Osho : Kill out Desire of Life. Life’s laws are very paradoxical. If you desire life, you will miss it. That is the surest way to miss it. If you desire life, you will miss it; but if you don’t desire it, abundant life will happen to you. Through desire, you move against life. It looks paradoxical. It is. This paradoxical law has to be understood deeply.
Why is it that when you desire life you miss it? Why? It should not be so. Logically, mathematically, it should not be so. If someone desires life, why should he miss it? The mechanism is such that when you desire, you have again moved into the future. And life is here! Life is already the case – how can you desire it? Only that which is not can be desired.
And life is. How can you desire it? It already is; it is already happening. You are life. If you desire life, you will miss it. Through desire, you are moving away from life. Every desire leads you further and further away. That’s why there is so much insistence on desirelessness. It is not that Buddha or all those who talk about desirelessness are against life. Really, on the contrary, they are for life. But they say, ”Don’t desire,” and to us U looks as though they are against life, life-negative. They are not.
We are missing life through desire. That is why Buddha says, ”Don’t desire.” What happens if you don’t desire? Life will happen to you. It is already happening, but you cannot look at it because your eyes are fixed on the future. You are somewhere else; your mind is not here. Life is here and you are not here, so the meeting has become impossible. Then you will hanker for life, you will desire life, but you will go on missing it.
Allow life to happen to you. How can that be done? By being attentive here. By not being desirous of being somewhere else. The moment you start desiring life, you become afraid of death. It is bound to be so, because the desire for life creates the fear of death. There is no death. In reality, nothing dies; nothing can. It is impossible. Death never happens; death is not. Then why do we feel death so much, and why are we so afraid of it? Why are we afraid of something that is not?
We are afraid of death because of our desire for life. The desire for life creates a counter fear: the fear of death. We don’t know life, but we desire life. Then the fear comes in that life is going to be destroyed. We see death happening… someone dies. Have you ever observed the fact that it is always someone else who dies, never you? It is always someone else. You see death from the outside; you have not seen it from the inside.
You see someone dying but you don’t know what is happening to him in his innermost core. You just know what is happening on the periphery. The periphery has gone dead; it is no longer alive, the man cannot breathe. But what has happened in the core, in the very being, in the center? You don’t know.
No one has witnessed death. And no one can, because there is only one way to witness it: if you move to your own innermost core and witness it there. But death never happens there. That is why a Buddha laughs at death, a Krishna laughs. Krishna says to Arjuna in the Gita, ”Don’t be afraid. Don’t think that anyone is going to die.” No one dies; you cannot kill anyone. It is impossible. In this world, nothing can be destroyed, not even a micro-organism can be destroyed. Destruction is not possible. Only change is possible.
Life goes on moving. One wave dies (appears to die) and then arises as another wave. Only forms disappear and new forms appear, but nothing dies and nothing is born. If nothing dies then nothing is born, because death is possible only if something is born. Birth and death are two fallacies. You existed before your birth – otherwise birth would not have been possible
– and you will exist after your death – otherwise it would not be possible for you to be here and now. But the desire to cling to life creates the fear of death.
If you stop desiring life, the fear of death immediately disappears. And when the fear of death disappears, you can know what life is. A mind that is trembling with fear and anguish cannot know. Knowing needs a very calm, unafraid, fearless consciousness.
Desire for life means fear of death. The sutra says KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE so that the fear of death disappears. And when there is no death, and no clinging to life, you will know what life is, because it has already happened to you. You are it! It is not something extrinsic; it is something intrinsic. It is happening already. You are breathing in it. You are just like a fish in the ocean of life, but you are not aware of it because your attention is obsessed with the future. Desire means obsession with the future. No desire means living here and now.