happiness

I want to be happy and I am happy , why don't you.

2007-03-23T05:40:00.000-07:00

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to
visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into
complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the
professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee
and an assortment of cups - porcelain,
plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some
exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:
"If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up,
leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for each of
you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your
problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was
coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and
were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are
the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality
of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup,
we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."

So, don't let the cups only drive you... enjoy the coffee
(instead)also.....

"Everything is okay in the end.
If it's not okay, then it's not the end..."

Article of happiness by OSHO

2007-01-19T21:22:00.000-08:00

A very rich man once wanted to become happy.

A very rich man once wanted to become happy. He had tried all kinds of ways but everything had failed. He went to many saints; nobody could help him. Then somebody suggested: 'You go to Mulla Nasruddin. He lives in a certain town - he is the only man who can be of some help to you.'
The man went with a bag full of diamonds, and he showed the bag to Mulla Nasruddin who was sitting underneath a tree outside the town, resting under the sun. And he said: 'I am a very miserable man - I want happiness. I am ready to give anything for it, but I have not tasted even once what happiness is - and death is coming closer. Can you help me? How can I be happy? I have all kinds of things that the world can give to me, yet I am unhappy. Why?'
Mulla looked at the man, and it happened so fast that the rich man could not understand what was happening. He just jumped on the man, took away the bag, and ran.
Of course the man followed, crying, shouting: 'I have been cheated, robbed!'
Mulla knew all the streets of the town, so he was going zigzag, this way and that. And the rich man had never run in his life, and he was crying and tears were flowing down, and he said: 'I have been robbed absolutely - that was my whole life's earnings. Save me, people! Help me!'
And a crowd followed. And by the time they reached Mulla, the Mulla had come back to the place where the rich man had found him. The rich man's horse was still standing there, Mulla was sitting under the tree. The rich man was crying, breathing hard. And Mulla gave the bag back to him.
The rich man said: 'Thank God!' And such tears of joy, and such peace.
Mulla said: 'Look, I have made you happy. Now you know what happiness is? This bag has been with you for years and you were unhappy. It had to be taken away from you.'

Happiness is part of unhappiness. That's why happiness should not be the goal of your life, because if you want happiness you will have to remain unhappy. The unhappier you are, then only a few moments, few and far between, will be those of happiness.
The goal is not happiness, the goal is bliss. Don't ask me: 'What is happiness?' because that shows you are searching for happiness. If you have come here in search of happiness, you have come to the wrong place. Go to Mulla Nasruddin.
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.'
And then comes unhappiness, and one does not become unhappy either. One says: 'A black cloud passing - I am the witness, the watcher.'

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

India my Love, Chapter 5, The Fragrance of the Eas

2006-10-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

Happiness

THE TIME TO BE HAPPY IS NOW
THE PLACE TO BE HAPPY IS HERE.
AND THE WAY TO BE HAPPY IS TO
…SHARE YOUR MEMORIES
WITH THOSE NEAR AND DEAR.

What do I want out of life, how best do I get it, and what factors do I need to consider?

What I want out of life is happiness. This is always true, no matter how you look at it or reconsider things - everything boils down to a desire for contentment.

How do I achieve happiness? My first thought is that in the simplest situation, I should be able to become happy by fulfilling all my needs. But "needs" are fictional. What we universally classify as "basic needs" - food, water, shelter, et al - are what are required to stay alive. However, we do not "need" to stay alive, if you think about it. We want to stay alive. Therefore, almost any need we come across has a want at its heart. This is important to remember. It means that any "needs" you find defined by any source are essentially false. So, hereafter, "needs" and "wants" should be taken to mean essentially the same thing.

Now some people fool themselves into thinking that they should be happy once they have all their needs, and if, once they have all that they think that they need and are still not happy then they are greedy or malcontent. This is dumb, because what they think they need has been arbitrarily defined, either by themselves based on certain perceived criteria on their part, or, as is more often the case, by the combined pressures of society, and religion. Essentially, happiness is happiness, and if for some reason you want more than society has defined that you need, then it doesn't mean you're malcontent, it means that the needs you have defined are not complete. You can be happy by fulfilling all your needs, but first you must seek and define your needs, and everybody's needs vary. So to be happy, you have to be honest with yourself.

Now, thinking along these lines, it seems that your needs are defined and limited by how much you know: because, while you may not want everything, the more you know exists, the more things in that there are to want. What you want is a percentage, or in some other way related to, how much you know. Now, morality and to some extent religion define wanting all the desirable things of which you know as "greed" and further says that this is somehow wrong. This would be appear to be illogical in any case - how can wanting be wrong? It's just a thought. Surely it would be the acquisition and the means of acquisition which, if at all, would be "wrong" but my opinion is that this too is false. A basic human characteristic is desire, and in nearly all cases this desire seems to extend endlessly, defined by the level of knowledge for an individual. The only apparent exception occurs in the case of the "good Samaritan," the person who "lives to help others," and those who feel guilt through acquisition. In nearly all cases, again, these would appear to be cases of self-delusion, albeit in some cases admirable self-delusion - while doing good by the abandonment of worldly goods may cause happiness, it seems to me unlikely that this happiness would be greater than that obtained by fulfilling all one's needs. For some people, however, religious and/or social brainwashing will have made these the only ways to achieve happiness.

With analysis, it becomes apparent that knowledge therefore also limits one's happiness through interaction with the real world and by the fact that no knowledge is discrete. If for instance all somebody wants is good-tasting food within easy reach and a dry place to sleep, the knowledge required to remain constantly happy in that state is vast: one must learn farming, and all its inherent skills such as animal husbandry and/or agriculture, and one must have a knowledge of construction to the extent that a dry place to sleep can be maintained indefinitely. This knowledge leads on to other knowledge: how to make a comfortable place to sleep, how to get more food, how to store food so it doesn't have to be killed every day - these are all things that the previously-happy person will now become unhappy desiring. This same knowledge, in certain cases, will produce unhappiness another way, through interaction with the real world: if one lives in a swamp, or the animals you were farming die, one's knowledge of a dry place to sleep and easy-to-reach food makes one unhappy.

Think of a graph of happiness with increasing knowledge. At no knowledge, you want nothing and get nothing, so your happiness is total, or infinite, depending upon whether you think there is a limit to happiness. Ignorance is supreme happiness. Then, as knowledge increases, happiness decreases exponentially to some limit. Now, factor in the happiness obtained for a level of knowledge, assuming this arbitrarily to be a straight-line function of the amount of knowledge. Thus, although there is infinite happiness at no knowledge, there is also infinite happiness at infinite knowledge, and since no one has no knowledge, this is the only approachable point of happiness. It also suggests that there is a low point of happiness at one stage, when one's unhappiness due to knowledge of what one does not have is least balanced by happiness at what one does have. Experience shows that this happens frequently on a personal and even on a social level.

Thus, the way to be happy is to get as much knowledge as possible.
But what form of knowledge? And what about:

Power?
Money?
Acceptance?
Love?

How do they factor in? Are they all knowledge?

This clearly requires a lot more thinking about. Maybe one day I'll do it.

source-http://www.seldo.com/articles/howtobehappy.php