Mês: março 2020
Frustration
So what! You must be responsible for it. If you don’t want to feel frustrated then there is no need. You must be creating it. Nobody else is responsible; if you feel frustrated, you must be reaping the crop which you go on sowing.
But you don’t see the relationship. If you expect too much, you will be frustrated. If you don’t want to be frustrated, don’t expect. Live without expectations and there will be no frustration.
But people go on expecting; they know no ends to their expectation. Then frustration comes in — frustration is the shadow of expectation. Frustration is never the problem, the problem is with expectation.
When you feel frustrated you think that existence is doing something wrong to you. No — you were asking too much. In fact, ask and you will be frustrated. Any asking is asking too much. Don’t ask, be. And then you will be surprised — whatsoever happens is good; you have no way to judge it. Don’t expect, and you see your whole life becomes a joy.
Expect, and your whole life becomes a hell. Expectation is the cause. If you want to change, never start by the effect, start by the cause. Frustration is the effect. You can go on fighting with frustration — nothing will happen, you will become more and more frustrated. Start by the cause, always look for the cause. Whenever you are feeling miserable, go into it and find out where the cause is. and then it is up to you. If you want to drop the effect then avoid the cause; then become aware, more and more aware.
If you are enjoying frustration… because there are many people who enjoy. There are many people who enjoy being miserable. In fact, they cannot tolerate happiness at all. When they are miserable they are happy, when they are happy they feel very miserable. You laugh at it, but this is a truth about the majority of people.
And again, there are reasons. Whenever you are miserable you gain something: sympathy, attention. Whenever you are happy nobody shows any sympathy — in fact,people become jealous. when you are unhappy everybody is a friend, everybody sympathizes with you — even your enemy will sympathize with you. When you are happy even your friend will become jealous and inimical. When you are happy nobody pays any attention to you. People avoid you. In fact, they start thinking you must be mad: Happy? — who has ever heard of anybody being happy?… must have gone crazy or something, or must be pretending. When you are unhappy they accept you. Then they think everything is okay, because this is how things have to be. And people enjoy your unhappiness, that’s why they pay attention — because whenever you are unhappy they can compare themselves, and deep down they can feel good — “So I am in a better position. People are so unhappy! — at least I am not that much unhappy. I am unhappy, but not so much.” He can compare.
OSHO
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10
How I became a madman
You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,–the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,–I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.
And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”
Thus I became a madman.
And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.
– Khalil Gibran , Book: The Madman