Just some quotes and excepts from others that have been helpful to me. Add your own if you like.
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Osho on making Mountains out of Molehills
Question: Why do I make mountains out of molehills?
Osho : Because the ego does not feel good, at ease, with molehills -- it wants mountains. Even if it is a misery, it should not be a molehill, it should be an Everest. Even if it is miserable, the ego doesn't want to be ordinarily miserable -- it wants to be extraordinarily miserable!
Bernard Shaw is reported to have said, 'If I am not going to be the first in heaven, I would like to go to hell...but I would like to be the first.' In Christianity there is only one hell and Bernard Shaw never knew that in India we have a concept of seven hells. If he had heard about Hindu hells he would have chosen the seventh, because in the fifth he would have felt humiliated, others are still far ahead of him in the seventh -- the real sinners, the great sinners, are in the seventh! Either this way or that -- but one wants to be the first. Hence one goes on making mountains out of molehills.
One woman hypochondriac died. The whole town felt relieved, the whole medical profession felt relieved, because she was a constant trouble to many people's heads, everywhere, all around. The family, the doctors, the physicians -- she had troubled everybody and nobody was of any help. And she relished the idea that nobody knew anything about the sort of disease she was suffering from -- it was an extraordinary disease. In fact there was no disease.
Then she died, and it was almost a celebration in the town. But when they opened the will, she had written in her will that her request had positively to be fulfilled. Her request was that a carved tombstone had to be put on her tomb with these words inscribed on it: Now will you believe I was sick? In this way she would haunt the whole town again.
People go on and on, creating big problems out of nothing. I have talked to thousands of people about their problems and I have not come across a real problem yet! All problems are bogus -- you create them. Because without problems you feel empty... then there is nothing to do, nothing to fight with, nowhere to go. People go from one guru to another, from one master to another, from one psychoanalyst to another, from one encounter group to another, because if they don't go, they feel empty, and they suddenly feel life to be meaningless. You create problems so that you can feel that life is a great work, a growth, and you have to struggle hard.
The ego can exist only when it struggles, remember -- when it fights. And if I tell you, 'Kill three flies and you will become enlightened, you will not believe me. You will say, 'Three flies? There doesn't seem to be much to that. And I will become enlightened? That doesn't seem to be likely. If I say you will have to kill seven hundred lions, of course that looks more like it!
The greater the problem, the greater the challenge -- and with challenge your ego arises, soars high. You create problems. Problems don't exist.
And now if you allow me, there are not even molehills. That too is your trick. You say, 'Yes, there may not be mountains, but molehills?' No, not even molehills are there -- those are your creations. First you create molehills out of nothing, then you create mountains out of molehills. And the priests and the psychoanalysts and the gurus, they are happy because their whole trade exists because of you. If you don't create molehills out of nothing and you don't make your molehills into mountains, what will be the point of gurus helping you? First you have to be in a shape to be helped.
The real masters have been saying something else. They have been saying, 'Please look what you are doing, what nonsense you are doing. First you create a problem, then you go in search of a solution. Just watch why you are creating the problem, just exactly in the beginning, when you are creating the problem, is the solution -- don't create it!' But that won't appeal to you because then you are suddenly thrown flat upon yourself. Nothing to do? No enlightenment? No satori? No samadhi? And you are deeply restless, empty, trying to stuff yourself with anything whatsoever. You don't have any problems -- only this much has to be understood. This very moment you can drop all problems
because they are your creations. Have another look at your problems: the deeper you look, the smaller they will appear. Go on looking at them and by and by they will start disappearing. Go on gazing and suddenly you will find there is emptiness -- a beautiful emptiness surrounds you. Nothing to do, nothing to be, because you are already that.
Enlightenment is not something to be achieved, it is just to be lived. When I say that I achieved enlightenment, I simply mean that I decided to live it. Enough is enough! And since then I have lived it. It is a decision that now you are not interested in creating problems -- that's all. It is a decision that now you are finished with all this nonsense of creating problems and finding solutions.
