoils our fun. We have somehow built a house, and…
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…