Happiness vs sufferings ....

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.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------