If you want to know what is happiness, then always remember one thing- It is not that you are happy because of something. You are simply happy. Happiness is your nature.Unhappiness is something nurtured, you have learned it. Every credit goes to you for all your misery, but for happiness, you cannot have any credit. It is natural. You were born happy. You were happy in your mother’s womb….
If you want to happy in your life- Don’t choose. Accept life as it is in its totality. You must look at the total: life and death together, love and hate together, happiness/unhappiness together, agony/ecstasy together. If you look at them together, then what is there to choose? If you see they are one, then from where can choice enter? If you see agony is nothing but ecstasy, ecstasy nothing but agony; if you can see happiness is nothing but unhappiness; love is nothing but hate, hate is nothing but love — then where to choose? how to choose? Then choice drops.
Remember this. This is the difference between happiness and bliss. Your happiness is caused. Sometimes a friend has come and you are happy. How long are you going to be happy with the friend? A few moments — and then you will be happy when he leaves. What type of happiness is this? It is caused, and the cause disappears. Sooner or later you become fed up and it disappears. Bliss is a happiness uncaused. Simply as you are, you are happy. There is nothing to say about why you are happy.
Just look: happiness, unhappiness, sadness, joy, they come and go, they are beggars around you. The witnessing remains the very center, uncaused, unchanging, one. Seek that within you and then everything becomes clear. When you are clear within, everything is transparent. The truth is everywhere around you, only you have to become one. Once you know the inner riches, then there is nothing which is comparable from the outside world. Once you know the inner bliss, then enjoyment is foolish, then all that goes on in the name of entertainment is foolish, stupid. It just falls down once you know the inner ecstasy. Then all that is known as happiness, joy, is nothing but deception. But not before — unless you have known the inner happiness you cannot say that, and if you say that then you will be in a greater deception.Happiness needs no cause. It is your simple nature, you are intrinsically happy. No cause, no purpose, no goal is needed. Life is in itself enough. It needs nothing else to complete it. It is complete! It is entire! It is already what it has to be. So there is no purpose in existence and no goal in existence.
All unhappy individuals resemble each other; only happy individuals have a uniqueness. Happiness, growing towards blissfulness, makes you unique in a world which is full of misery.
Never forget that money can’t buy happiness. If you are compassionate to someone, you feel a joy of being compassionate — that is its reward. If you are angry at someone, you are first burning inside yourself. Even before you have acted on your anger, you have suffered the punishment. In my vision every action has its intrinsic reward or punishment. So a man of intelligence soon starts finding what are the acts which bring you happiness, joy, blissfulness, and what are the actions which create misery, suffering. There is no need to wait for the last judgement day, there is no need to wait after death — you will be thrown into hell or into heaven. Each moment completes itself.
That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don’t let past move your mind; don’t let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life.
Whenever you feel happy, you were not looking for it. That is the first basic thing about happiness: it happened when you were looking for something else. For example, you have heard the story of Archimedes: he was in search of a scientific truth. He worked, experimented, thought, pondered over it many days and nights. He forgot himself. Then suddenly, when he was in his bath one day, lying down in his tub, it happened, it bubbled up — he realized. He was naked, but he forgot that he was naked. When you are happy you forget yourself; if you cannot forget yourself you are not happy. Happiness means you are no longer there; it happens only when you are not. Be happy when alone. Let happiness be your quality. And when you move from aloneness into involvement, into communication, relationship, carry that quality of happiness which was in loneliness — carry that.
Why is man unhappy? No animal is so unhappy, no bird is so unhappy, no fish is so unhappy as man. Why is man so unhappy? Because man desires happiness, and the birds are happy right now; the trees are happy right now. Man desires happiness; he is never happy here and now. He always desires happiness and goes on missing it. Happiness is here. It is happening all around you. Allow it to enter within. Be part of existence. Don’t move into the future. Existence never moves into the future; only mind does. This is call meditation: to be here, to not move into the future. Be nonambitious, kill all desire for life, don’t desire happiness and then you will be happy and no one can destroy your happiness. Then it will be impossible for you to be unhappy. And then you will be deathless and eternal life will have happened to you. In fact, it has already happened but you are not aware of it.
The more you ask for happiness, the more you will be in suffering. The suffering is a shadow. The greater the desire for happiness, the greater will be the shadow. Ask for happiness and you will never get it. You will only suffer frustration. Why? Because there is only one way to be happy, and that is to be happy here, now. Happiness is not a result. It is a way of life. Happiness is not the end result of desire. It is an attitude, not a desire. You can be happy here and now if you know how to be, but you will never be happy if you don’t know how to be and you go on desiring it. Happiness is an art. It is a way of life.
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