When Life Is a Joy, Then Life Has Meaning

Osho,
The crises that you have so often warned about are now happening everywhere and people seem to be scared of the future. They seem to choose to cling to their misery rather than change and enjoy life. What is this attachment to misery? And why is it so difficult to be happy?

“Your question is significant: ‘What is this attachment to misery?’
“There are reasons. Just look into your misery, watch, and you will be able to find what the reasons are. And then look into those moments when once in a while you allow yourself the joy of being in joy, and then see what differences are there. These will be the few things: when you are miserable you are a conformist. Society loves it, people respect you, you have great respectability, you can even become a saint – hence your saints are all miserable. The misery is written large on their faces, in their eyes. Because they are miserable they are against all joy. They condemn all joy as hedonism; they condemn every possibility of joy as sin. They are miserable, and they would like to see the whole world miserable.”
To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Diogenes and the Dog

So all that talk of the pursuit of happiness is just bogus?

“Society is not interested in your happiness, in your joy. The interest of the society is more production, efficiency, more work – and don’t ask for what, because they don’t know for what. If you work hard they will say to create better situations – for what? – to work still harder. It is just like a man who earns money and you ask him ‘For what?’ He says, ‘To earn more money.’ ‘And then you earn more money, then what?’ He says ‘To earn still more money.’ The thing seems to be vicious.

The individual has totally different interests from the society, because the society has no soul. The society is soulless. And if you become too much a part of the society, it will reduce your soul also to a non-entity.

“Beware, before you have lost your whole opportunity. Don’t be a slave. Follow society to the point you feel is needed, but always remain master of your own destiny.”
To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Compassion Is the Purest Form of Love

It seems society is very successful at destroying our joy?

“Down the centuries, parents have been destroying people. They were destroyed by their parents, and so on and so forth. It seems to be a chronic state. Your parents were not happy; whatsoever they knew made them only more unhappy and more unhappy – and they trained you for it, and they have made a replica of themselves in you….
“So I am not saying that it is their responsibility; it is an unconscious, chronic state that perpetuates itself. So there is no need of complaining against your parents – that is not going to help. The day you understand it, you have to consciously drop it and come out of it.

Be an individual if you want to be happy.

“If you want to be happy, then start choosing on your own. There are many times when you will have to be disobedient – be! There are many times when you will have to be rebellious – be! There is no disrespect implied in it. Be respectful to your parents. But remember that your deepest responsibility is towards your own being.
“Everybody is dragged and manipulated, so nobody knows what his destiny is. What you really always wanted to do you have forgotten. And how can you be happy? Somebody who could have been a poet is just a moneylender. Somebody who could have been a painter is a doctor. Somebody who could have been a doctor, a beautiful doctor, is a businessman. Everybody is displaced. Everybody is doing something that he never wanted to do – hence unhappiness.
“Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you.

If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative.“

To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: From Happiness Meditation Flows
“Life is very simple; it is a joyful dance. And the whole earth can be full of joy and dance, but there are people who are seriously vested in their interest that nobody should enjoy life, that nobody should smile, that nobody should laugh, that life is a sin, that it is a punishment. How can you enjoy when the climate is such that you have been told continuously that it is a punishment? – that you are suffering because you have done wrong things and it is a kind of jail where you have been thrown to suffer?

I say to you life is not a jail, it is not a punishment. It is a reward, and it is given only to those who have earned it, who deserve it.

“Now it is your right to enjoy; it will be a sin if you don’t enjoy.
“It will be against existence if you don’t beautify it, if you leave it just as you have found it. No, leave it a little happier, a little more beautiful, a little more fragrant.”
To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Unless the Whole Existence

Is there a knack for enjoying life? What to do with the frustration in finding that nothing is ultimately satisfying – all is not enough?

I teach you the joy of the moment. Live in the moment, and whatsoever the moment makes available, enjoy it, celebrate it.

