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- Misery is a by-product, so is bliss.
Misery is a by-product of being asleep, bliss is a by-product of
being awake. Hence you cannot seek and search for bliss directly,
and those who seek and search for bliss directly are bound to fail,
doomed to fail. Bliss can be attained only by those who don't seek
bliss directly; on the contrary, they seek awareness. And when
awareness comes, bliss comes of its own accord, just like your
shadow, unshakable.
- When you feel blissful you are right,
moving in exactly the way you should move. Because bliss increases
only when you are approaching closer to God, and in no other way. If
you are going away from God, anguish arises. You feel more and more
frustrated, more and more bored, more and more miserable. Misery is
an indication that you are going astray, a natural indication that
you have lost track of truth. Bliss simply says that you are falling
in line with the whole. Things are becoming harmonious, the garden
of the Beloved is coming closer: the air feels cooler, winds bring
the fragrance of the flowers, freshness, a new thrill, a new
enthusiasm. Then you are moving towards the garden of the Beloved.
Maybe you cannot see yet, but the direction is right.
- Bliss is true happiness. What you call
happiness is just misery in disguise. What you call happiness is
nothing but entertainment, pleasure. It is momentary -- it cannot be
true. Truth has to have one quality, and the quality is of eternity.
If something is true it is eternal; if it is untrue it is momentary.
True happiness is found only when the mind completely ceases
functioning. It does not come from the outside. It wells up within
your own being, it starts overflowing you. You become luminous. You
become a fountain of bliss.
- Sometimes it happens that you become one,
in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it
-- and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia; you
relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the
Himalaya peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not
be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You
fall together. Or, listening to beautiful music, you fall together.
Whenever, in whatsoever situation, you become one, a peace, a
happiness, a bliss, surrounds you, arises in you. You feel
fulfilled. There is no need to wait for these moments -- these
moments can become your natural life. These extraordinary moments
can become ordinary moments -- that is the whole effort of Zen
- Don't wait for some great bliss to descend
on you. It never happens. Great bliss is nothing but small pleasures
accumulating in your being. The total of all the small pleasures is
the great bliss. Eating, enjoy it. Drinking, enjoy it. Taking a
bath, enjoy it. Walking, enjoy it. Such a beautiful world, such a
beautiful morning, such beautiful clouds...what else do you need to
celebrate? The sky full of stars...what more do you need to be
prayerful? The sun rising from the east...what more do you need to
bow down? And amidst a thousand and one thorns a small roseflower
arises, opening its buds, so fragile, so vulnerable, yet so strong,
so ready to fight with the wind, with the lightning, with the
thunderings. Look at the courage...what more do you need to
understand trust?
- It is up to you to make whatsoever you
want out of your life. An enlightened consciousness makes even death
beautiful. An unenlightened consciousness makes even life ugly. For
an enlightened consciousness, only beauty exists -- only beauty;
only bliss exists -- only bliss.
- The Bauls belong to the seventh type --
joy, celebration, song, dance, ecstasy -- ANAND. They make
meditation tremendously joyful -- because a person can be meditative
and can become sad. A person can be meditative and can become very
silent and may miss bliss. Because meditation can make you silent,
absolutely still, but unless dance happens in it, something is
missing. Peace is good, peace is very beautiful, but something is
lacking in it; bliss is lacking. When peace starts dancing it is
bliss. When peace becomes active, overflowing, it is bliss. When
bliss is enclosed in a seed it is peace. And when the seed has
sprouted, not only that, but the tree has bloomed and the flowers
have come and the seed has become a bloom, then it is SAMADHI. That
is the highest type of religion.
- Accept your responsibility for misery, and
you will find that just hidden inside you are all the causes of
bliss, freedom, joy, enlightenment, immortality.
- I am here, available. If you are thirsty,
move closer to me. And soon you will know that light, that insight,
that explosion of bliss in which there is no choice. Enlightenment
is choicelessness. But don’t misunderstand me. Before that, you will
have to move very cautiously, choosing the right against the wrong,
choosing the truer so that you can reach to the ultimate truth.
- If a person can go into his sorrow deeply
he will find all sorrow has evaporated. In that evaporation of
sorrow is joy, is bliss. Bliss has not to be found outside, against
sorrow. Bliss has to be found deep, hidden behind the sorrow itself.
You have to dig into your sorrowful states and you will find a
wellspring of joy.
- Bliss is a taste, a feel, and so
overwhelming and so intense, that once you have got it you cannot
believe how you have been missing it all along: “i cannot figure it
out because it is simply there. It was always there; how did I
manage to miss it for so many lives?” Once you get it, that is the
problem that arises: how have you been missing it? Bliss is just
sitting at the very center of your being, ready to be remembered.
- Buddha says,'Don't be worried about happiness, about bliss.
Don't talk about SATCHITANAND, don't talk about ultimate bliss --
there is no need. Just know how not to cause suffering.' If
suffering is not there, the very absence of suffering is bliss,
because bliss is your intrinsic nature. It is not something that
comes from the outside.
- Bliss has no counterpart to it. That is
the first thing to understand. Pleasure has pain, happiness has
unhappiness, but bliss has nothing as a counterpart; it is an
organic whole. Gautam the Buddha used to say, “If you taste the
ocean from anywhere, it is salty.” So is the case with the bliss:
you can taste it from any corner, from any space, from any direction
— -it is just blissfulness. There is nothing opposite to it. Bliss
is the only experience in life which has no polar opposite to it.
That’s why, once you are blissful, you cannot fall back. There is no
way to be unblissful again. I have tried but nothing succeeds.
- Don't be bothered with the next moment, or the next life, or the
next world. Make this moment rejoicing, make this moment a moment of
bliss, and the next will follow it, and the next life, and the next
world. And everything that you are this moment is going to become
deepened more and more. And when you see that you are responsible
for your bliss, your bliss will be far more. When you see that
nobody has given it to you, that you have not been a beggar, that it
is not a gift from somebody else -- because nobody has given it to
you, nobody can take it away -- when you see this you will be far
happier.
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