Meditation Is Paradise

“Paradise is nothing – paradise is a capacity to enjoy yourself right here and now.

“You are in paradise, but still you have lost it because you cannot enjoy here and now. You are thinking, planning for the future, somewhere when you become like gods, then you will enjoy it.

“Knowledge creates future. Knowledge creates desire. Knowledge creates becoming. Knowledge is sansar, the wheel. When you are in the wheel you go on round and round and round reaching nowhere.

“Knowledge is the world. When Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” he means the world of becoming. He does not mean this world of the trees and the birds singing and the rain falling, and the sky and the clouds, no – he does not mean by “this world,” this world that surrounds you. He means the world that surrounds your mind and your being, the world of becoming, desire – what Buddha calls tanha. The desire to be something other than you already are.

“And that is impossible. You are going to be in a constant hell. You can be only that which you are already, nothing else is possible. You are simply trying to do something impossible.

“You cannot be anything else. How can you be? A roseflower trying to become a lotus flower, a lotus flower trying to become something else…but they are not so stupid, they are still part of paradise. The rosebush just by your side is still in paradise but you are not. The child sitting by your side may be still in paradise but you are not. I am just here before you, am in paradise, but you are not. So paradise is not a question of geography, it is a question of inner space.”

Osho, Undone Tao, Talk #3

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