Famous Quotes & Sayings

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

Why is it so? If live is a gift, all that belongs to and is intrinsic to life is going to be a gift. You can wait for it, you can be receptive to it, you can remain in a surrendered mood, waiting, patient, but you cannot demand, and you cannot force.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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...

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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.'

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

When you are happy you are ordinary, because to be happy is just to be natural. To be miserable is to become extraordinary. Nothing is special in being happy - trees are happy, birds are happy, animals are happy, children are happy. What is special in that? It is just the usual thing in existence. Existence is made of the stuff called happiness. Just look! - can't you see these trees?...so happy. Can't you see the birds singing?...so happily. Happiness has nothing special in it. Happiness is a very ordinary thing.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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?'

Rajneesh

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.'

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

A Sufi mystic who had always remained happy was asked.... For seventy years people had watched him, he had never been found sad. One day they asked him, 'What is the secret of your happiness?' He said, 'There is no secret. Every morning when I wake up, I meditate for five minutes and I say to myself, 'Listen, now there are two possibilities: you can be miserable, or you can be blissful. Choose.' And I always choose to be blissful.'

Rajneesh

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.'

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

And that third dimension brings bliss. Bliss is without any opposite to it. It is serene, tranquil, cool. It is ecstasy without any excitement.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

And then comes unhappiness, and one does not become unhappy either. One says, 'A black cloud passing. I am the witness, the watcher.'

Rajneesh

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.'

Rajneesh

Enjoyment is just the sound of being centered.

Rajneesh

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.

Rajneesh

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.

Socrates

Happiness is unrepented pleasure.

Socrates

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

Though the clown is often deadpan, he is a connoisseur of laughter.

John Milton

Then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A Paradise within thee, happier far.