Osho – We don’t live in existence, we live in desires. Really, we don’t live in the world at all, we live in desires. Our life is not here and now, it is always somewhere else where the desire is arrowed. It may be anywhere, but it is never here. Never here, because desire needs time – desire cannot be here.
Can you desire anything in the present moment? The moment you desire, you desire for the future; you cannot desire here and now. Here and now there is no desire, there is no possibility of desiring. Desire needs space – that space is time.
Desire needs some point somewhere else from here – only then can desire exist. It exists as a bridge: a bridge needs two banks, a bridge cannot exist only on THIS bank. How can the bridge exist? There must be the other; the other bank must be there. Only then does the bridge become possible. Desire is creating a bridge from here to there.
And the moment you have gone there and lost this moment, you will live always in an inner tension, inner anguish. And really you will never be existential; you will always be in desires, in desires, in desires – always longing for the other shore. Even if you can get to the other shore, you will be again longing for the other shore. No shore can be the fulfillment – desire is self-frustrating. We are nothing but desires. Can you find anything in you which is not a desire? Even when you are praying, it is desire; even when you are meditating, it is a desire; even when you are thinking of the divine, it is a desire. We convert everything into desire. This is the disease, that we cannot conceive of anything without desire.
Buddha used to say, ”There is no God.” And he was himself one of the most existential proofs of the divine. He was the perfect argument for the divine; his presence was divine. And he used to say there was no God. One day, Sariputta asked him, ”Why do you continue to say there is no God? – because we all feel that when you are, God is. It seems contradictory, a person like you denying God. It seems contradictory because you are the proof, you are enough! We don’t require any argument, but why do you deny it?”
Buddha said, ”I deny it because I don’t like God being made an object of desire. If I say God is, you will begin to desire: ‘Then I must get, then I must reach.’ And God is something which you cannot desire, and by desiring cannot get.”
People would ask him, ”Is there existence beyond death?” And he would say, ”No, there is no existence beyond death.” Why? – simply because if there is existence beyond death, you will begin to desire it.
They would ask, ”Is there bliss? Is bliss possible?”
Buddha would say, ”No. There is only the cessation of misery, no bliss.”
He was one of the rarest geniuses to see the phenomenon of desiring, the tricks of desiring, and the cunningness of desiring. He would say, ”No, there is no bliss at all; only cessation of suffering.”
Why? – because if bliss is positively asserted, one begins to desire it.
We convert everything into desiring. We have a mechanism for converting and transforming anything. Put anything into it, and it become as desire. We can even desire desirelessness. I have come across people who come and say, ”How can I be desireless?” How to be desireless – they are asking for the supreme-most desire – how to be desireLESS! But we go on converting. This is the disease; really, this is the disease.
Look at the disease, look at the fact, and don’t ask the ”how.” Look at the fact: this is the fact. Live with the fact. Be aware of your mind’s mechanism, and how it transforms everything into desiring. In that moment of awareness, desiring stops. And when there is no desiring, you are just here – this very moment. That moment becomes the door to the infinite. That moment becomes the door to the divine – to nirvana.
Source – Osho Book “That Art Thou”