[A journalist, who came to do an article on Osho, has decided to take sannyas.]
Osho – Good! I was waiting and waiting for you!… I recognise my people when they come to me. And it is very natural to hesitate, very natural to think and waver; it is very natural to be a little scared, afraid. These are all natural things and they are good. Because once you have wavered, thought about it again and again, and in spite of the wavering and in spite of the fear you decide, it is going to stay because you have seen all that wavering already; nothing more can be there.
People who take the jump sometimes without thinking what they are going to do start repenting later on, start thinking how to escape, how to get out of it. They are not very reliable people; a responsible person always thinks. Thinking is not necessarily negative; it brings you to a positive conclusion too.
Rightly applied it simply makes you aware of the whole situation, and when you decide, seeing the whole situation, the decision is going to be more valid…. You have looked all around, you have thought in every possible way. Yes, there are pros and there are cons but you have looked into them. Now nothing is left, nothing new can disturb you.
And something very essential is going to happen to you through sannyas. Because it is going to happen, the idea has been haunting you from the very moment you came. Your unconscious has felt something. The conscious takes time. The unconscious is intuitive – it jumps without a process, so it concludes immediately; but the conscious mind follows a little bit slowly. It has to be more cautious… and it is good.
Raise your hands and close your eyes and just feel as if you are a tree in the wind. Let the wind blow, let the wind sway you. Don’t hold yourself: just become like a small, small, innocent tree, with no mind at all.
Satya means truth or true and ananda means bliss – true bliss. And there are many untrue blisses in the world which only appear to be blissful from the distance: illusions, mirages. The closer you come, the more frustrated you feel. Once you have become really close, the mirage disappears and again the old mind starts looking for another mirage somewhere else.
The bliss that is in the future is illusory; the bliss that becomes available right now this very moment is true. All that is true is in the present; all that is untrue is either in the past or in the future. The future and the past are both lies: one is no more, one is not yet. Only this moment is all there is, so never be deceived by the future.
And there are only two types of people in the world: a few people are deceived by the past – their golden age is always in the past; and a few people are deceived by the future – their utopia is in the future… and both are deceived. There are only very rare, fortunate people who are not deceived by the past or by the future… who live in the moment like the lilies in the field, who don’t think of the morrow, who are utterly satisfied with this moment whatsoever it brings. Yes, sometimes it brings sadness but to be satisfied with sadness is blissful. That may look paradoxical but it is true.
If you can be contented with your sadness, suddenly you will see a bliss arising out of it. Bliss has nothing to do with happiness or unhappiness, bliss has something to do with contentment. If you are contented even with unhappiness, there will be bliss; if you are discontented even with happiness, there will be un-bliss, there will be misery.
So bliss is not equivalent to happiness, bliss is the attitude of contentment. Whatsoever is… sadness, it’s okay. If there is unhappiness it’s okay, one accepts it. What else can one do? – one is helpless. Out of that acceptance, suddenly a great bliss arises. That bliss comes only by being true.
We have been taught to be untrue in a thousand and one ways: we have been taught how to wear masks, how to have false faces, how to act, how to play – all games. And because of those games and those lies, we become unavailable to bliss. Bliss is whenever we are true, whenever we are authentic, whenever we are not pretending, whenever we are absolutely the way we are and there is no hide-and-seek game going on.
If one can be just the way one is, suddenly there is benediction, there is bliss, there is great blessing. That is the meaning of ’satyananda’: bliss is through being true, through being authentic.
Source – Osho Book “Far Beyond the Stars”