We make life complicated to feel important because we’re taught to chase and compare, but real ease comes from being simple and letting the ego go.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, for years you have talked to us of simplicity: simplicity in love, the simplicity of enlightenment, and now the simple solution to the power game between the united states and russia. Why has man developed such complexity, and why does he show such mistrust and disbelief in the simple?
The yogis have not produced anything, have not created anything, have made no contribution to the world. What have your ascetics given to the world? What have your so-called saints been doing all along, except being parasites sucking your blood? And these are the people you have been worshipping. And why have you been worshipping them? For the simple reason that you cannot stand for twelve hours on your head. Try it -- even for twelve minutes it is difficult. In fact, when you first try you will fall many times; you may have a broken rib. The yogi is doing something difficult. A man is standing naked in the snow in the Himalayas, and people come from thousands of miles to touch his feet. All that he is doing is getting frozen and dead. What is his contribution? Nobody goes to touch the feet of Albert Einstein, or Bertrand…
Osho, the path of simplicity is the second one. What is it?
The first path is to try to be simple, to make an effort, to practice it. Cultivated simplicity is always false. Because to practice, by its very meaning, is to practice against your own mind; otherwise, what is the practice against? If being naked is blissful for me, I will not call it practice. If wearing clothes is blissful for me and then I start practicing being naked, will nakedness be a “practice”? And if being naked is simply blissful—if wearing clothes never gave me the joy that comes from being naked—then no one would call it a practice. It is my joy. We practice only that which is contrary to us; practice means repression. Practice is inevitably repression. And wherever effort is required, against whom is that effort made—against oneself? No effort made against oneself can ever win. How could it win? Who would win? How can I win…
Osho, there is a question in the Shatapatha Brahmana: Ko veda manushyasya? Who knows the human being? Osho, is man so complex and mysterious that no one can know him?
Purushottam Mahanti, man is not complex; he is certainly mysterious. If he were complex, knowing him would not be so difficult. However complex a thing is, complexity can be unraveled. Complexity is a puzzle that lies within the scope of the intellect, not beyond it. Whatever was complex, man has solved, or if not yet, he will. What was unknown yesterday is known today; what is unknown today will be known tomorrow. Science recognizes only two categories: the known and the unknown. There is no qualitative difference between them—only a difference of time. The unknown is that which is capable of becoming known: a little more effort, a little more search, a little more research, a little more reasoning, a little more science. But mystery is qualitatively different, not merely quantitatively. Mystery does not mean the unknown; mystery means the unknowable—what cannot be known at all, what lies beyond the…
Chapter 2: sutra 2 so it is that existence and non-existence give birth the one to the idea of the other; that difficulty and ease produce the one the idea of the other; that length and shortness fashion out the one the figure of the other; that the idea of height and lowness arise from the contrast of the one with the other; that the musical notes and tones become harmonious through the relationship of one with another; and that being before and behind give the idea of one following another.
The child has the greatest amount of energy. This old man is the weakest of all. If it was left to us to decide, then like Bernard Shaw, we would want our children to be absolutely weak and the elders to be strong for they are experienced. But the inexperienced child has the energy to develop, to expand -- while the experienced old man has none. What is the reason? The reason is significant. Actually, the accumulation of experiences is the advance of death, Aggregation of experiences means approach of death. It means, life's work is over and one should depart. It is now time to leave the University of Life. So now you need strength no more. No energy is required to go to the grave. You have only to slip into the grave. The inexperienced require strength, for strength is required to gain experience. There will be many…
Beloved Osho, you are for me, the most extraordinary person I can imagine. Yet I know that you feel ordinary. Where is the door for a talented and gifted person or a genius to feel and become ordinary? I see that each time I feel special, something goes wrong. But I have still not found the door to real modesty and simplicity. Could you please say something about that?
I do not feel ordinary -- I am. The people who have talents, the gifted, the geniuses -- they also suffer the same problem that you are suffering because they forget that the whole existence is ordinary. A sunrise, howsoever beautiful, is pure ordinariness. A sky full of stars does not feel in any way special. A rosebush full of beautiful flowers and fragrance is just part of the ordinary existence. The talented people get into trouble because they forget their relationship with existence. They become confined and imprisoned in their small talents. What are your talents and what are your geniuses? Because you can paint, you are a genius? Look at the butterflies, look at the flowers, look at the sky when the sun is setting -- the whole existence is so colorful. And because you have painted a small canvas, you have become special. And what have you…