Happiness

In america everybody seems to be tense and frustrated while in india even the beggars appear to be happy and contented. Why?

BECAUSE they are beggars. They cannot afford to be frustrated. Frustration first needs a few requirements to be fulfilled: it needs affluence. Only a rich society can be tense; a poor society cannot be tense. It has nothing to do with religion, remember -- because you have been told this again and again by the Indian so-called-spiritual peddlers who go to the West. They go on talking to you and saying that India is contented because it is religious. That is utter bulls hit. It has nothing to do with religion. India is simply poor, that's why India is contented. It will be difficult for you to understand why a poor man seems to be more contented. There are basic reasons. First, a poor man has much to hope for -- that hope brings contentment. A rich man has nothing to hope for -- all that he could have hoped…

Beloved Osho, religions try to make us disinterested in worldly happiness by saying that it is temporary and transient. But is not this very transiency the cause of it attraction?

The awakening of nonattachment is because of misery and anguish. Religion says that you must try to see that the momentary pleasure is followed by unlimited misery. And you also know it very well that whenever you found happiness, misery followed. Whenever you were happy, later on your eyes were full of tears. You fell down whenever you were vain. Bad luck started as soon as you thought that good luck was smiling on you. Religion says that if you want happiness which will not get lost and will not turn into misery then look for the eternal, the immortal, and wake up from this transient world. Time spent in dreams is time lost. Seek the truth. What is the definition of truth? The definition of truth is that which was always, which is always and which will be always. The definition of untruth is that which was not yesterday…

Osho, religions call worldly pleasures unstable and fleeting and thereby try to create dispassion in us. But isn’t it precisely their fleetingness that is also the reason for their attraction?

Certainly, it is so; transience itself is the cause of attraction. And religions do not create dispassion by merely declaring life transient. Religion says: wherever there is transience, suffering will follow like a shadow. Transience is not the cause of dispassion; the suffering that comes in its wake is. Transience attracts, it beckons. The faster life runs away, the more the mind says—Enjoy, quickly! Now it’s here, now it’s gone. Who knows when the curtain will fall? So enjoy as much as you can; live with the utmost urgency. Let not even a single moment go idle—suck it dry. Exhaust the full possibility of each moment. Transience is attraction. Death is approaching; that is precisely why we cling to life. If death did not come, who would cling to life? If pleasures came and never left, who would worry? The cause of attraction is transience. The faster a thing dissolves,…

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…