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.
All alternatives are open. Choose to be blissful. And then there are people who can be blissful even when they are imprisoned, and there are people who remain miserable even when they are living in marble palaces. It all depends on you.
Misery makes you special. Misery makes you more egoistic. A miserable man can have a more concentrated ego than a happy man. A happy man really cannot have the ego, because a person becomes happy only when there is no ego. The more egoless, the more happy; the more happy, the more egoless. You dissolve into happiness. You cannot exist together with happiness; you exist only when there is misery. In happiness there is dissolution.
Happiness is one pole, sadness is another. Blissfulness is one pole, misery is another. Life consists of both, and life is richer because of both. A life only of blissfulness will have extension, but will not have depth. A life of only sadness will have depth, but will not have extension.
This is the deepest experiment of life. And whatever has been discovered in regard to life, this is the most significant finding of all: don't ask for happiness if you want to be happy, don't ask for peace if you want to be peaceful. Whatever you ask for will be lost. Whatever you do not ask for you will get. You have asked many times and seen that you do not receive it. Now try not asking and see. There is no need to believe me; there is a need to experiment.
Remember one thing: the one who brings unhappiness to others in the end becomes unhappy himself, and the one who brings happiness to others in the end reaches to the heights of happiness. That's why I am saying that someone who tries to give happiness develops the center of happiness inside himself, and someone who tries to bring unhappiness to others develops the center of unhappiness inside himself.
My effort here is to create bliss, not happiness. Happiness is worthless; it depends on unhappiness. Bliss is transcendence: one moves beyond the duality of being happy and unhappy. One watches both; happiness comes, one watches and does not become identified with it. One does not say, 'I am happy. Peace, it is wonderful.' One simply watches, one says, 'Yes, a white cloud passing.'
Happiness has nothing to do with what you have or don't have. Happiness is related to what you are. However many things you may collect, perhaps they may increase your worries, your troubles, but happiness will not increase because of them. Certainly unhappiness will increase with them, but they have no relation to an increase in your happiness.
I am not against money - remember. Don't misinterpret me: I am not against money. I am not against anything. Money is a means. If you are happy and you have money, you will become more happy. If you are unhappy and you have money, you will become more unhappy because what will you do with your money? Your money will enhance your pattern, whatsoever it is. If you are miserable and you have power, what will you do with your power? You will poison yourself more with your power, you will become more miserable.
A life of both sadness and blissfulness is multi-dimensional; it moves in all dimensions together. Watch the statue of Buddha or sometimes look into my eyes and you will find both together - a blissfulness, a peace, a sadness also.
What is wrong with enjoying yourself? What is wrong in being happy? If there is anything wrong it is always in your unhappiness, because an unhappy person creates ripples of unhappiness all around him. Be happy!
And then comes unhappiness, and one does not become unhappy either. One says, 'A black cloud passing. I am the witness, the watcher.'
I am not saying that you should renounce things, that you should escape from your home and renounce the marketplace. No, don't misunderstand my statement. What is, is good. Nothing will happen either by dropping things and escaping from them or by clinging to them. Remain where you are, but begin the search within. Much outer searching has already been done, now go within. Now know the one, in this knowing one attains all. All desires are at once fulfilled.
Many times people come to me to be reassured. They ask, they say, 'I'm feeling very happy and blissful. What do you say?' What is the need to say anything? The very need shows that the happiness is unreal and imaginary.
You will find a blissfulness which contains in it sadness also, because that sadness gives it depth. Watch Buddha's statue - blissful, but still sad. The very word sad gives you wrong connotations - that something is wrong. This is your interpretation. To me, life in its totality is good.
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.
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