Osho - 20 Difficult Things to Accomplish in this World: lifes challenges according to Buddha

The Buddha said:
There are twenty difficult things to attain or accomplish in this world:
1. It is difficult for the poor to practice charity.
2. It is difficult for the strong and rich to observe the Way.
3. It is difficult to disregard life and go to certain death.
4. It is only a favored few that get acquainted with a Buddhist sutra.
5. It is by rare opportunity that a person is born in the age of a buddha.
6. It is difficult to conquer the passions, to suppress selfish desires.
7. It is difficult not to hanker after that which is agreeable.
8. It is difficult not to get into a passion when slighted.
9. It is difficult not to abuse ones authority.
10. It is difficult to be even-minded and simple-hearted in all ones dealingswith others.
11. It is difficult to be thorough in learning and exhaustive in investigation.
12. It is difficult to subdue selfish pride.
13. It is difficult not to feel contempt toward the unlearned.
14. It is difficult to be one in knowledge and practice.
15. It is difficult not to express an opinion about others.
16. It is by rare opportunity that one is introduced to a true spiritualteacher.
17. It is difficult to gain an insight into the nature of being, and topractice the Way.
18. It is difficult to follow the steps of a savior.
19. It is difficult to be always the master of oneself.
20. It is difficult to understand thoroughly the ways of Buddha.

Life is not a bed of roses. It is difficult, it is complex. It isvery rare to be alive in the true sense of the word. To be born is one thing,to be alive quite another. To be born is to be just biologically here, to bealive is a totally different dimension the dimension of spirituality.

Unless a man is spiritual he is not alive yet. But to move fromthe biological realm to the spiritual realm is very difficult, arduous. It isthe greatest challenge there is. It is the greatest quantum leap: from the bodyto the soul, from the material to the immaterial, from the visible to theinvisible, from time to timelessness, from out to in. It is arduous.

In this sutra Buddha says there are twenty difficult things.These twenty difficult things can become twenty steps of the challenge. Thesetwenty difficult things are not to make you beware of them; these twentydifficult things Buddha is talking about not to avoid them it is aninvitation, it is a challenge.

These twenty Himalayan peaks are just a challenge for you, agreat invitation. Dont remain in the valley. The valley is very secure,convenient, comfortable. You will live comfortably, you will die comfortably.But you will not grow. You will only grow old, but you will not grow.

Growth happens only when you are accepting a challenge. Growthhappens only when you start living dangerously. These twenty things areindicative of how one should live.

There is only one way to live and that is to live dangerously,courageously. You rightly become a human being only when you have accepted thischallenge of the Buddha.

We will go into these twenty things. They look small on thesurface, but Buddha cannot talk about small things. You will have to go intothe depth of these small things, and then you will see they are reallydifficult.

Before we enter this sutra, I would like to tell you one thing:that the search for truth is the search for the impossible. Religion itself isnothing but a passion for the impossible. But the beauty is that impossiblehappens, that impossible also becomes possible. But you have to pay for it, andyou have to pay tremendously. You have to sacrifice yourself utterly. You haveto stake your whole life.

If you stake your so-called life, you will attain to what Buddhacalls to be alive, to what Jesus calls to be reborn, to what Hindus call to betwice born, dwij. Then a totally new dimension and a totally new qualityof being arises in you, uncorrupted by time and space, uncontaminated byanything, absolutely and eternally virgin.

Long for the impossible. Desire for the impossible.

The Buddha said:
There are twenty difficult things to attain or accomplish in this world.
First: It is difficult for the poor to practice charity.

Because unless you have it, how can you share it? To sharesomething with somebody else you must have it first. In the first place youmust have it, only that which you have can be shared, and this is somethingthat we go on forgetting continuously.

I see so many people trying to share their love and they donthave any love. Of course, their sharing brings misery to them and to othersbecause you can share only that which you have. You may think you are sharingyour love, but in fact you share only your misery because that is what youhave. You go with hope, you move with dreams, but what is the actual result ofit? In fantasy love is good; in reality it becomes a misery, a hell.

You dont have love in your being, that energy is not existentthere. First you have to become radiant with love, only then can you share it.Before you can become a lover you have to become love. People think that theywill become love only by becoming a lover. Stupid is their logic, illogical istheir way of thinking. You cannot become a lover unless you have love andlove you dont have.

Everybody goes on believing that one has the capacity to love,one has just to find somebody to receive. One is full of love energy, one needsonly just a receiving end. Thats how people go on moving, searching. Manytimes they find beautiful people, but the total result is misery.

They think they are sharing love; they share only theirloneliness. They think they are sharing something divine; they share only theirugliness. They think they are sharing their innermost being, but they shareonly their dirty surface. They themselves are not aware of their innermostcore. That is the meaning of a poor man.

When Buddha talks about a poor man, he does not mean a manwithout money. When Buddha talks about a poor man, he means a man who is notrich inside a loveless man. How can he share? How can he become a tremendoussharing? No, charity is not possible. Charity is possible only when you areoverflowing. Overflowing is charity.

It is difficult for the poor to practice charity. Rememberit in the reverse way also. Whenever you are unable to share, whenever you areunable to practice charity, note down you must be poor. You may have much inthe eyes of others, but deep down you must be poor if you cannot share.