Sadness as a Meditation

by Osho    

Sadness can become a very enriching experience. You have to work on it. It is easy to escape from your sadness �?and all relationships ordinarily are escapes; one simply goes on avoiding it. And it is always there underneath... the current continues. Even in relationship it erupts many times. Then one tends to throw the responsibility on the other, but it is not the real thing. It is your loneliness, your own sadness. You have not settled with it yet, so it will erupt again and again.

You can escape in work. You can escape in some occupation, in relationship and society, this and that, in traveling, but it is not going to go way, because it is part of your being.

Every man is born alone �?in the world, but alone; comes through the parents, but alone. And every man dies alone, again moves out of the world alone. And between these two lonelinesses we go on deceiving and fooling ourselves. It is good to take courage and enter into this loneliness. However hard and difficult it may look in the beginning, it pays tremendously. Once you settle with it, once you start enjoying it, once you feel it not as sadness but as silence, once you understand that there is no way to escape, you relax.

Nothing can be done about it, so why not enjoy it? Why not go into it deeply and have a taste of it, see what it is? Why be unnecessarily afraid? If it is going to be there and it is a fact �?existential, not accidental �?then why not come to terms with it? Why not move into it and see what it is?

Whenever you feel sad, sit silently and allow sadness to come; don’t try to escape from it. Make yourself as sad as you can. Don’t avoid it �?that’s the one thing to remember. Cry, weep... have the whole taste of it. Cry to death... fall down on the earth... roll �?and let it go by itself. Don't force it to go; it will go, because nobody can remain in a permanent mood.

When it goes you will be unburdened, absolutely unburdened, as if the whole gravitation has disappeared and you can fly, weightless. That is the moment to enter yourself. First bring sadness. The ordinary tendency is not to allow it, to find some ways and means so that you can look somewhere else �?to go to the restaurant, to the swimming pool, meet friends, read a book or go to a movie, play a guitar �?to do something, so that you can be engaged and you can put your attention somewhere else.

This is to be remembered �?when you are feeling sad, don’t lose the opportunity. Close the doors, sit down, and feel as sad as you can, as if the whole world is just a hell. Go deep into it... sink into it. Allow every sad thought to penetrate you, every sad emotion to stir you. And cry and weep and say things �?say them loudly, there is nothing to worry about.

So first live sadness for a few days, and the moment that momentum of sadness goes, you will feel very calm, peaceful �?as one feels after a storm. In that moment sit silently and enjoy the silence that is coming on its own. You have not brought it; you were bringing sadness. When sadness goes, in the wake, silence settles.

Listen to that silence. Close your eyes. Feel it... feel the very texture of it... the fragrance. And if you feel happy, sing, dance.