One has just to be oneself. That's my basic message. The moment you accept yourself as you are, all burdens, all mountainous burdens, simply disappear. Then life is a sheer joy, a festival of lights.
Tantra says be real, be authentic to yourself. Your happiness is not bad; it is good. It is not sin! Only sadness is sin, only to be miserable is sin. To be happy is virtue because a happy person will not create unhappiness for others. Only a happy person can be a ground for others' happiness.
Enjoyment is just the sound of being centered.
The fruit does not come from the outside, the fruit is created within you. Whatever you do, you develop receptivity for it inside yourself. Someone who wants love should give his love. Someone who wants bliss should start sharing his bliss. Someone who wants flowers to shower in his home should shower flowers in other people's homes. There is no other way. So compassion is an emotion that each person has to develop in order to enter into meditation.
If you become silent after your laughter, one day you will hear God also laughing, you will hear the whole existence laughing - trees and stones and stars with you.
Don't be too much concerned about money, because that is the greatest distraction against happiness. And the irony of ironies is that people think they will be happy when they have money. Money has nothing to do with happiness. If you are happy and you have money, you can use it for happiness. If you are unhappy and you have money, you will use that money for more unhappiness. Because money is simply a neutral force.
This is what meditation is all about, just becoming a watcher. Failure comes, success comes, you are praised, you are condemned, you are respected, you are insulted - all kinds of things come, they are all dualities. And you go on watching. Watching the duality, a third force arises in you; a third dimension arises in you. The duality means two dimensions: one dimension is happiness; another is unhappiness. Watching both, a depth arises in you: the third dimension, witnessing, sakshin.
If you are happy, you are happy; nobody asks you why you are happy. Yes, if you are miserable, a question is relevant. If you are miserable, somebody can ask why you are miserable, and the question is relevant - because misery is against nature, something wrong is happening. When you are happy, nobody asks you why you are happy, except for a few neurotics. There are such people; I cannot deny the possibility.
If you are really feeling happy, you are feeling happy even if the whole world contradicts you. If the whole world agrees that you are not happy, then too it doesn't matter. Your happiness is real. It cannot be canceled by anybody's opinion. But if your happiness is unreal, it can be canceled by anybody. Even a small child can cancel it. You will be constantly looking towards people. You will be smiling, trying to show that you are happy so that they can say, 'Yes. You are very happy. You look very happy.'
Whenever you feel happiness it is always from the inner. Then mind immediately jumps in and takes control and says, 'It is because of me.' When you are in love, it is like death, you feel blissful. Immediately mind comes in and says, 'Okay, this is me, this is because of me.'
It is my observation that all human hearts are the same and that their ultimate desire is also the same. This soul wants happiness, perfect and pure happiness, because only then will all desires end. As long as desire exists misery exists, because with desire there can be no peace.
And that third dimension brings bliss. Bliss is without any opposite to it. It is serene, tranquil, cool. It is ecstasy without any excitement.
I have heard about a patient - the psychiatrist was bored with him. Of course, he was getting enough money out of him, but he was getting bored by and by - three, four, five years of psychoanalysis, and the man was repeating the same again and again and again. The psychiatrist said, 'Do one thing: go to the mountains for a few days. That will be very helpful.'
If life is a gift then all that belongs to life is going to be a gift. Happiness, love, meditation - all that is beautiful is going to be a gift from the holy, from the whole. You cannot deserve it in any way and you cannot force existence to make you happy, or to make you loving, or to make you meditative. That very effort is of the ego. That very effort creates misery. That very effort goes against you. That very effort has destroyed you - it is suicidal.
Whenever you meditate, there are glimpses. Then the mind comes in and says, 'Be happy! Look, I have done it.' And immediately the contact is lost.
The total absence of desire brings happiness. It also brings freedom and liberation, because whenever something is lacking there are both limits and dependency. Only when nothing at all is lacking is there the possibility of total freedom. Freedom brings happiness. And happiness is salvation.
Meditation is enjoying oneself, just sitting silently doing nothing: happy, joyous without any reason, because all reasons come from outside. You meet a beautiful woman and you are happy, or you meet a beautiful man and you are happy - but the meditator is simply happy. His happiness has no reason from the outside world; his happiness wells up within himself.
So the patient went to the mountains, and do you know what? Next day a telegram arrived for the psychiatrist. The patient said in the telegram, 'I am feeling very happy - why?'
It is impossible to pursue happiness. Nobody has ever pursued it. One has to wait for it. And it is not a right at all. No law court can force you to be happy or force happiness to be with you. No government violence is capable of making you happy. No power can make you happy.
Remember this: with mind you will always be a loser. Even if you are victorious, your victories will be just defeats. With mind there is no victory, with no-mind there is no defeat. You have to shift your whole consciousness from mind to no-mind. Once no-mind is there, everything is victorious. Once the no-mind is there, nothing goes wrong, nothing can go wrong.
The desire for total happiness and for ultimate freedom lies dormant in everyone. It is in the form of a seed. It is like a seed that contains a tree within it. In the same way, the fulfillment of man's ultimate desire is hidden in his very nature. In its perfectly developed state, it is our nature to be happy, to be free. Our real nature is the only thing that is true, and only perfecting it can bring complete satisfaction.
The essential religion is taking the whole responsibility for whatsoever you are. And immediately an insight arises: 'If I am responsible for my suffering, then it is simple, I can drop it. It is my choice. I will not choose it any more.'
Feeling very happy - why? An explanation is needed. No, happiness needs no explanation, happiness is its own explanation. God is creating because that is the only way he can be happy, that is the only way he loves, that is the only way he sings, that's the only way he can be at all. Creation is his innermost nature, no why is needed.
The very idea that you can pursue happiness, that you can deserve it, that you can demand it, that you have the right to be happy, is foolish. Nobody has the right to be happy. You can be happy, but there is nothing like a right about it. And if you think that it is your right you will go on missing, because you have started to look in the wrong direction from the very beginning.
We ask for happiness but what we get is unhappiness. We all put our efforts into trying to be happy but we make a fundamental mistake: happiness is not related to the effort, happiness is related to not asking for it.
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