VBT – Meditation 54.4
Being Happy Is Up to You
Being happy is up to you. It’s a choice you make, and it really is that simple. No one but you is responsible for your happiness, and no one but you can choose to be happy.
Happiness is man’s nature. You need not worry about happiness at all, it is already there. It is in your heart – you just have to stop being unhappy, you have to stop the mechanism functioning which creates unhappiness.
We keep searching for happiness but not finding it
Seeking, you will never find it. Finding, or the effort to find it, is a serious thing. It is here! – you need not find it. Start enjoying it! Start being cheerful at this very moment! Don’t try to find it, because if you try to find it you will remain serious. How can a seeker be non-serious?
You are searching for happiness and laughter and joy – you have to be serious, otherwise how will you search? Meanwhile you will remain serious, and the seriousness is getting stronger every moment. Tomorrow again you will search; but one day has passed – twenty-four hours’ more conditioning of seriousness is on you. You will find less laughter tomorrow; the day after tomorrow it will become even more difficult…and so on and so forth. And you will always be searching and seeking and trying to find.
Just be cheerful at this moment! Just see the point of it! Don’t postpone it – these are tricks of postponing. You don’t want to be happy; you still want to remain unhappy. You still want some new excuse to be unhappy. Now this is the excuse: ‘I am searching for happiness, I am searching for joy. Right now I am unhappy. I will be happy when I have found – but how can I be happy right now? I will have to find, and the journey is long and the path is arduous, an uphill task.’ So you can be happy with your unhappiness right now, and tomorrow we will see…and tomorrow never comes.
We didn’t realize being happy is simply a choice
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 anymore.’
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.
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