THE MIND BECOMES TRANQUIL BY CULTIVATING ATTITUDES OF FRIENDLINESS TOWARDS THE HAPPY, COMPASSION TOWARDS THE MISERABLE, JOY TOWARDS THE VIRTUOUS AND INDIFFERENCE TOWARDS THE EVIL.
MANY THINGS HAVE TO be understood before you can understand this sutra. First, the natural attitudes: whenever you see somebody happy, you feel jealous – not happy, never happy. You feel miserable. That’s the natural attitude, the attitude that you have already got. And Patanjali says the mind becomes tranquil by cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy – very difficult. To be friendly with someone who is happy is one of the most difficult things in life.
Ordinarily, you think it is very easy. It is not! Just the opposite is the case. You feel jealous, you feel miserable. You may show happiness, but that’s just a facade, a show, a mask. And how can you be happy? And how can you be tranquil, silent, if you have such an attitude?
Because the whole life is celebrating millions of happinesses happening all over the universe, but if you have an attitude of jealousy, you will be miserable, you will be in a constant hell. And you will be in a hell precisely because all over there is heaven. You will create a hell for you – a private hell – because the whole existence is celebrating.
If somebody is happy, what comes first to your mind? – As if that happiness has been taken from you, as if he has won and you are defeated, as if he has cheated you… Happiness is not a competition, so don’t be worried. If somebody is happy, it does not mean that you cannot be happy, that he has taken happiness – now how you can be happy. Happiness is not somewhere existing, which can be exhausted by happy people.
Why do you feel jealous? If somebody is rich, maybe it is difficult for you to be rich because riches exist in a quantity. If somebody is powerful in a material way, it may be difficult for you to be powerful because power is a competition. But happiness is not a competition. Happiness exists in infinite quantities. Nobody has ever been able to exhaust it; there is no competition at all. If somebody is happy, why do you feel jealous? And with jealousy enters hell in you.
Says Patanjali, when somebody is happy – feel happy – feels friendly. Then you also open a door towards happiness. In a subtle way, if you can feel friendly with someone who is happy, you immediately start sharing his happiness; it has become yours also – immediately! And happiness is not someTHING; it is not material. It is not something that somebody can cling to. You can share it. When a flower blooms, you can share it; when a bird sings, you can share it; when somebody is happy, you can share it. And the beauty is that it does not depend on his sharing. It depends on your partaking.
If it depended on his sharing, whether he shares or not, then it was totally a different thing. He may not like to share. But this is not a question at all, it does not depend on his sharing. When the sun rises in the morning you can be happy, and the sun cannot do anything about it. It cannot prevent you being happy. Somebody is happy: you can be friendly. It is totally your own attitude, and he cannot prevent you by sharing. Immediately you open a door, and his happiness flows towards you also.
This is the secret of creating a heaven all around you, and only within heaven can you be tranquil. How can you be tranquil in hell-fire? And nobody is creating it: you create it. So the basic thing to be understood is that whenever there is misery, hell, you are the cause of it. Never throw the responsibility on anybody else because that throwing of responsibility is escaping from the basic truth.
If you are miserable, only you – absolutely only you – are responsible. Look within and find the cause of it. And nobody wants to be miserable. If you can find the cause within you, you can throw it out. Nobody is standing in your way to prevent you. There is not a single obstacle to be happy.
But by being friendly towards happy people, you become attuned to happiness. They are flowering; you become friendly. They may not be friendly; that is none of your concern. They may not even know you – that doesn’t matter. But wherever there is a blooming, wherever there is bliss, wherever somebody is flower-ing, wherever somebody is dancing and is happy and is smiling, wherever there is celebration, you become friendly, you partake of it. It starts flowing within you, and nobody can prevent it. And when there is happiness all around you, you feel tranquil.
THE MIND BECOMES TRANQUIL BY CULTIVATING ATTITUDES OF FRIENDLINESS TOWARDS THE HAPPY…
With the happy, you feel jealous – in a subtle competition. With happy people, you feel; yourself inferior. You always choose people around you who are unhappy. You become friendly with unhappy people because with unhappy people you feel superior. You always seek somebody who is below you. You are always afraid of the higher; you always seek the lower, and the more you seek the lower, the lower you fall. Then even more lower people are needed.
