Is it true that money cannot buy happiness?

Question: BELOVED MASTER, IS IT TRUE THAT MONEY CANNOT BUY HAPPINESS? Anando, yes, it is true. Money cannot buy happiness -- but it makes misery more comfortable. That's why I am not against money, I am all for it. It is better to be comfortably miserable than uncomfortably miserable. I have lived in poverty and I have lived in richness, and believe me: richness is far better than poverty. Enough for today.

What is your attitude to money?

God has nothing to do with money. You can have God with as much money as you want, and you can have God without money, without as much money as you want. God has nothing to do with money. A rich man can become meditative, a poor man can become meditative. But my understanding is thins: that if a poor man wants to become meditative, he will need TREMENDOUS intelligence -- because he will have to see the futility of money which he does not have. He will need tremendous intelligence. Kabir must have been tremendously intelligent -- I think more intelligent than Buddha and Mahavir. My reason for saying so is this: Buddha had money, Mahavir had money. If they became fed-up, it is simple, it is logical. It is as simple as "two plus two are four." If Buddha had not renounced the palace, then it would have…

Beloved Osho, can you talk about money? What are all these feelings which are around money? What makes it so powerful that people sacrifice their lives for it?

Just by reading it you are not aware. Now, when I was talking to you about Sodom... in this new Bible they have made pictures of men making love to animals, women making love to animals. There is adultery, there is homosexuality, there is sodomy, there is rape. You name it and it is in the Bible! I have said that we should immediately order it. My people should start reading the real Bible! And order it immediately, because there is every possibility it will be prohibited. Never in the world has any book been so pornographic as this Bible. And they are not doing anything which is not in the Bible -- they are just making pictures of it. You can understand pictures better. Just reading the word `rape' is nothing, but when you see a series of rapes pictured, then you become suddenly aware -- this is a…

What is happiness?

HAPPINESS IS THE OTHER SIDE OF UNHAPPINESS. If you want to be happy, you will have to remain unhappy. The statement will look very paradoxical, but it is not. That's how life is. Only an unhappy person can be happy. Unhappiness creates the situation in which happiness can be felt. If you have been ill for many months, then suddenly when you become healthy again you feel tremendously happy. And you have been healthy before illness for years and years, and you were never so happy, not at all; you had not even taken any note of it. Now you are happy that you are healthy. Why? From where does this happiness come? It comes from your illness. Your illness created unhappiness, the background. Now you are healthy again and you can feel -- and you can feel only when something happens in contrast. When a poor man becomes rich…

Osho, can one not desire nothing but happiness in life?

What I am saying is: man is unhappy, therefore he wants to find happiness. And since he keeps seeking happiness but never sees that happiness and sorrow are two sides of the same coin, however much happiness he seeks he will remain unhappy—and keep seeking happiness. What I am saying is that fundamentally he fails to see that what he seeks is not happiness; a basic mistake is occurring. The mistake is that he is rejecting sorrow and seeking happiness, whereas happiness is a part of sorrow. That is, I am seeking birth and do not want to die; I am seeking youth and do not want to grow old. This is a great difficulty. If I want youth, old age is part of it; it is simply youth on the decline. When the flood has come, it must recede; when morning has happened, evening will be. Now I seek…