Osho – Whatever you have desired — fulfilled, unfulfilled, it makes no difference — the moment the desire has come into your mind, into your heart, you have created ripples, waves. They will go on. This wheel, this sansar, is constituted of all the desires that have existed and all the desires that are in existence. This is such a great force, of all the dead and of all the living, that you cannot stand still. They will push you, you have to run.
It is just like in a crowd. When the whole crowd is running you cannot stand still. You are just pushed to run. You are safe if you are running; if you are not running you will be killed. It is not that your energy is needed to run. If you do not make any effort, the crowd will push you. This is the wheel — the wheel of desires. You must have seen the Tibetan picture of the wheel. It is beautifully depicted — the whole wheel of desires.
To step out of the wheel is sannyas. You just come out of the crowd. You just step down. You just sit by the side of the road, you say goodbye. Only then do you know the phenomenon of what is the wheel. Only then do you know that some persons are running in a circle, they will pass you so many times — then you know that this is a wheel.
A Buddha, a Mahavira, could call this world sansar, a wheel, because they knew that it was a wheel when they stepped aside. It is not that you are running in a line, it is a circle — repeating the same desires, the same days, the same nights, the same disillusionments, and going on in the whirlwind. Pushed from behind, pulled from the front, you go on.
Sannyas means to step aside, to step out. This is the second part of sannyas. Sannyas has two parts. The first part is knowing the frustration, knowing the anguish. This is the miracle: once you know that the world is anguish, the world is frustration, you are not frustrated at all. The frustration comes because you think the world is not frustrating. The anguish comes because you hope even when you know it is hopeless. That hoping is nonsense. When you know this, then you do not feel hopeless at all. Then there is no need to feel so. Then there is nothing to feel hopeless about — there is no hope.
That is why Buddhism could not be understood. The Western mind could only interpret it as pessimism. It was a natural fallacy. Buddhism is not pessimistic. But to the Western mind it appeared pessimistic, because of the saying that the world is frustrating, the world is dukkha — misery. This makes you pessimistic. But this is not the case. The earth has not known so happy, so blissful a person as Buddha, or, it has known very few such people. He was not a pessimist at all.
So what is the secret? The secret is this:if you know this world is dukkha, then you do not expect anything except dukkha. Expectation only creates pessimism. When there is no expectation, then there is no need to be in misery. Once life is known as miserable, you will never be in misery, you will be out of it.
So a sannyasin is not one who is frustrated. A sannyasin is one who has known the world as frustrating. He is not frustrated, he is most at ease. There is nothing to frustrate him. Everything that happens, he knows it happens so. Even death is not an anguish to him, because death is a certainty.
Once you know the nature of this whirling wheel — of this world, of this so-called life, of this repetitive vicious circle — then you will become a silent and a blissful person. Now you do not hope, so there is no feeling of hopelessness. You are at ease, composed. The more you are at ease, the more you are composed. The more you are in the moment, the more you are non-wavering, standing still.
In this very moment, here and now, is all that is to be known and realized — moksha, God, the reality — in this moment. So in a way, spiritual seeking is not for something. It is not for some object. It is to know what is, and the knowing comes once you are in the moment. To be in the moment is the secret door, or you may say the open secret. To be in the moment is the open secret.
source – osho book “I am the Gate”