Seek the company of those who are higher than you – higher in wisdom, higher in happiness, higher in tranquility, calmness, quiet, collectedness: always seek the company of the higher because that is the way how you become higher, how you transcend the valleys and reach to the peaks. That becomes a ladder. Always seek the company of the higher, the beautiful, the happy – you will become more beautiful, you will become more happy.
And once the secret is known, once you know how one becomes more happy, how with others’ happiness you create a situation for yourself also to be happy, then there is no barrier; then you can go as far as you like. You can become a god where no unhappiness exists.
Who is a god? A god is one who has learned the secret to be happy with the whole universe, with every flower and with every river and with every rock and every star, who has become one with this continuous eternal celebration, who celebrates, who doesn’t bother whose celebration is this. Wherever there is a celebration, he participates. This art of participating in happiness is one of the foundations if you want to be happy. It has to be followed.
Just the opposite you have been doing: if somebody is happy, immediately you are shocked. How is it possible? How come you are not happy and he has become happy? There is injustice. This whole world is cheating you and there is no God. If God is, how come you are not happy and others are becoming happy? And these people who are happy, they are the exploiters, they are tricky, cunning. They live on your blood. They are sucking others’ happiness.
Nobody is sucking anybody’s happiness. Happiness is such a phenomenon, there is no need to suck it. It is an inner flowering; it doesn’t come from the outside. Just by being happy with happy people you create the situation in Which your own inner flower starts blooming: THE MIND BECOMES TRANQUIL BY CULTIVATING ATTITUDES OF FRIENDLINESS…
You create the attitude of enmity. You can feel friendly with a sad person, and you think it is very virtuous. You can feel friendly with someone who is depressed, in misery, and you think it is something religious, something moral you are doing, but what are you doing, you don’t know.
Whenever you feel friendly with someone who is sad, depressed, unhappy, miserable, you create misery for you. It looks very irreligious, Patanjali’s attitude. It is not, because when you will understand his whole standpoint you will see what he means. He is very scientific. He is not a sentimental person, and sentimentality won’t help you.
One has to be very very clear: … COMPASSION TOWARDS THE MISERABLE…
Not friendliness – compassion. Compassion is a different quality; friendliness is different. Friendliness means you are creating a situation in which you would like to be the same as the other person is, you would like to be the same as your friend. Compassion means that someone has fallen from his state. You would like to help him, but you would not like to be like him. You would like to give him a hand; you would like to bring him up, cheer him up. You would like to help him in every way, but you would not like to be like him because that is not a help.
Somebody is crying and weeping, and you sit by the side and you start crying and weeping: are you helping him? In what way? Somebody is miserable and you become miserable; are you helping him? You may be doubling his misery. He was alone miserable; now there are two people miserable. But in showing sympathy to the miserable you are again playing a trick. Deep down, when you show sympathy to the miserable – and remember, sympathy is not compassion; sympathy is friendliness. When you show sympathy and friendliness to a depressed, sad, miserable person, deep down you are feeling happy. Always, there is an undercurrent of happiness. It has to be so because it is simple arithmetic: when somebody is happy, you feel miserable, then how is it possible when somebody is miserable you can feel unhappy? Somebody is happy you feel miserable; then somebody is unhappy, deep down you feel very happy.
But you don’t show it. Or if you are observed acutely even you show it – even in your sympathy there is a subtle current of happiness. You feel good; you feel cheered up really, that it is not you who is unhappy, and you are in a position to show sympathy – and you are higher, superior.
People always feel good when they can show sympathy to others; they are always cheered. Deep down they feel that they are not so miserable, thank God When somebody dies, immediately an undercurrent in you comes that you are still alive, thank God. And you can show sympathy and it costs nothing. Showing sympathy costs nothing, but compassion is a different thing. Compassion means you would like to help the other person; you would like to do whatsoever can be done; you would like to help him to come out of his misery. You are not happy about it, but you are not miserable also.
And just between the two exists compassion: Buddha is in compassion. He will not feel miserable with you because that is not going to help anybody, and he will not feel happy because there is no point in feeling happy. How can you feel happy when somebody is miserable? But he cannot feel unhappy also because that is not going to help. He will feel compassion. Compassion exists just in between these two. Compassion means he would like to help you to come out of it. He is for you, compassion means, but against your misery; he loves you, but not your misery. He would like to bring you up, but not your misery with you.
Tags: Yoga Sutra 10 Natural Attitude
