---
section: Library
booktitle: "Even Bein' Gawd Ain't A Bed of Roses"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "GAWD"
dategiven: "01 October 1979 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #1"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "7910015"
shorttitle: "GAWD01"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Even Bein' Gawd Ain't A Bed of Roses: Chapter #1"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
<!--This file is automatically generated. Do not edit!-->


OSHO (TO PIETER): Misery makes you more and more impotent, hollow, it is a kind of negative emptiness. One simply feels useless, meaningless; one does not live, but only vegetates. But that is the story of millions of people: they all live in misery, and to live in misery is to live in hell.


Hell is not somewhere else -- it depends on you. You can live in it right now or you can transcend it. It is our choice; but the choice is such that you cannot make it once for ever, you have to make it every moment. You cannot make it once and then go to sleep. You have to be alert, watchful, because each moment these two alternatives are present: to be miserable or to be blissful. And you become whatsoever you choose.


Choosing blissfulness brings strength, rootedness, centeredness, gives you an inner plentitude, a fullness. Not that misery disappears -- the world goes on living in misery, and you are in the world and you are surrounded by miserable people and they are all like dark clouds, not even a silver line in them -- but it no more touches you, it no more influences you. It no more has any impact on you. You remain in the world of misery and miserable people and yet you are above it.


Life can never be just a bed of roses. The roses come with thorns, because life is a duality. It is night and day, birth and death, summer and winter; it is happiness, unhappiness.


Remember, by being blissful I don't mean being happy. Happiness is another polarity of unhappiness. The happy person is bound to become unhappy sooner or later; the unhappy person will become happy again -- it is a vicious circle. It is like a wheel: you go on moving in the same circle again and again.


Blissfulness is a transcendence: seeing the duality of life, seeing the constant conflict of polarities in life, one becomes only a witness. The world remains the same but you are no more the same; you live in the same world but you are a totally different person. You are reborn.
That's exactly the definition of sannyas: a rebirth.


OSHO (TO MARY): Revolution is concerned with outer things: the economic structure of the society, the political structure, the state. Rebellion is inner: it is concerned with the state of consciousness. Revolution is political, rebellion is spiritual. And a true rebellion transforms you into divinity; it reveals your godhood to you. It makes you aware that you are not the body, nor the mind; that you are nothing but pure consciousness, that you are only a witness. Once this is experienced, realized, life becomes a play.


Misery comes: you witness it, you don't get identified with it. Happiness comes and you witness it. Sometimes it is cloudy, very cloudy, and sometimes very sunny -- but it is all the same to you because, as far as you are concerned, you remain rooted in your witnessing, which never changes. You remain immovable, unchanging.


Life is a flux: everything is changing, everything is in movement. In life there are no nouns, only verbs. There is only one noun and that is God. Everything else is a verb because nothing else is eternal. Everything is momentary: one moment it is there, the next moment it is gone.


Witnessing all, slowly slowly you are neither happy nor unhappy; that is bliss. You are neither cold nor hot; that is Buddhahood. You are neither man nor woman; that is God-realization.


And remember: even if you have realized God the world continues to be the same. Illness will happen to you, old age will come, and death too. But because now you have a different vision everything happens and yet nothing happens to you.


A Zen master was asked once, "Before you became enlightened you used to say that you were miserable. Now that you have become enlightened -- what is the state? In what state are you now?"


The master said, "I was miserable before enlightenment and I am miserable after enlightenment!"
The questioner was puzzled. He said, "Then what is the difference?"


The master laughed. He said, "The difference is that before I used to get identified with my misery; now I remain aloof, just a witness. The misery comes and goes, clouds gather and disperse -- it has nothing to do with me. Before it used to affect me, now it does not affect me at all. I am just a mirror, I only reflect. If it is sunny I reflect it: if it is cloudy I reflect it."


His answer is tremendously beautiful: "Before enlightenment I was miserable, and after enlightenment I am miserable." As far as the outer world is [illegible]


Even being God ain't a bed of roses, remember. Thorns are always there, but your vision changes. You look in a different way, your attitude is different, your approach is different, because you are different. You are on a different plane: a watcher on the hill, and in the valley the same world continues.


The same master was again asked the same question, by another inquirer, and he said the same thing: "I was miserable before my enlightenment and I am miserable after my enlightenment," but when he was asked to explain it further, he said something more, he added something more. He said, "Before, I was miserable for myself, now I am miserable for others." But that is a revolution. To be miserable for oneself is ugly; to be miserable for others is compassion, is beauty, is grace.


This is what I call divine rebellion: moving from identification to witnessing, moving from getting lost in things and the world, to a point where you are always alert, clear, transparent, unaffected, untouched. You become a lotus leaf in the pond: the water can touch it but cannot affect it; in fact it cannot even touch it. It can be as close as possible but the lotus leaf remains utterly untouched by it. It remains in the pond and yet beyond it. This transcendence is divine rebellion.


Sannyas is basically a movement towards such a rebellion, such a radical transformation.
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>