Why there is so much Frustration !

YOUR MIND IS A MAGIC-BOX; that's what Buddha has said again and again. It goes on creating phantoms, imaginations, which have no substance in them.

BUT IF YOU WANT TO BELIEVE IN THEM, they will become real. Your mind is a great mock show. In fact, the English word magic comes from the Indian word maya. Maya means illusion.

ILLUSIONS CAN BE CREATED, and you all create illusions. YOU SEE A WOMAN, but you never see yatha bhutam -- as she is. THAT'S WHY THERE IS SO MUCH FRUSTRATION AFTERWARDS.

You start seeing things which are not there, which are only projections of your mind. You project beauty, YOU PROJECT THOUSAND AND ONE THINGS ON THE POOR WOMAN.

When you come closer, when you are able to live with the woman, those phantoms will start wearing out. Those imaginations cannot persist against reality for long, THE WOMAN'S REALITY WILL ASSERT. And then you will feel cheated, and you will think as if she has cheated you.

She has not done a thing. SHE HERSELF IS FEELING CHEATED BY YOU, because she has also projected something on you. She was thinking you are a hero, an Alexander or something, a great man, and now you are just a mouse and nothing else. And she was thinking you are a mountain -- you are not even a molehill! She feels cheated. You both feel cheated, you both feel frustrated.

I have heard: A woman walked into the Missing Persons Bureau. "My husband disappeared last night," she reported.
"We'll do our best to find him," the officers assured her. "Kindly give us a description of the man."

"Well," she waited a little and then said, "he's about five feet tall, wears thick glasses, has a bald head, drinks a lot, has a red nose, has a high squeaky voice..." And then she stopped and thought for a moment, and said, "Oh, just forget the whole thing!"

IF YOU SEE THE REALITY, that is how it is. You will say, "Oh, forget the whole thing." But you don't see; you go on projecting....

That's how we go on and on. Reality is never frustrating, reality is always fulfilling.
FRUSTRATIONS COME because we impose our illusions on reality.

Buddha says it is a mock show. Be aware -- YOUR MIND IS A MAGICIAN.

It shows you things which are not there, which have never been there. It deludes you, it creates an unreal world around you, and then you live in that unreal world.

This world of trees and birds and animals and mountains is not unreal! But the world that your MIND creates is unreal.

When you hear people like Buddha talking about the unreality of the world, don't misunderstand them. They don't mean that the trees are unreal, they don't mean that the people are unreal.

They mean that WHATSOEVER YOU HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT REALITY IS UNREAL -- your mind is unreal. Once mind is dropped, all is real. Then you live in suchness, then you become tathata, then you are suchness.

OshO 

The Diamond Sutra
Ch #11: The Fully Enlightened One
am in Buddha Hall