PAIN & PLEASURE

UNDERSTANDING SADNESS & HAPPINESS

    Do things with your whole heart, with as much intensity as
you are capable of.
    Anything done halfheartedly never brings joy to life. It only
brings misery, anxiety, torture, and tension, because whenever
you do anything halfheartedly you are dividing yourself into two
parts, and that is one of the greatest calamities that has happened
to human beings--they are all split. The misery in the world is
not surprising; it is a natural outcome of living halfheartedly,
doing everything only with one part of our being while the other
part is resisting, opposing, righting.
    And whatever you do with half of your being is going to bring
you repentance, misery, and a feeling that perhaps the other part
that was not participating was right--because following this part,
you have attained nothing but a miserable state. But I say to you:
If you had followed the other part, the result would have been the
same. It is not a question of which part you follow, it is a question
of whether you go totally into it or not. To be total in your action
brings joy. Even an ordinary, trivial action done with total inten-
sity brings a glow to your being, a fulfillment, a fullness, a deep
contentment. And anything done halfheartedly, however good the
thing may be, is going to bring misery.
    Misery does not come from your actions, neither does joy come
from your actions. Joy comes when you are total. It does not mat-
ter what action you are involved in, misery is the outcome when
you are partial. And living a halfhearted life is creating a hell for
yourself every moment--and this hell goes on becoming bigger
and bigger.
    People ask, is there a hell somewhere, or is there a heaven
somewhere?--because all the religions have been talking about
hell and heaven as if they are part of the geography of the uni-
verse. They are not geographical phenomena, they are in your
psychology.
    When your mind, when your heart, when your being is pulled
in two directions simultaneously, you are creating hell. And when
you are total, one, an organic unity ... in that very organic unity,
the flowers of heaven start blossoming in you.
    People have remained concerned about their acts: Which act is
right and which act is wrong? What is good and what is evil? My
own understanding is that it is not a question of any particular
act. The question is about your psychology.
    When you are total, it is good; and when you are divided,
it is evil. Divided you suffer; united, you dance, you sing, you
celebrate.
Life consists of extremes. Life is a tension between the oppo-
sites. To be exactly in the middle forever means to be dead. The
middle is only a theoretical possibility; only once in a while are
you in the middle, as a passing phase. It is like walking on a
tightrope; you can never be exactly in the middle for any length of
time. If you try, you will fall.
    To be in the middle is not a static state, it is a dynamic phe-
nomenon. Balance is not a noun, it is a verb; it is balancing. The
tightrope-walker continuously moves from the left to the right,
from the right to the left. When he feels now he has moved too
much to one side and there is a danger of falling, he immediately
balances himself by moving to the opposite side. In passing from
the left to the right, yes, there is a moment when the tightrope-
walker is in the middle. And again, when he has moved too much
to the right and there is a fear of falling, he is losing balance, he
starts moving to the left and again passes through the middle for a
moment.
    This is what I mean when I say balance is not a noun but a
verb--it is balancing, it is a dynamic process. You cannot just be
in the middle. You can go on moving from left to right and right to
left; this is the only way to remain in the middle.
    Don't avoid the extremes, and don't choose any one extreme.
Remain available to both the polarities--that is the art, the secret
of balancing. Yes, sometimes be utterly happy, and sometimes be
utterly sad--both have their own beauties.
    The mind is a chooser; that's why the problem arises. Remain
choiceless. Whatever happens, and wherever you are--right or
left, in the middle or not in the middle--enjoy the moment in its
totality. While happy, dance, sing, play music--be happy! And
when sadness comes--which is bound to come, which has to come,
which is inevitable, you cannot avoid it ... If you try to avoid it
you will have to destroy the very possibility of happiness. The day
cannot exist without the night, and the summer cannot exist with-
out the winter. Life cannot be without death. Let this polarity sink
deep in your being--there is no way to avoid it. The only way is to
become more and more dead; only a dead person can exist in a
static middle. The alive person will be constantly moving--from
anger to compassion, from compassion to anger--and accepting
both, not identified with either but remaining aloof and yet in-
volved, distant yet committed. The alive person enjoys and yet re-
mains like a lotus flower--in the water, yet the water cannot
touch it.
