Happiness need not be caused...

Man wants happiness, that's why he is miserable. The more you want to be happy, the more miserable you will be. Now this is very absurd, but this is the root cause. And when you understand the process of how the human mind functions you will be able to realise it.

Man wants to be happy, hence he creates misery. If you want to get out of misery, you will have to get out of your desire for happiness -- then nobody can make you miserable. Here is where Freud missed. He could not understand that the very desire for happiness can be the cause of misery. How does it happen? Why in the first place do you desire happiness? And what does it do to you, the desire for happiness?

The moment you desire for happiness, you have moved away from the present, you have moved away from the existential, you have already moved into the future -- which is nowhere, which has not come yet. You have moved in a dream. Now, dreams can never be fulfilling. Your desire for happiness is a dream. The dream is unreal. Through the unreal, nobody has ever been able to reach to the real. You have taken a wrong train.

Happiness is herenow, it needs no condition. Happiness is natural. Just see the point of it. Don't make conditions on your happiness. Remain happy for no reason at all. There is no reason to find some cause to be happy. Just be happy.

Trees are happy and they will not get any beer in the evening and any cigarettes, and they are perfectly happy. Look! ... And the wind blowing is happy, and the sun is happy, and the sands are happy and the seas are happy, and everything is happy except man -- because nobody is making any conditions. Just be happy.

But you say, "I will be happy only when this great house is mine." Now you are making a big condition. It may take years, and you will be tired and exhausted, and by the time you reach to the palace of your desires you may be close to death. That's what happens. And you wasted your whole life and your great house will become your grave. You say, "Unless I have a million dollars, I am not going to be happy." And then you have to work and waste your whole life.

If you understand then there is no need to put any conditions. Just see the point of it -- that conditions don't create happiness, they only give relief. But the relief cannot be permanent, no relief can ever be permanent. It lasts only for a few moments. Have you not watched it again and again? You wanted to purchase a car; the car is in your porch and you are standing there, very very happy. How long does it last? Tomorrow it is this old car, one day old. Two days after it is two days old, and all the neighborhood has seen it and they all have appreciated it, and finished! Now nobody talks about it. That's why car companies have to go on putting out new models every year, so that you can have new conditions.

Why wait for the evening? And why wait for the beer? Why not drink water and enjoy it while you are drinking it?,
You have heard Jesus' story that he turned water into wine? Christians have missed it. They think he really turned it into wine. That is not true. He must have taught the secret that I am teaching you to his disciples. He must have told them, "Drink it so joyously that water becomes wine."

You can drink water so joyously that it almost intoxicates you. Try! Just water can intoxicate you. It depends on you. It does not depend on the beer or the wine.

Whenever happiness comes to you, it comes for no reason at all. Suffering has a cause, happiness none. Suffering is caused by something. It is part of cause and effect: the mechanical world. Happiness is not caused by anything. Whenever you are available, it happens, as if happiness is your nature; whenever you settle into it, it happens. Unhappiness is not your nature. It has to be caused, it has to be created.

Whenever suffering is felt, you will always feel as if it is coming from the outside, and whenever you feel happy, you simply feel that happiness is arising from within you. Happiness is a flower of your own consciousness. Suffering is a thorn which has entered into you: alien, foreign, not of you. So whenever you suffer you start thinking that somebody, somewhere, must be responsible for it; known, not known, but somebody must be responsible for it. Whenever you are happy you never think that somebody is responsible for it. Whenever you suffer, you enquire as to the cause. Whenever you are happy, you never even ask.

If somebody is happy and he asks,'Why am I happy?' it will look absurd, it will look foolish, it will look mad. You are happy -- that's all. There is no 'why' to it. But if somebody in suffering asks,'Why am I in suffering?' nobody can say that he is asking irrelevant things.'Why' with suffering is relevant, with bliss it is irrelevant.

Remember this: the God which you remember in suffering is just a projection of your mind. The God which you remember in celebration is no more a projection of your mind, because mind is perfectly satisfied when you are happy. Mind means philosophy. When you are unhappy, then the mind is not sufficient -- then you need somebody's help, then you need somebody's shoulder to lean upon; then you invoke God.

Any act or no act, doing or no doing, becomes utterly blissful. It does not have to be caused by something. When your happiness is caused, you become attached to the cause, because you are afraid that if you lose the cause your happiness will disappear. If you are happy with a woman or with a man, you become attached; not only attached, you start creating prisons for each other, because without this woman, without this man, you cannot be happy. So your happiness turns into misery for both.

Meditation brings you a great experience that happiness need not be caused, and when you have found a happiness which is not caused by anything, you are simply happy -- just to be is to be happy -- then you don't create any prisons for anybody. Then you don't possess anybody, and you don't destroy anybody's dignity as a human being. You don't enslave people. You love, you share, just because of your abundance, not that you want anything in return. Without your asking, much comes to you. The moment you start asking, you have lost the very ground of being happy.