According to Osho, delight is your inherent nature; it appears the instant you stop preventing it. You don’t achieve bliss—you simply cease the effort that maintains misery, like a fist that opens when you stop clenching. Taking total responsibility ends the need for explanations and scapegoats. It’s your choice, right now: the inner “weather” is self-made, and you can stop making the storm at any moment.
Yes—happiness is already inside you; just stop holding tight to the thoughts and excuses that make you unhappy, like relaxing a clenched fist.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
It keeps occurring to me that is is incredibly easy for all my rubbish to just fall away and disappear -- that I could just choose to be delighted all the time right now. Am I kidding myself? Is it really that easy? That's ridiculous.
VANDANA, IT IS RIDICULOUS, BUT STILL IT HAPPENS, It is unbelievable, but it is true. Truth is always unbelievable because truth is a mystery. That which you can believe, cannot be true. Just because YOU can believe, it can't be true. All that you can believe must be a lie. You ARE a lie; you can believe only in lie. Truth is too much -- it looks ridiculous, it looks absurd, because it is paradoxical and illogical. Yes, it is so. You say: IT KEEPS OCCURRING TO ME THAT IT IS INCREDIBLY EASY FOR ALL MY RUBBISH TO JUST FALL AWAY AND DISAPPEAR... Yes, it is so, Vandana. It is absolutely easy. In fact, you need not drop it even. Just don't go on holding it, that's all. It is like a fist -- I can go keeping my fist closed, I am putting effort in closing it. But if…
If you know that it is a question of choice you are bound to choose happiness always. People think that we are victims; that is wrong, we are not victims. It is not that situations go on dragging us into unhappiness and sometimes into happiness, that we are just at the mercy of blind forces -- no, not at all, a thousand times no. Every moment we are choosing. Maybe our choie is unconscious, we may not ve consciously choosing, but choice is there. From this moment start becoming aware of it and you will be surprised: sometimes in the middle of your sadness suddenly the clouds disperse and it is sunny, because suddenly you see the point -- that you have chosen to be sad and there is no need to be sad!
When life itself is so fulfilling, overflowing, so blissful, then what is that which makes a man miserable?
So an egoist remains miserable, because to be happy one has to be happy with that which one has. You cannot be happy with that which you don't have; you can only be unhappy with that. You can be happy only with that which you have. How can you be happy with that which you don't have? And ego is always interested only in that which you don't have. You have ten thousand rupees -- ego is no more interested in it. It is interested in twenty thousand. By the time you have twenty thousand, it is no more interested in it. It is interested only in thirty thousand. And so on, so forth... it goes on. The ego only gives you goals, but whenever those goals arrive, it does not allow you to celebrate. One becomes more and more miserable! As life passes, we go on gathering misery, we…
Osho, a rain of bliss is pouring over me; I feel the urge to thank you for it. But I don’t know whether bliss is truly raining, or I am imagining it, or exaggerating!
The human mind is very troublesome. When there is suffering it believes; when there is joy it doubts. No one ever suspects suffering, wondering, “Perhaps this is only imagination!” Suffering you accept straight away—with great conviction and faith. I have never met a person who says, “I am very miserable, but I doubt whether I truly am or am just imagining it! Perhaps I am exaggerating my suffering!” No one says that. We accept suffering. We have great faith in it. But when the wave of bliss arrives, doubts begin to rise: maybe it’s imagination, maybe a dream, maybe self-hypnosis. Perhaps I have fallen into some delusion! Am I exaggerating? Am I going mad? A thousand such questions arise. This needs to be looked into. You accept suffering because suffering is the nature of the mind. You cannot accept bliss because bliss is not the nature of the mind. Bliss…
As a child, sundays have been something very special to me. Now, since a few days, I wake up every morning and go out, see the sun shining through the trees, hear the birds singing and get this feeling, 'ah, another sunday.' I put on my best clothes and have sunday for the whole day. What is happening to me?
Don't make a problem out of it. There are two types of values in life. One is intrinsic value. You sing a song -- it has an intrinsic value, it is the means and it is the end also. Or you sing a song in the marketplace to earn a little money. That money is not intrinsic to the song, that money is an outside value. And if you are singing your song only for the money, the activity is no longer holy, it is profane. If you are singing your song for the happiness that it brings to you.... Maybe as a by-product it brings money also, but that is irrelevant. If it brings, it is good, if it does not bring, that too is good -- but your activity has an inner glow to it, it is intrinsically valuable in itself. If you are happy that you could…