How can one achieve happiness?

Question: HOW IS ONE TO BE HAPPY? If you want to be happy, you will become unhappy: the very wanting will create unhappiness. That's why people are unhappy. Everybody wants to be happy and everybody becomes unhappy. Can't you see this? Have you ever met a man who does not want to be happy? If you have met such a man you will find he is happy. If you meet a man who says 'I don't want to be happy, I don't care a bit' then you will suddenly see, here is a man who is utterly happy. People who want to be happy you will find miserable, in the same proportion. If they want too much to be happy they will be too much unhappy -- the proportion of unhappiness will be the same as is their desire for happiness. What goes wrong?

Question: First question: Osho, I want to be happy. Whatever I do, I do it in the hope of being happy. Now I have come to practice religion also in that same hope. You say: dissolve the ego. It seems to me that if I dissolve the ego, I myself will be dissolved; then I won’t be there—so how will I be happy? Wouldn’t a miserable existence be preferable to losing my very existence? You ask: “I want to be happy. And whatever I do, I do in the hope of being happy.” That is true—everyone does. But note well: this itself breeds misery. For once, just for twenty-four hours, drop all wanting—even the want for happiness. In twenty-four hours nothing will be lost; what great harm can happen? After so many days of craving, what have you gained anyway? For twenty-four hours, take my word.

Question: Osho, can one not desire nothing but happiness in life? What we want—that only happiness remain—is not possible. Even if it did, happiness itself would begin to hurt. Hence, the one I call truly seeing is the one who looks at life in its reality, not through the lens of desire. There are two ways: one, to view life through desires. When I say, “I want only happiness,” I am not concerned with life; I am only saying, “I want.” I do not ask whether life has any concern for me. I was not, and life was; I will not be, and life will be—and not a leaf will stir, not a wave will tremble. Nothing at all will happen. What concern has life with my being or not being? I am here for two moments and I say, “It should be like this, it should be like that.

And for you? Even if the world were made exactly as you want it, there would be no change in your unhappiness—you might even become more unhappy. When your demands are fulfilled, you discover that after all that effort and toil, nothing was gained; you become even more miserable. To become a siddha, the sutra says: “By your own experience, know your own Self to be indivisible and be a siddha, and abide most joyfully in the non-conceptual Self.” Remain in that. Stay there. Abide, be established there. Be absorbed in that. Do not go out from it. Keep a little remembrance of this. Rising and sitting, seek unconditional happiness. Walking, sleeping, waking, eating, drinking—whatever the circumstance—seek unconditional happiness. Be happy. It sounds strange when we tell someone, “Just be happy.” He will ask, “How can I be happy?” Because our notion is that happiness must come from outside.

Bliss demands only one thing and that is the decisive factor. Misery allows you the ego and takes everything else. Bliss does not allow you the ego and gives you everything else, the whole existence. You have to decide. Either you choose the ego... then the kingdom of God is not yours; then you live in an egoistic, illusory world, surrounded by an ocean of misery. The ego can exist only in hell. That context is a must for the ego to exist. Any moment bliss can be victorious over you if you surrender the ego, if you drop the idea of "I," the idea of being separate from existence. You will be overflooded with bliss and you will have inexhaustible energy for creating. My sannyasins have to be creative, because my experience, my observation, is that only by being creative do you come closer to the creator.