     Your very effort to be in the middle, and to be in the middle
forever and always, is creating unnecessary anxiety for you. In
fact, a desire to be in the middle forever is another extreme--the
worst kind of extreme, because it is the impossible kind. It cannot
be fulfilled. Just think of an old-fashioned clock: If you hold the
pendulum exactly in the middle, the clock will stop. The clock
works only because the pendulum goes on moving from the left
to the right, from the right to the left. Yes, each time it passes
through the middle, and there is a moment of that middle-ness,
but only a moment.
    And it is beautiful! When you pass from happiness to sadness,
from sadness to happiness, there is a moment of utter silence, ex-
actly in the middle--enjoy that too.
    Life has to be lived in all its dimensions, only then is life
rich. The leftist is poor, the rightist is poor, and the middlist is
dead! When you are alive you are neither rightist nor leftist nor
middlist--you are a constant movement, a flow.
    Why do we want to be in the middle in the first place? We are
afraid of the dark side of life; we don't want to be sad, we don't
want to be in a state of agony. But that is possible only if you are
also ready to drop the possibility of being in ecstasy. There are a
few who have chosen it--that is the way of the monk. For cen-
turies that has been the way of the monk, ready to sacrifice all pos-
sibilities of ecstasy just to avoid agony. He is ready to destroy all
the roses just to avoid the thorns. But then his life is just flat . . .
a long, long boredom, stale, stagnant. He does not really live. He is
afraid to live.
    Life contains both; it brings great pain, and it also brings great
pleasure. Pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin. If you
exclude one, you have to exclude the other, too. This has been one
of the most fundamental misunderstandings down the ages, that
you can get rid of pain and save pleasure, that you can avoid hell
and have heaven, that you can avoid the negative and can have
only the positive. This is a great fallacy. It is not possible in the
very nature of things. The positive and negative are together, in-
evitably together, indivisibly together. They are two aspects of the
same energy. We have to accept both.
    Include all, be all. When you are on the left, don't miss
anything--enjoy it! Being on the left has its own beauty, a beauty
you will not find when you are on the right. It will be a different
scene. And, yes, to be in the middle has a silence, a peace, and you
will not find it on any extreme. So enjoy all of it. Go on enriching
your life.
    Can't you see any beauty in sadness? Meditate over it. Next
time, when you are sad don't fight with it. Don't waste time in
fighting--accept it, welcome it, let it be a welcome guest. Look
deep into it with love, care ... be a real host! And you will be
surprised--you will be surprised beyond your comprehension--
sadness has a few beauties that happiness can never have. Sadness
has depth, and happiness is shallow. Sadness has tears, and tears
go deeper than any laughter can ever go. Sadness has a silence of
its own, a melody, which happiness can never have. Happiness
will have its own song but more noisy, not so silent.
    I am not saying to choose sadness. I am just saying, enjoy it
too. When you are happy, enjoy happiness. Swim on the surface,
and sometimes dive deep into the river. It is the same river! On the
surface is the play of ripples and waves, and the sun rays and the
wind--it has its own beauty. Diving deep into the water has its
own quality, its own adventure, its own dangers.
    And don't become attached to anything. There are people who
have become attached to sadness, too--psychologists know about
them, they are called masochists. They go on creating situations in
which they can remain miserable forever. Misery is the only thing
they enjoy, they are afraid of happiness. In misery they are at
home. Many masochists become religious, because religion pro-
vides a great protection for the masochist's mind. Religion gives a
beautiful rationalization for being a masochist.
    Just being a masochist without being religious, you will feel
condemned and you will feel ill, ill at ease, and you will know that
you are abnormal. You will feel guilty about what you are doing to
your life, and you will try to hide it. But if a masochist becomes re-
ligious he can exhibit his masochism with great pride, because
now it is no longer masochism--it is asceticism, it is austerity.
