Emptiness

You are so addicted and you have become so habituated that you cannot allow the cup to be empty even for a single moment. The moment you see emptiness anywhere you start filling it. You are so scared of emptiness, you are so afraid.: emptiness appears like death. You will fill it with anything, but you will fill it.

Those who are on the periphery exist in agony. For them, no ecstasy. For those who have come to their center no agony exists. For them, only ecstasy. When I say break the cup it is breaking the periphery. And when I say be totally empty it is coming back to the original source, because through emptiness we are born, and into emptiness we return. Emptiness is the word, really, which is better to use than God, because with God we start feeling there is some person. So Buddha never used `God` he always used sunyata -- emptiness, nothingness. In the center you are a nonbeing, nothingness, just a vast space, eternally cool, silent, blissful.

In the Lotus Sutra, it is said everything is emptiness -- this world is empty, hell is empty, heaven is empty, God is empty, everything is emptiness. Emptiness is the nature of all things, nothingness, so be attuned to nothingness and you will achieve.

A deep inner emptiness is needed; that inner emptiness becomes the womb. So I`m not saying stop doing, stop action; I`m not saying that. I am saying that whatsoever you are doing, let it be just an outside activity. Inside become feminine, silent, doors opened, empty, waiting.

My whole effort is to help you to disappear. My whole effort is to help you to be so empty: anatta -- non-being. Because if you are, you will remain in trouble. If you are, you will remain limited. If you are, there will be a definition to your being -- and you will never be overflowing. Only emptiness can be overflowing, only emptiness can be at ease. Only emptiness can be life abundant. To be, the way passes through non-being. If you really want to be, you will have to drop all concepts of your being. You will have to disappear, by and by. You will have to melt into nothingness.

When all the faces have been rejected and emptiness is left, you have found the original face. Emptiness is the original face. Zero is the ultimate experience. Nothingness -- or more accurately NO-THINGNESS -- is your original face.

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.


A negative emptiness means you are feeling a failure, not understanding. You have tried to achieve something in the world and you have not achieved it. You feel empty because the thing you desired you couldn`t get; the woman you wanted you couldn`t get -- you feel empty. The man you were after escaped -- you feel empty. The success that was in your dreams could not happen -- you feel empty. This emptiness is negative. This is a sadness, a depression, a frustrated state of mind. If you are feeling empty that way, remember, flowers will not shower on you. Your emptiness is not real, not positive. You are still after things, that`s why you are feeling empty. You are still after the ego; you wanted to be somebody and could not. It is a failure, not an understanding.

Remember, a sublime emptiness is a positive phenomenon. One is not a failure, one simply looks at the thing and understands that dreams cannot be fulfilled. And then one never feels sad, one feels happy that one has come to this understanding that dreams cannot be fulfilled. One never feels depressed, hopeless, one feels simply happy and blissful because one has come to an understanding: Now I will not try the impossible, now I will not try the futile. And one NEVER says that the object of desire is wrong; when you are in positive sublime emptiness, you say desire is wrong, not the object of desire -- this is the difference. In negative emptiness you say the object of desire is wrong, so change the object! If it is wealth, money, power -- drop it! Make the object God, liberation, heaven -- change the object! If emptiness is perfect and sublime and positive you don`t see the object as wrong, you simply see that desire is futile; objects are okay, but desire is futile. Then you don`t change your desire from on object to another object, you simply drop the desire itself. Nondesiring, you flower. Desiring, you become more and more paralyzed and dead.

Once you know it, you move as a nonbeing. Nobody can make you angry, nobody can make you happy, unhappy, miserable. No! In that emptiness all dualities dissolve: happy, unhappy, miserable, blissful -- all dissolve. This is buddhahood. This is what happened under the bodhi tree to Gautam Siddhartha. He reached emptiness. Then everything is silent. You have gone beyond opposites. A master is to help you to go to your inner emptiness, the inner silence, the inner temple.

There are only two types of people in the world: those who try to stuff their inner emptiness, and those very rare precious beings who try to see the inner emptiness. Those who try to stuff it remain empty, frustrated. They go on collecting garbage, their whole life is futile and fruitless. Only the other kind, the very precious people who try to look into their inner emptiness without any desire to stuff it, become meditators. Meditation is looking into your emptiness, welcoming it, enjoying it, being one with it, with no desire to fill it -- there is no need, because it is already full. It looks empty because you don`t have the right way of seeing it. You see it through the mind; that is the wrong way. If you put the mind aside and look into your emptiness, it has tremendous beauty, it is divine, it is overflowing with joy. Nothing else is needed.

Source: http://oshoba.org/osho_quotes.php?qton=Emptiness