If you anticipate being in pain and accept it, then the pain becomes much less unpleasant. A loud noise isn’t distressing if you don’t wish it were quieter. A cloudy day can be beautiful if you choose to enjoy it instead of wishing it were sunnier.
Frustration is just a shadow which follows expectation. If you don’t expect even for a single moment, if you are in a state of mind where there is no expectation, then it is simple. You ask a question and the answer comes; there is a fulfillment. But if you ask with any expectations you will be frustrated by the answer.
Everything we do, we do with expectations. If I love someone, an expectation enters without my even knowing it. I begin to expect love in return. I have not yet loved, I have not grown into love yet, but the expectation has come and now it will destroy the whole thing. Love creates more frustration than anything else in the world because, with love, you are in a utopia of expectation. You have not even been on the journey yet and already you have begun to think of the return home.
The more you expect love, the more difficult it will be for love to flow back to you. If you expect love from someone the other will feel it as bondage; it will be a duty for him, something which he has to do. And when love is a duty it cannot fulfill anyone because love as a duty is dead.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), The Great Challenge (Chapter 12)
“Better” and “Worse” are human concepts. They are not an objective reality, and they can be released.
Once you start seeing life as it is, and you have no idea how it should be, everything is perfect. Even imperfection is perfect. What I mean when I say life is perfect is a simple thing: I mean don’t bring your ideals to it, otherwise you make life imperfect: because once you bring the ideal then you are creating the imperfection.
If you say man has to be seven feet tall and he is not, there is difficulty. Or if you have the idea that man has to be only four feet tall and he is not, then there is difficulty. Life simply is. Somebody is seven feet tall and somebody is four feet tall. One tree grows to the clouds, one tree remains small. But all is perfectly well, all is as it should be, because there is no “should” in my mind. I simply listen and see life as it is. I have no idea how it should be. That’s why I say it is as it should be, there is no other life.
The message is: drop comparing, drop judging, otherwise you will remain miserable – and just because of your judgments and comparisons. Look at life without being a judge. Who are you to judge? What do you know about life? What do you know even about yourself? Who are you to judge? Judgment comes from the idea that you know; judgment is knowledge ability.
Look at life with a state of not-knowing, through a state of not-knowing. Look at life through wonder – and suddenly all is perfect. Yes, sometimes it is cloudy, but it is perfect. And sometimes it is sunny and it is perfect. And sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t rain, but it is perfect. As it is, it is a blessing.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), Unknown Source