“While it lasts, dance! And when it has gone, be grateful that it had come. Why ask ‘… nothing is ultimately satisfying – all is not enough?’ Nothing can be done about it! This is so. This is how the reality is, and the reality is not going to change its ultimate law for you. No one can be an exception.
“But if this experience has not yet become your own, you will have to suffer a little more. You will have to hope a little more. When understanding arises, hope disappears. That does not mean that one becomes hopeless. That simply means that one accepts life as it is; whatever it gives, one accepts with gratitude and with no complaint….
“Learn to enjoy not only the pleasures of life but the pains too, not only the ecstasies but the agonies too. And the person who can enjoy the agonies is liberated.”
To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Life Cannot Be Reduced to Any Answer

When you say to enjoy the ecstasies and the agonies, this seems very difficult.

“When I say suffer joyfully it looks paradoxical and your mind starts thinking how to compromise both, because to you they are contradictory. They are not, they only appear contradictory. You can enjoy suffering.
“What is the secret – how to enjoy suffering? The first thing is: if you don’t escape, if you allow the suffering to be there, if you are ready to face it, if you are not trying somehow to forget it, then you are different. Suffering is there but just around you; it is not in the center, it is on the periphery. It is impossible for suffering to be in the center; it is not in the nature of things. It is always on the periphery and you are the center.

So when you allow it to happen, when you don’t escape, you don’t run, you are not in a panic, suddenly you become aware that suffering is there on the periphery, as if happening to someone else, not to you, and you are looking at it.

“A subtle joy spreads all over your being because you have realized one of the basic truths of life: that you are bliss and not suffering.”
To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Empty Your Cup

Can you say more about joy?

“Then what is joy?

Joy is a state of transcendence. One is neither happy nor unhappy, but utterly peaceful, quiet, in absolute equilibrium; so silent and so alive that his silence is a song, that his song is nothing but his silence.

“Joy is forever; happiness is momentary. Happiness is caused by the outside, hence can be taken away from the outside – you have to depend on others. And any dependence is ugly, any dependence is a bondage. Joy arises within, it has nothing to do with the outside. It is not caused by others, it is not caused at all. It is the spontaneous flow of your own energy.
“If your energy is stagnant there is no joy. If your energy becomes a flow, a movement, a river, there is great joy – for no other reason, just because you become more fluid, more flowing, more alive. A song is born in your heart, a great ecstasy arises.”
To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Live in Joy

Is joy something we need to search for? Or does it happen on its own accord?

“Live in your own innermost nature, with absolute acceptance of whosoever you are. Don’t try to manipulate yourself according to others’ ideas. Just be yourself, your authentic nature… and joy is bound to arise; it wells up within you.
“When the tree is taken care of, watered, looked after, it naturally blooms one day. When the spring comes there is great flowering. So is it with man. Take care of yourself. Find a right soil for your being, find a right climate, and go deeper and deeper into yourself. Don’t explore the world; explore your nature. Because by exploring the world you may have many possessions, but you will not be a master. But by exploring yourself you may not have many possessions, but you will be a master.

It is better to be a master of yourself than to be a master of the whole world.”

To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Live in Joy

W.H. Auden writes, “Dance till the stars come down from the rafters! Dance, dance, dance till you drop!” Is that the way?

“Yes, it happens. It is not something that you have to do. It is something that, even if you want not to do, you will find it impossible. You will find it impossible to resist. You will have to dance.
“The beauty of this, the beauty of now, the joy that existence is and the closeness of it… Yes, stars come down from the rafters. They are so close you can just touch them; you can hold them in your hands.”
To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit:  The Great Miracle of Zen
“The whole journey is inward. Going to the moon is not going to help. Going into yourself is the only way to be redeemed from misery, to be liberated from all that we are burdened with. The weight is too much, it is almost a Himalaya, and we are crushed underneath it, we cannot move. Once you have found the source of joy within you, you are free from all weight, you become weightless. And in that weightlessness life is freedom, life is joy, life is a celebration.”
Osho, Is the Grass Really Greener…?, Talk #26
“The very act of meditation is a great joy. Just to be able to dance, just to be able to sing, just to be able to sit silently and breathe and be, is more than enough. Don’t ask for anything else. Because of your asking you are corrupting your being. You have tried that way, now listen to me and try my way. You simply meditate.”
To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Just to Be Able to Dance
 
END
To read more about what Osho says about joy or any other subject you are interested in you can go to the OSHO Online Library.
It contains all the Osho books in English and Hindi which can be read and searched.

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