All this nonsense is a game you are playing with yourself: you yourself are hiding and you yourself are seeking, you are both the parties. And you know it! That's why when I say it you smile, you laugh. I am not talking about anything ridiculous -- you understand it. You are laughing at yourself. Just watch yourself laughing, just look at your own smile -- you understand it. It has to be so because it is your own game: you are hiding and waiting for yourself to be able to seek and find yourself.
You can find yourself right now because it is you that is hiding. That's why Zen masters go on hitting. Whenever somebody comes and says, 'l would like to be a Buddha, the master gets very angry. Because he is asking nonsense, he IS a Buddha. If Buddha comes to me and asks how to be a Buddha, what am I supposed to do? I will hit his head. 'Whom do you think you are befooling? You are a Buddha.'
Don't make unnecessary trouble for yourself. And understanding will dawn on you if you watch how you make a problem bigger and bigger and bigger, how you spin it, and how you help the wheel to move faster and faster and faster. Then suddenly you are at the top of your misery and you are in need of the whole world's sympathy.
One sannyasin, Marga, wrote me a letter. She said, 'Osho, I feel very sad because when you talk, you look at everyone except me.' Now, I am not looking at anybody, but I have got eyes, so they have to be somewhere. It is not that I am looking at somebody, I am not looking at anybody. And you can see in my eyes that they are empty, they are vacant. But if you are trying to find your reflection in them and you don't, great sadness comes to you.
Now there is a new problem. Now the ego feels hurt -- looking at everybody else except you! Just watch how you have made yourself an exception; extraordinary you have become. I look at everybody, the ordinary mass, except you. You have become unique. If I look at Marga -- which I am not going to do! Since I received her letter, I am never going to look at her -- if I look at her then the ego can have another trip: that I look only at her. Then that will create a problem!
You are a great problem-creator... just understand this and suddenly problems disappear. You are perfectly in shape; you are born perfect, that is the whole message. You are born perfect; perfection is your innermost nature. You have just to live it. Decide, and live it.
But if you are not yet fed up with the game you can continue, but don't ask why. You know. The why is simple: the ego cannot exist in emptiness, it needs something to fight with. Even a ghost of your imagination will do, but you need to fight with someone. The ego exists only in conflict, the ego is not an entity, it is a tension. Whenever there is a conflict, the tension arises and the ego exists;' when there is no conflict the tension disappears and the ego disappears. Ego is not a thing -- it is just a tension.
And of course nobody wants small tensions, everybody wants big tensions. If your own problems are not enough, you start thinking about humanity and the world and the future... socialism, communism, and all that rubbish. You start thinking about it as if the whole world depends on your advice. Then you think, 'What is going to happen in Israel? What is going to happen in Africa?' And you go on advising, and you create problems. People become very excited, they cannot sleep because there is some war going on.
They become very excited. Their own life is so ordinary that they will have to reach extraordinariness from some other source. The nation is in difficulty so they become identified with the nation. The culture is in difficulty, the society is in difficulty -- now there are big problems and you become identified. You are a Hindu and the Hindu culture is in difficulty; you are a Christian and the church is in difficulty. The whole world is at stake. Now you become big through your problem.
The ego needs some problems. If you understand this, in the very understanding the mountains become molehills again, and then the molehills also disappear. Suddenly there is emptiness, pure emptiness all around. This is what enlightenment is all about -- a deep understanding that there is no problem.
Then, with no problem to solve, what will you do? Immediately you start living. You will eat, you will sleep, you will love, you will have a chit-chat, you will sing, you will dance -- what else is there to do? You have become a God, you have started living.
If there is any God, one thing is certain: he will not have any problems. That much is certain. Then what is he doing with all his time? No problems, no psychiatrist to consult, no gurus to go and surrender to... what is God doing? What will he do? He must be getting crazy, whirling. No, he is living; his life is totally full with life. He is eating, sleeping, dancing, having a love affair -- but without any problems.
Start living this moment and you will see that the more you live, the less problems there are. Because now that your emptiness is flowering and living there is no need. When you don't live, the same energy goes sour. The same energy which would have become a flower, is stuck; not being allowed to bloom it becomes a thorn in the heart. It is the same energy.