It is "self-discipline," not torture. Only the labels have been
changed--now nobody can call the person abnormal, he is a saint!
Nobody can call him pathological; he is pious, holy. Masochists
have always moved toward religion, it has a great attraction for
them. In fact, so many masochists down the ages have moved
toward religion--and it was natural, that movement--that ulti-
mately religion grew to be dominated by masochists. That's why so
much of religion insists on being life-negative, life-destructive. It
is not for life, it is not for love, it is not for joy--it goes on insist-
ing that life is misery. By saying that life is misery, it rationalizes
its own clinging to misery.
    I have heard a beautiful story--I don't know how far it is cor-
rect, I cannot vouch for it.
    In paradise one afternoon, in its most famous cafe, Lao Tzu,
Confucius, and Buddha are sitting and chatting. The waiter comes
with a tray that holds three glasses of the juice called "Life," and
offers them. Buddha immediately closes his eyes and refuses; he
says, "Life is misery."
    Confucius closes his eyes halfway--he is a middlist, he used to
preach the golden mean--and asks the waiter to give him the
glass. He would like to have a sip--but just a sip, because without
tasting how can one say whether life is misery or not? Confucius
had a scientific mind; he was not much of a mystic, he had a very
pragmatic, earthbound mind. He was the first behaviorist the
world has known, very logical. And it seems perfectly right--he
says, "First I will have a sip, and then I will say what I think."
He takes a sip and he says, "Buddha is right--life is misery."
    Lao Tzu takes all the three glasses and he says, "Unless one
drinks totally, how can one say anything?" He drinks all the three
glasses and starts dancing!
    Buddha and Confucius ask him, "Are you not going to say any-
thing?" And Lao Tzu says, "This is what I am saying--my dance
and my song are speaking for me." Unless you taste totally, you
cannot say. And when you taste totally, you still cannot say be-
cause what you know is such that no words are adequate.
    Buddha is on one extreme, Confucius is in the middle. Lao Tzu
has drunk all the three glasses--the one that was brought for Bud-
dha, the one that was brought for Confucius, and the one that was
brought for him. He has drunk them all; he has lived life in its
three-dimensionality.
    My own approach is that of Lao Tzu. Live life in all possible
ways; don't choose one thing against the other, and don't try to be
in the middle. Don't try to balance yourself--balance is not some-
thing that can be cultivated. Balance is something that comes out
of experiencing all the dimensions of life. Balance is something
that happens; it is not something that can be brought about through
your efforts. If you bring it through your efforts it will be false,
forced. And you will remain tense, you will not be relaxed, be-
cause how can a person who is trying to remain balanced in the
middle be relaxed? You will always be afraid that if you relax you
may start moving to the left or to the right. You are bound to re-
main uptight, and to be uptight is to miss the whole opportunity,
the whole gift of life.
    Don't be uptight. Don't live life according to principles. Live
life in its totality, drink life in its totality! Yes, sometimes it tastes
bitter--so what? That taste of bitterness will make you capable of
tasting its sweetness. You will be able to appreciate the sweetness
only if you have tasted its bitterness. One who knows not how to
cry will not know how to laugh, either. One who cannot enjoy a
deep laughter, a belly laugh, that person's tears will be crocodile
tears. They cannot be true, they cannot be authentic.
    I don't teach the middle way, I teach the total way. Then a bal-
ance comes of its own accord, and then that balance has tremen-
dous beauty and grace. You have not forced it, it has simply come.
By moving gracefully to the left, to the right, in the middle, slowly
a balance comes to you because you remain so unidentified. When
sadness comes, you know it will pass, and when happiness comes
you know that will pass, too. Nothing remains; everything passes
by. The only thing that always abides is your witnessing. That wit-
nessing brings balance. That witnessing is balance.


				*PAIN & PLEASURE*