The Buddha said: ‘Live in joy, in health, even among the afflicted.’ By health he means wholeness. Health comes from the same root as healing. A healed person is a healthy person; a healed person is a whole person. By health the Buddha does not mean the ordinary, medical meaning of the term; his meaning is meditational, although you will be surprised to know that the words meditation and medicine both come from the same root. Medicine heals you physically, meditation heals you spiritually. Both are healing processes, both bring health.
But the Buddha is not talking about the health of the body; he is talking about the health of your soul. Be whole, be total. Don’t be fragmentary, don’t be divided. Be an individual, literally: indivisible, one piece.
People are not one piece; they are many fragments, somehow holding themselves together. They can fall apart at any moment. Any new situation, any new danger, any insecurity, and they can fall apart. Your wife dies or you go bankrupt or you are unemployed, anything can prove the last straw on the camel’s back.
So many desires, so many dreams, so many people are living in you. If you watch carefully, you will not find one person there but many faces, changing every moment.
The Buddha is awake even while he is asleep. He has no compartments in his being. He is not many, he is one. Because he is one and he has no clinging to memories and no desires for the future, the present is enough for him. Then he lives moment to moment in its totality; he does not go on living partially. Your dreams simply show that you live partially, and the unlived parts have to be lived in your dreams. If you live totally each moment, then there is no possibility of any dreams. You are living inside in a very confused state. And not only young people; even when they become old the same state becomes more confusing because, as you accumulate experience, your confusion becomes greater.
Your childhood is the closest to buddhahood. As you grow old, you go farther away from buddhahood. It is a strange state; it should not be so. One should grow toward buddhahood, but people grow in just the opposite direction. ‘Live in joy, in health, even among the afflicted’, is an important sutra.
It is to be remembered more so because people are creating a totally wrong approach to life. They say: “When there is so much misery in the world, how can you be joyous?” But that’s exactly what the Buddha is saying.
By being poor yourself you cannot help the poor, although the poor will worship you because they will see how great a saint you are.
-Osho