Force a small child to sit in the corner and tell him to become completely immobile, unmoving. Watch what happens...just a few minutes before, he was perfectly at ease, flowing; now his face will become red because he will have to strain, hold himself. His whole body will become rigid and he will try to fidget here and there and he will want to jump out of himself. You have forced the energy -- now it has no purpose, no meaning, no space to move, nowhere to bloom and flower; it is stuck, frozen, rigid.
The child is suffering a short death, a temporary death. Now if you don't allow the child to run again and move around the garden and play, he will start creating problems, he will fantasize; in his mind he will Create problems and start fighting with those problems. He will see a big dog and he will get afraid, or he will see a ghost and he will have to fight and escape from him. Now he is creating problems. The same energy that was just a moment before flowing all around, in all directions, is stuck and becoming sour.
If people can dance a little more, sing a little more, be a little more crazy, their energy will be flowing more, and their problems will by and by disappear. Hence I insist so much on dance. Dance to orgasm; let the whole energy become dance, and suddenly you will see that you don't have any head -- the stuck energy in the head is moving all around, creating beautiful patterns, pictures, movement. And when you dance there comes a moment when your body is no longer a rigid thing, it becomes flexible, flowing. When you dance there comes a moment when your boundary is no longer so clear; you melt and merge with the cosmos, the boundaries are mixing.
Watch a dancer -- you will see that he has become an energy phenomenon, no longer in a fixed form, no longer in a frame. He is flowing out of his frame, out OT his form, and becoming more alive, more and more alive. But only if you dance yourself will you know what really happens. The head inside disappears; again you are a child. Then you don't create any problems.
Live, dance, eat, sleep, do things as totally as possible. And remember again and again: whenever you catch yourself creating any problem, slip out of it, immediately. Once you get into the problem then a solution will be needed. And even if you find a solution, out of that solution a thousand and one problems will arise again. Once you miss the first step you are in the trap. Whenever you see that now you are slipping into a problem, catch hold of yourself, run, jump, dance, but don't get into the problem. Do something immediately so that the energy that was creating the problems becomes fluid, unfrozen, melts, goes back to the cosmos.
Primitive people don't have many problems. I have come across primitive groups in India who say they don't dream at all. Freud would not be able to believe that it is possible. They don't dream, but if sometimes somebody dreams -- it is a rare phenomenon -- the whole village fasts, prays to God. Something has gone wrong, something wrong has happened... a man has dreamed.
It never happens in their tribe because they live so totally that nothing is left in the head to be completed in the sleep. Whatsoever you leave incomplete has to be completed in your dreams; whatsoever you have not lived remains as a hang-over and completes itself in the mind -- that's what a dream is. The whole day you go on thinking. The thinking simply shows that you have more energy than you use for living; you have more energy than your so-called life needs.
You are missing real life. Use more energy. Then fresh energies will be flowing. Just don't be a miser. Use them today; let today be complete unto itself; tomorrow will take care of itself, don't be worried about tomorrow. The worry, the problem, the anxiety, all simply show one thing: that you are not living rightly, that your life is not yet a celebration, a dance, a festivity. Hence all the problems.
If you live, ego disappears. Life knows no ego, it knows only living and living and living. Life knows no self, no center; life knows no separation. You breathe -- life enters into you; you exhale you enter into life. There is no separation. You eat, and trees enter into you through the fruit. Then one day you die, you are buried in the earth, and the trees suck you up and you become fruits. Your children will eat you again. You have been eating your ancestors -- the trees have converted them into fruits. You think you are a vegetarian? Don't be deceived by appearances. We are all cannibals.
Life is one, it goes on moving. It comes into you; it passes through you. In fact to say that it comes into you isn't right, because then it seems as if life comes into you, and then passes out of you. You don't exist -- only this life's coming and going does. You don't exist -- only life exists in its tremendous forms, in its energy, in its millions of delights. Once you understand this, let that understanding be the only law.
And start living as Buddhas from this very moment. If you decide otherwise, it is for you to decide -- but as I see it, it is a decision: 'I am not going to befool myself anymore. Now I start living as a Buddha, in emptiness. I will not try to find unnecessary occupations. I dissolve.'
Source: from book “Ancient music in the pines“ by Osho
