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asleep," said Paddy. "I was up half the night."
"What was the trouble?" pursued Mick.
"It was the cat," replied Paddy. "I had to sit up till midnight waiting for her to come in so I could put her out for the night."
Reformation, revolution, rebellion -- we have to take these words out of the hands of those people who have destroyed their beauty and their meaning.
Question 3
BELOVED OSHO,
GROWTH IS MY PASSION, TRANSFORMATION MY FIRST LOVE. BECAUSE I HOLD THE BELIEF THAT GROWTH COMES THROUGH HARD WORK, STRUGGLE, AND AGONY, I AM HAPPIEST WHEN I AM IN PAIN, WHICH I INTERPRET AS BEING USEFUL FOR MY GROWTH. I KEEP THIS BELIEF, BECAUSE MY EXPERIENCE IS THAT MANY TIMES AFTER DEEP SUFFERING, A BREAKTHROUGH HAPPENS FOR ME. WOULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN THE SUFFERING I FEEL AS A SEEKER AND HOW IT DIFFERS FROM MY OLD NEUROTIC MISERY?
Avirbhava, I think you have a certain point of significance: misery can certainly be different from suffering -- it may not be, but there is a possibility of its being different. Misery is a state of mind when the night is dark and you don't have even a hope of any dawn. When all hopes die, you shrink within yourself.
You want to die, but you cannot die either. You cannot live, you cannot die; you are crushed between the two. This kind of misery does not help growth; on the contrary, it destroys all the possibilities of growth. The night becomes longer and longer, and the dawn goes on receding farther and farther. Instead of having a breakthrough, you can only have a breakdown.
But there are states of mind when you are in suffering; misery is absolutely negative, suffering has a positive side to it. Suffering means you have a longing, a hope, and you are not finding a way. You are searching, but you are failing again and again. You are trying your best to come out of it -- you are struggling with your suffering, you have not accepted it as your fate. Then there is a possibility that the night will end -- a new dawn, a new beginning, a new consciousness.
The difference is in whether you have accepted your suffering as your fate -- "this is all life is" -- then it is misery. If you
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