ONLY BLISS MAKES A PERSON COMPASSIONATE

ONLY BLISS MAKES A PERSON COMPASSIONATE...
I don't talk about compassion at all, but I teach bliss, and compassion comes as a shadow….
( A Sannyas Initiation )

“Anand means bliss, rahimo means compassion -- a blissful compassion. Bliss is spontaneously compassionate. Suffering is never compassionate. The man who suffers is always angry with life. The man who suffers would like everybody to suffer. He has a grudge against life. He cannot feel compassion.

Usually people think just the reverse: they think that if a man has suffered he will feel compassion for others' suffering. That is not so. 

The man who has suffered becomes hard, insensitive; he cannot feel compassion. That you can see everywhere in a country like India: people have lived in poverty so long, they have suffered so much that they have become oblivious of poverty. 

A beggar may be dying on the road -- nobody feels anything for the beggar. If suffering made people compassionate then India would be the most compassionate country. It is not?

Suffering has made people hard, suffering has dulled their sensitivity, suffering has made them thick. Just to protect themselves they had to become hard: they have grown a hard crust around their hearts. If they continuously feel for everybody who is suffering it will be impossible to live. Suffering is all over the place. 

They have invented beautiful theories to protect themselves: if somebody is suffering he is suffering because of his past karma. It has nothing to do with the person who is suffering but it gives a good explanation to the person who wants to avoid compassion. 

This theory is just a protection, otherwise you will have to be compassionate; and if you are not compassionate you will feel guilty and that will be heavy on you. People have lived in poverty, starvation, suffering, for so long that others have to invent theories to console themselves, to defend themselves. They have to create an armor, a psychological armor.

My own observation is that only bliss makes a person compassionate. If he has known joy he will feel compassion for those who are in suffering. 

If he has not known any joy he accepts suffering as life. Why should he feel compassion? There is no reason. He has suffered, everybody suffers -- life is suffering -- and because he has not tasted anything contrary to it he cannot feel it.

The East has talked about religion for so long but has no compassion. The West is not so religious, not at all, but more compassion is arising, and the reason is: the West has tasted something of the joys of life.

They are not much, they are only on the circumference, but still some pleasure on the circumference has been tasted. 

Suddenly, when a person comes from the West to the East and sees poverty and starvation, he feels aghast; it is inconceivable to him. He cannot believe his eyes -- how people are tolerating this and why nobody is doing anything to change it. This is only because on the circumference the West has attained a little affluence, a little better standard of life.

When one comes to know the innermost joy, when one knows something of God, something of love, something of meditation -- when one has flown high or has tasted something of the deepest in one's consciousness -- then a great compassion arises. 

One would like to share all that one has; one would like to pour one's whole being. One would like the whole existence to become enlightened. One would like everybody to dance and sing and celebrate. But that happens only when you have come to know something.

So I make bliss a prerequisite of being compassionate. I don't teach compassion to people. I teach bliss. Compassion comes of its own accord. 

Many people come to me and they ask why I am teaching you to meditate and dance and sing when people are in suffering. I should teach people to serve, to be compassionate, to do something. But I know that is not the right way. 

Unless they have tasted something of joy they will never feel compassionate. And if they are convinced logically, rationally, to feel compassion, their compassion will be a kind of obligation to the people and they will feel very egoistic about it. They will go on an ego trip, and when you are on an ego trip it is not compassion -- it is destruction.

So I don't teach compassion at all, I don't talk about compassion at all, but I teach bliss, and compassion comes as a shadow. And when compassion comes as a shadow it has a beauty. Then you don't oblige anybody; you don't become a great public servant. Then you are not on an ego trip for humanity's salvation. Then all that is nonsense. 

You simply do whatsoever you can do because you enjoy doing it, because it is your sheer joy that wants to be shared; it has nothing to do with the other. You don't want even a thank you from the other; you don't wait for him to feel grateful to you. 

And when you can be loving and compassionate without obliging the other, then compassion is really beautiful -- a benediction to you and to others too.”

OSHO
God's Got a Thing About you
Chapter 12 - None (12 September 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium)