Can’t You Be a Cause to Your Own Happiness?

"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. “Relationship is happiness coming from the other, but have you watched, when happiness is coming from the other it must be welling up in the other, otherwise how will it reach you? And your happiness is reaching the other, you are both enjoying each other’s happiness; you are drinking out of each other’s well. And the well is there, otherwise how can you drink? But the woman that you love thinks she is enjoying your happiness – you are making her happy, you are the cause of her happiness. And you are thinking she is the cause of your happiness. But if you can both be causes to each other’s happiness, can’t you be a cause to your own happiness?”

It All Depends on You

“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.’

“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.’

“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.”