Expectations always lead to frustrations. Expectations are the seeds, and frustration is the crop that sooner or later you will have to reap. It is your own doing.
Live without expectations and there will be no frustration.
The real thing is that you are suffering from your expectations. When they are not fulfilled - and they are never going to be fulfilled - frustration arises, failure arises, and you feel neglected, as if existence does not care for you. Drop expectations for the future. Remain open, remain available to whatsoever happens, but don't plan ahead. Don't make any psychological, fixed ideas about the future - that things should be like this - and much more suffering will disappear.
Remember, frustration is out of expectation, and ego is always expecting. The ego is a beggar.
There is no failure in life. It all depends how you take things. If you are desiring too much - you want to reach too high, and you cannot - then there is frustration and failure. But if you are not desiring anything and you are perfectly happy wherever you are, life is moment-to-moment victory.
Man is almost mad-mad because he is seeking something which he has already got; mad because he's not aware of who he is; mad because he hopes, desires and then ultimately, feels frustrated. Frustration is bound to be there because you cannot find yourself by seeking; you are already there. The seeking has to stop, the search has to drop.
The mind lives through more, and the more cannot be fulfilled; that is impossible. IT ENDS IN TEARS. Every desire ends in frustration, because every expectation is the beginning of frustration. Why does every desire end in frustration? There are only two alternatives: either you achieve your object of desire or you don`t achieve it, but in both cases it will end in tears. If you achieve it you will see the utter futility of it all.
Once the ego is not there, there is no expectation, frustration, no desire, no despair. Suddenly one finds oneself falling into a deep harmony with the cosmos. And that harmony is God; that harmony is nirvana; that harmony is tao.
When there is nothing to desire, there is nothing to dream about either, because dreams are reflections of your desires. Dreams are reflections of your frustrations, dreams are reflections of your repressions, dreams reflect your day-life.
How does one earn innocence? - by learning from frustration, by going deep into frustrations and realizing the fact that each frustration is an outcome of a certain dream. If you don`t want frustrations, drop dreaming. Life is not frustrating, dreaming is frustrating.
The moment love becomes a relationship, it becomes a bondage, because there are expectations and there are demands and there are frustrations, and an effort from both sides to dominate. It becomes a struggle for power.
If you expect anything out of love, or meditation, you will get only frustration, and negative emptiness will happen. If you love for the sheer joy of it, if you meditate for the sheer delight of it and you don`t have any result in mind - you are not goal-oriented - then there comes an emptiness which is positive. You start feeling full. You start feeling, for the first time, that you ARE. Being is felt, and that being is tremendously beautiful, blissful. It is SATCHITANANDA: it is existence, it is consciousness, it is bliss.
Life is a flux, nothing abides. Still we are such fools, we go on clinging. If change is the nature of life, then clinging is stupidity, because your clinging is not going to change the law of life. Your clinging is only going to make you miserable. Things are bound to change; whether you cling or not does not matter. If you cling you become miserable: you cling and they change, you feel frustrated. If you don`t cling they still change, but then there is no frustration because you were perfectly aware that they are bound to change. This is how things are, this is the suchness of life.
That is Buddha`s meaning of nirvana: to be free from life and death, to be free from desire. The moment you are free from all desires... remember, I repeat, ALL desires. The so-called religious, spiritual desires are included in it, nothing is excluded. All desires have to be dropped because every desire brings frustration, misery, boredom. If you succeed it brings boredom; if you fail it brings despair. If you are after money there are only two possibilities: either you will fail or you will succeed. If you succeed you will be bored with money.
Two persons can be very loving together. The more loving they are, the less is the possibility of any relationship. The more loving they are, the more freedom exists between them. The more loving they are, the less is the possibility of any demand, any domination, any expectation. And naturally, there is no question of any frustration
Frustration is out of expectation; expectation is our projection. All kinds of love frustrate unless love is based in meditation.
A man who lives with intentions is bound to feel frustration. A man who lives with expectations is bound to feel frustrated because existence has no obligation to you. But if you live without intentions, without expectations, then miraculously you find that everything that you ever dreamed of is being fulfilled. The moon is reflected in the lake - the lake never asked it, the moon never intended it. Existence goes on spontaneously. Don't bring your desire, your ambition and your expectation; they are the disturbing points. They create a chaos in your mind.
Any object of desire is bound to bring frustration. Any expectation is bound to turn into frustration. Expectation is the beginning of frustration, the very seed. Beware of it!
Mind can only desire, and each desire is going to be frustrated. Instead of bringing more meditation, it will bring you more frustration. Instead of bringing you more love, it will bring to you more anger. Instead of silence and peace, it will bring more traffic of thoughts.
Spiritual seeking means knowing this negative part: that desiring is the root cause of frustration. To desire is to create, of one`s own accord, a shell. Desiring is the world. To be worldly is to desire and to go on desiring, never becoming aware that each desire comes to nothing but frustration. Once you become aware of this, then you do not desire, or your only desire is to know what is.
Expectation brings frustration. Private ambitions bring failures.
All desiring is desiring for the futile. It leads only into frustration.
It is within your hands to be frustrated in life or not. Just your expectations should become smaller, smaller, smaller, and in the same proportion the frustration will become smaller. A day will come when there will be no expectation; then you will never come across any frustration.
Desire means you are dragged out of the moment; that creates a tension, that creates anxiety, that creates hope. And then finally hope turns sour, becomes frustration. Each hope leads you into anguish. Buddha calls it the only impurity. Cut the roots of desire, live in the moment so totally, pull yourself out of the past and don`t project yourself into the future. Let this moment be all and all. And your life will have such a purity, such a crystal-clear consciousness that right now you cannot imagine.
