HAPPINESS : THE WAY OF LIFE
Happiness is natural. It needs no condition to be happy. If one’s happiness has a condition to it, he will always remain unhappy. If one cannot be happy just as he or she is, one is never going to be happy ever.
WHAT IS HAPPINESS?
HAPPINESS IS THE OTHER SIDE OF UNHAPPINESS. If you want to be happy, you will have to remain unhappy. The statement will look very paradoxical, but it is not. That’s how life is. Only an unhappy person can be happy. Unhappiness creates the situation in which happiness can be felt.
If you have been ill for many months, then suddenly when you become healthy again you feel tremendously happy. And you have been healthy before illness for years and years, and you were never so happy, not at all; you had not even taken any note of it. Now you are happy that you are healthy.
Why? From where does this happiness come? It comes from your illness. Your illness created unhappiness, the background. Now you are healthy again and you can feel — and you can feel only when something happens in contrast.
When a poor man becomes rich he is happy, tremendously happy. But you don’t see rich people happy. They ARE rich, so there is no point in being happy; they don’t feel it at all. The richer you become, the less happy you are. If you become the richest man in the world you will forget all about happiness.
That’s what is happening every day. Happiness is only part, like an island in the ocean of unhappiness.
I have heard:
Only the prisoner knows what freedom means. When he comes out of the prison and looks at the trees and the sun and the sky and looks at people and knows that there are no more chains on his feet, on his hands, he knows what freedom is. Soon he will forget.
And I cannot define what happiness is, because it depends on what kind of person you are. What is happiness to you may be unhappiness to your brother. What is unhappiness to you may be happiness to your neighbour.
There’s a Story…
Four women sat for hours under the hairdryers at the beauty parlour. After exhausting their gossip, they turned to philosophy. The first lady said, “Happiness is when my husband brings home his paycheck.”
The second lady stated, “Happiness is gambling in Las Vegas and winning.”
The third lady commented, “Happiness is vacationing without my husband or my children.”
The fourth lady concluded, “Happiness is eating without worrying about calories.”
Upon eavesdropping, one hairdresser whispered to the other, “Happiness is not having to listen to these cackling hens.”
It depends. Your happiness is your idiosyncrasy; it may be unhappiness to somebody else. It has no truth about it; it is only your dream. And you can have any dream you like. To somebody power is happiness; to somebody money is happiness; to somebody else money is misery — he escapes, renounces the money; he escapes from all power, goes to the jungle. To somebody, people are happiness; to somebody, aloneness. It depends on you.
But I am not interested in happiness at all. Because basically it has to depend on its opposite — and anything that depends on its opposite keeps you divided. And to live divided is to live in hell.
Be part of existence. Don’t move into the future. Existence never moves into the future; only mind does.
Call To Action
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