Anguish

Question: OSHO, WHAT IS ANGUISH? IS IT JUST ANOTHER NAME FOR ANXIETY? You cannot be decisive, certain. The other man may look bigger, that is a certainty, but a smaller man may be more sharp, more clever, more cunning, may have known aikido, judo, jujitsu, and who knows what. The stronger man may not know anything, may be just a heavyweight, not a heavyweight champion, and the smaller man may throw him off. We are not programmed. Dogs are programmed and they can read each other's program easily. They give all the signs of their program: "This is what I can do. These are my teeth, you can see them. This is my bark, this way I jump, this way I will hit. You show YOURSELF." They both put their cards on the table. And when you see that one person has all the great cards, what is the point...?

Osho, what is the fundamental anguish of human life?

There is only one anguish: that a human being cannot become what he was born to be. There is only one anguish: that the seed remains a seed and does not bloom like a flower; that it cannot scatter its fragrance to the infinite winds; cannot converse with the moon and stars; cannot offer its colors to the sky; cannot be expressed. If the poem within the poet cannot be revealed—anguish. If the painter cannot paint—anguish. If the dancer cannot dance—if chains lie on his feet—anguish. Anguish means only this: that what we are meant to be—our innate nature and destiny—does not come to fruition, and we are forced to be something else. Then anguish is born. Then melancholy gathers over life. And all those countless people you see burdened with sorrow, living in a kind of hell—the reason is only this: each has come carrying the seed of becoming…

Ordinarily we go on searching for a freedom that is for the self: 'I want to be free' -- this is the worldly search. Hence people desire money because that will make them more free. Prestige, power -- they will make you more free, you will be less limited, you will have a little longer rope. The prison can become bigger but it doesn't disappear. The prison can be so big that you cannot even see the walls that surround you, but still it is a prison. The real search starts the day one understands this -- that if one is, then one is going to remain a prisoner. Only if 'I' is not found will there be unlimited freedom. Then the whole existence is one's existence, because one is not. One is no more a part but the whole.

When life itself is so fulfilling, overflowing, so blissful, then what is that which makes a man miserable?

So an egoist remains miserable, because to be happy one has to be happy with that which one has. You cannot be happy with that which you don't have; you can only be unhappy with that. You can be happy only with that which you have. How can you be happy with that which you don't have? And ego is always interested only in that which you don't have. You have ten thousand rupees -- ego is no more interested in it. It is interested in twenty thousand. By the time you have twenty thousand, it is no more interested in it. It is interested only in thirty thousand. And so on, so forth... it goes on. The ego only gives you goals, but whenever those goals arrive, it does not allow you to celebrate. One becomes more and more miserable! As life passes, we go on gathering misery, we…