According to Osho, you create misery by choosing—taking sides fragments you, sets you against parts of life and yourself. Choice breeds inner conflict and the illusion you must fight existence. Bliss arises from choiceless awareness: relax, trust the whole, and respond totally to what the moment brings—love when love flowers, meditate when silence calls—without preference or suppression. Then wholeness replaces misery.
You feel miserable because you keep picking sides and fighting life; stop choosing and just flow with what comes, and peace appears.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why do I always create misery around myself? Beginning to see that I consistently choose this vicious circle. Is the choosing in itself the misery?
Forty-two is the age when life comes to a certain conclusion -- whether you have failed or succeeded. Because beyond forty-two there is not much hope: if you have made money, you have made it; by the time forty-two arrives, you have made it -- because the greatest days of energy and power are gone. Thirty-five is the peak. You can give seven more years; in fact, already for seven years you have been going downhill. But you have done everything that you could do. And now the age has come, forty-two, and suddenly you see that you have failed. Now you need some rationalization... immediately a heart attack comes. That's a great boon, a blessing from God. Now you can fall into the bed and you can say, "What can I do? The heart attack disturbed everything. When everything was going to be okay, when I was just going…
Why can I not live without misery?
You are miserable because you have decided to be miserable -- maybe the decision is unconscious. And you have to be conscious about the decision, only then can it be dropped. Because nothing can be dropped from the unconscious. The unconscious is a great preserver, it preserves everything. Once you make anything unconscious it will be preserved for ever and ever unless you make it conscious again and throw it. Your unconscious is a basement where you never go, and you always go on throwing things in the basement. Whenever you are miserable you repress it. Your eyes may be full of tears but you try to smile -- you throw those tears into the unconscious. You may be boiling with anger but you go on repressing the anger, the sexuality, the greed. You go on throwing all this into the basement, and there all these things are creating a…
Osho, I once read somewhere that when buddha was asked by a disciple to describe life briefly, the buddha replied 'misery'. Is this true?
What is misery? Misery is feeling separate from existence, feeling isolated from existence, feeling alienated from existence -- that is misery. And what is bliss? Feeling one with existence, orgasmically one with existence, organically one with existence. Having an ego is misery, and becoming egolessness is bliss. Both alternatives are open. The choice is yours. Zareen, listening to Buddha's answer that life is misery, don't settle there. His answer is to unsettle you. His answer is to shock you. His answer is to wake you up to the fact that your life is misery. But people are really cunning, very cunning; they listen only to that which they want to listen to. People are so cunning that listening to the statement that life is misery, they say, ''Then nothing can be done. If life is misery, then I have to live a miserable life, then this is all there is…
Why is every human being full of problems and unhappy?
Put all your energy into being happy, and don't bother about others. Your happiness is your destiny; nobody is entitled to interfere with it. But the society goes on interfering; it is a vicious circle. You were born, and of course you were born into a society already there, a given society of neurotic people, of people who are all miserable and unhappy. Your parents, your family, your society, your country, are already there waiting for you. And a small child is born; the whole society jumps on the child, starts culturing him, cultivating him. It is as if a child is born in a madhouse, and all the mad people start cultivating. Of course, they have to help -- the child is so small and does not know anything about the world. They will teach whatsoever they know. They will enforce whatsoever has been enforced on them by their…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY DO I CLING TO MY MISERY? WHY CAN I NOT DROP IT? All the stones on your path can become stepping stones. They need not hinder you, you just have to know that they are steps. Look into your suffering, find out that good and bad are all together there. You cannot separate them, so the question of dropping does not arise. You have to use them together -- not as opposites, but as complementaries. And that is possible. Even poison can be used as medicine -- it is used. In fact, on most of the medicines you will find written: POISON -- in red letters. Poison is to kill, but by understanding it you can use it to save somebody who is dying. But if you are foolish, even nectar will kill you; you may drink too much of it.