According to Osho, real understanding dawns when worldly satisfaction exposes its emptiness: outer gains cannot birth contentment. Use that disillusionment as a doorway - stop seeking outside and turn within to the hidden inner master. By contacting your own consciousness through love, inwardness, meditation, being awakens and contentment, your natural state, arises unconditionally. Unhappiness then dissolves, not by acquiring more, but by uniting with your inner source.
If having everything still feels empty, stop looking outside and gently look inside with loving awareness, because your built-in happiness wakes up there.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
In a worldly sense I am completely happy. But still, I am not happy. I do not understand the reason for my unhappiness. Could you indicate the way?
Only one who becomes completely happy in a worldly sense discovers that happiness is unreal. The unhappy never find out. The unhappy live in the hope that if they can find worldly happiness then everything will be alright. The hope of an unhappy person is very alive. In the eyes of a discontented man there is a flame of hope. Only in the eyes of the contented does the flame of hope vanish. This is why I continuously say that only the contented person, contented in the so-called worldly sense, can start off on the religious quest. When you have all the so called contentment and still you are not happy, then it becomes clear that there can be no contentment in 'this world.' Whatever you could collect on the outside, you have collected. Now you are in a situation where all illusions have broken, where all the mirages of…
Osho, in worldly terms I have every kind of comfort, yet I am still not happy. I don’t even understand the cause of my unhappiness. Please guide me.
Let there be recognition of the Divine; let a slight bond form, a thread of love. Even a raw, fragile thread of his love—and there is an endless shower of bliss. What cannot be obtained by possessing the whole world is obtained in a single moment of samadhi. The treasure is within. You have brought this treasure with you. Happiness is your nature. Happiness is not to be acquired. And no condition has to be fulfilled for happiness; happiness is unconditional, because happiness is your nature. To be unhappy is a distortion; to be happy is a spontaneous happening. Just as fire is hot—such is its nature—so for a human being to be blissful is his nature. Seeing a blissful person, do not think some specialness has occurred. The blissful person is the ordinary, simple person. Seeing a miserable person, understand that something has gone wrong, some abnormality is there.…
Osho, why does life feel futile? When I come to you I get a small glimpse of meaning, but it keeps slipping away.
Life is neither futile nor meaningful. Life is a blank canvas. Paint upon it whatever you wish. Life is a blank book—write abuses in it if you like, or write songs. In itself, life is nothing; life is a bare opportunity. Many people live with the illusion that life already has a meaning and wonder why they cannot find it. Meaning does not exist in life; it has to be put into it. The more you pour in, the more you will receive—no more. A flute lies before you and you sit there saying, “The flute is here, but why are there no notes in it?” Notes do not dwell inside a flute; they have to be born, awakened, poured in, coaxed to surge. Put it to your lips and play, and an incomparable music will arise. There is no ready-made meaning in life, as if you could walk into…
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?
They entered the city; people began removing turbans and caps, bowing. But the farmer said nothing. He remained silent. The emperor asked, “What is the matter? Do you understand?” The farmer said, “I am in a fix. You don’t remove your turban—and I don’t remove mine. So who is the emperor—you or I? This is a serious tangle.” Ego is such a delusion. Ego mistakenly believes itself to be the soul. Ego is not the soul—but both ride the same horse, very close. As a man rides a horse, his shadow too rides the horse. Similarly, with the soul rides the ego’s shadow. If the soul does not remove its hat, how will the shadow remove hers? The shadow too has a hat; she too struts, enjoying the full fun. You have taken the shadow to be yourself. When the shadow disappears, you will not. And the shadow must vanish…
The search for happiness can have two alternatives: either extrovert or introvert If it is extro it is going to fail, it is doomed to fail. If it is introvert it is bound to succeed... as inevitably as it is bound to fail if you search outside. And once tasted, it is yours forever. Once known it cannot be lost. Nobody s e it, nobody can destroy it -- not even death. Santosh Sindhu. Santosh means contentment; sindhu means an ocean -- an ocean of contentment. We are oceans, but of discontentment. We can be oceans of contentment too, because it is the same energy that becomes discontent; it can become contentment. It is the same energy standing upside-down. We are not to go in search of some new energy; all that is needed is already given.