Happiness does not only come from
achievement. When you were a child you were simply happy. That is your
nature. If you go against your own nature to be happy, you will never
get anywhere. To be happy is not the ultimate aspect of life. It is the
fundamental aspect of life. If you are not happy, what else can you do
with your life? Only if you are happy, can other great possibilities
arise in your life.
The first and most fundamental
responsibility for a human being is to become a joyous being. It does
not matter what you are pursuing in your life, whether it is business,
power, education or service, you are doing so because somewhere deep
inside you is a feeling that this will bring you happiness. Every single
action that we perform on this planet springs from an aspiration to be
happy because it is the original nature. Today we are seeking happiness
so vigorously that the very life of the planet is being threatened. All
those people, who depend on external situations to be happy, will never
know true joy in their lives.
The source of joy is within you; you can
take charge of it. When you are fundamentally joyous, when you do not
have to do anything to be happy, then every dimension of your life – the
way you perceive and express yourself and the world – will change. You
will no longer have vested interests because whether you do something or
you do not do something, whether you get something or do not get
something, whether something happens or does not happen, you will be
joyous by your nature. When you are joyous by your nature, your actions
will rise to a completely different level.
It is definitely time we look inward and
see how to create personal wellbeing. From your own experience of life
you can clearly see that true wellbeing will come to you only if your
interiority changes. At present, the quality of your life is not
determined by the clothes that you wear,
the educational qualifications that you carry, the family background
that you come from or the bank balances that you hold. Rather, the
quality of your life depends upon how peaceful and joyous you are within
yourself.
Unless something of true value happens
within you, you cannot do anything of tremendous value to the world.
Whatever you do, it is only your inner quality that you are going to
spread. Whether you like it or not, that is the reality. If you are
concerned about the world, the first thing you must do is transform
yourself into a joyous being.
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Suffering-its Mechanics
There are two ways people can suffer.
Generally, people think in terms of physical suffering and mental
suffering. Physical suffering could be caused in different ways but 90%
of human suffering is mental, which is caused within ourselves. People
create suffering for themselves everyday – suffering anger, fear,
hatred, jealousy, insecurity and so many other things. This is the
maximum suffering in the world.
Why is humanity suffering? Let us
understand the mechanics of suffering. Today morning, did you see that
the sun came up wonderfully well? The flowers blossomed, no stars fell
down, the galaxies are functioning very well. Everything is in order.
The whole cosmos is happening wonderfully well today but just a worm of a
thought worming through your head makes you believe it is a bad day
today. Suffering is happening essentially because most human beings have
lost perspective as to what this life is about. Their psychological
process has become far larger than the existential process, or to put it
bluntly, you’ve made your petty creation far more important than the
Creator’s creation. That is the fundamental source of all suffering. We
have missed the complete sense of what it means to be alive here. A
thought in your head or an emotion within you determines the nature of
your experience right now. The whole creation is happening wonderfully
well but just one thought or emotion can destroy everything. And your
thought and emotion may have nothing to do even with the limited reality
of your life.
What you call as “my mind” is not yours actually. You don’t have a mind
of your own. Please look at it carefully. What you call as “my mind” is
just society’s garbage bin. Anyone and everyone who passes by you
stuffs something into your head. You really have no choice about whom to
receive from and whom not to receive from. If you say, “I don’t like
this person,” you will receive a lot more from that person than anyone
else. You really don’t have a choice. If you know how to process and use
it, this garbage is useful. This accumulation of impressions and
information that you have gathered is only useful for survival in the
world. It has got nothing to do with who you are.
If you take a closer look at your own life, you will see the same
repetition happening, because as long as you are functioning only
through the prism of the mind, you are functioning only with the old
data. The past is carried only in your mind. Only because your mind is
active, past exists.
From Psychological to Existential
When we talk about a spiritual process,
we are talking about shifting from psychological to existential. Life
is about the creation that is here, knowing it absolutely and
experiencing it the way it is; not distorting it the way you want. If
you want to move into existential reality, to put it very simply, you
just have to see that what you think is not important, what you feel is
not important. What you think has nothing to do with reality. It has no
great relevance to life. It is just chattering away with nonsense that
you have gathered from somewhere else. If you think it is important, you
will never look beyond that. Your attention naturally flows in the
direction of whatever you hold as important. If your thought and your
emotion is important, naturally your whole attention will be right
there. But that is a psychological reality. That has nothing to do with
the existential.
Suffering is not showered upon us, it is
manufactured. And the manufacturing unit is in your mind. It is time to
shut down the manufacturing unit.
The whole effort of spiritual sciences has
always been how to transcend the mind, how to look at life beyond the
limitations of the mind. Many people have defined yoga in many different
ways. People say, “If you become one with the universe, it is yoga.”
“If you go beyond yourself, it is yoga.” “If you are no longer subject
to the laws of the physical, it is yoga.” All these things are fine and
fantastic definitions, there is nothing wrong with them, but in terms of
your experience, you cannot relate to them. Someone said, “If you
become one with God, you are in yoga.” You don’t know where you are. You
don’t know where God is. How to become one?
But Patanjali nailed
it this way – “To rise above the modifications of your mind, when you
cease your mind, when you cease to be a part of your mind, that is
yoga.” All the influences of the world are entering you only through the
instrument of the mind. If you can rise beyond the influence of your
mind in full awareness, then you are naturally one with everything. The
separation – you and me, time and space – has come only because of the
mind. It is a bondage of the mind. If you drop the mind, you have
dropped time and space. There is no such thing as this and that. There
is no such thing as here and there. There is no such thing as now and
then. Everything is here and now.
If you rise above all the modifications and manifestations of the m
(source : sadhguru's speech)
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