Happiness is not something you have to hunt for. You do not need to be happy. You are already joyful if you do not subject yourself to your own nonsense. Life by design is not meant to torture you. If life becomes cumbersome, then surely it is, it is from my own decisions. It is my own doing.
How do you know somebody is happy? We have fooled ourselves. We don’t know happiness. We only know symptoms of happiness. And symptoms are easy to copy. Nobody’s happy. All they exhibit is symptoms of happiness. And we have in some kind of a very shady deal among ourselves decided mutually with universal consent that these will be the accepted symptoms of happiness. Let’s list down five of them. One smiling. Second, money,
clothes, shining face.
You see a young man, a young woman, arms in arms. What do you would say immediately? Happy. We can conduct an experiment right now. Let’s display a few pictures over here. And let’s ask you which of these indicate happiness. The answer would be almost unanimous. Now how do you know they are happy? Those are pictures. Do you see that’s our happiness pictures? What does that tell? Happiness is an image.
What is happiness? Feeling a particular way. Now feeling is totally chemical. Don’t we know that?
And if happiness happens to be such a big thing, then you can have that chemical put into your body very artificially and you’ll be happy.
Happiness that is neither temporal nor chemical has been classically called as joy and it is not something to be obtained. It is not something to be obtained. It is nature. It is who you are. Provided you refuse to abide by what you are not. Happiness is not something you have to hunt for. Otherwise, happiness remains eternally elusive.
Sensation of arousal, hormonal, chemical arousal that we call as happiness that is needed only because our life is otherwise depressing. Happiness is not a particular state, a particular moment, a particular event or episode. Happiness is a constant thing. It is your very breath just as the heart beats. Similarly, the nature of consciousness is to always be joyful. You are joyful already. But but we burden ourselves with all kinds of needless things and that becomes the sadness, the grief of life. Life becomes a trauma. And when life becomes that kind of a thing, then you require sensational pleasures that we mistakenly call as happiness.
Again, turning it a little personal. That’s another grouse people have against me. Why doesn’t this man laugh? Because I don’t need to. See, I’m already all right. I’m not depressed. Why do I need to laugh? You’re so depressed. You need to laugh. You’ll die if you don’t laugh. But I’m already all right. I’m vibrant within. I’m not tense. I’m not worried. I’m okay. I’m immersed. I’m enjoying being with you. This association itself is so enjoyable. Why do I need to burst out into a gaper? And if need be, when that happens, that happens on its own. I don’t have to turn that into a routine or an obligation.
Happiness is the is the most needless thing to be pursued because it is always and already there. Why are you searching for something that is your very nature? And if the mind is heavy, if life is no more fun, then you need to ask what have I done? Life by design is not meant to torture you. You have all that you need to live joyfully. If life becomes cumbersome, then surely it is, it is from my own decisions. It is my own doing, I don’t need to laugh, I need to fight, I need to undo what I have done. I need to see clearly where I am conditioned and enslaved. And when I see that, then I push away my grief. My grief is not something that has accidentally come upon me. My grief is something I am deliberately sticking to. I have to release my grip. I have to release my grip and that will release me of grief.
Freedom from grief itself is joy. Internally I’m weeping and bleeding and externally I go to to sit in a comic show. How will that help? But we do that too. No, I’m extremely tense. Oh, I’m feeling so down. I need to shop. I need to speak to you for at least 30 minutes. Why? I’m not all right. Make me laugh. Whatever. How will that help you? That which is inside will remain. You are just whitewashing it. You’re sugar coating it. You are denying what is there. That’s that’s what this flimsy happiness is all about. The grief is there and you want to deny it using the concept of happiness.
Why not get rid of grief itself? Instead of trying out happiness as a as a shady solution, why not ask what is causing the problem itself? What will help? Freedom from the problem or a shady solution? Freedom from the problem. That freedom is what we need. Not happiness.
Purpose is desire and all desire comes from the center of conditioning. You don’t need to tackle anything. You don’t need to have preset conclusions about what is right and what is wrong. If let’s say you observe greed, how do you know greed is bad? Badness is a concept. Badness is a man-made concept. What is bad in one culture is great in another. Is it not? So how do you know badness is something absolute and we are looking for the absolute? Because only that would give us peace. Things that are temporal, spatial, cultural, let’s not respect them too much. We are looking for something that is beyond the mind of man. We are looking for something that we have ourselves not constructed because we know who we are and therefore we know the quality of our construction. We don’t want to depend too much on it. Are you getting it?
You don’t need to be judgmental. You don’t need to be your own inner police. I’m not my opinions, thoughts, feelings, my body, my world, my age, my anything I’m pure realization nothing less nothing more. There is no action contained in this. It’s not my job to act. It’s not my job to impede action either. If action has to happen, it will happen. I’ll submit myself to the action.
How big are your desires? Look at the size of the universe. What do you desire? A grain of sand. Petty desires. So when the action emanates from the center of ego, it is always pity. But when action comes from nothing but realization, then it’s unstoppable. The body can fall, the person can die, but that action cannot be stopped. I think it came from the conditioning where we trained from our childhood. Yes. If you win that thing, you are super.