The Root Cause of Unhappiness
A sannyasin says:
I feel happy - happier than I have ever been
before.
Very good. Now don't lose track of it. It is very difficult to be
happy and very easy to be unhappy. People almost always choose the
easiest thing - and to be unhappy is very easy. It needs no talent
to be unhappy. Have you watched?
To be happy is a great talent. Great intelligence, great awareness -
almost a genius is needed to be happy. To be unhappy is nothing.
Even stupid people are unhappy. It is nothing.
And it is very easy to be unhappy because the whole mind lives
through unhappiness. If you remain happy for a longer time the mind
starts disappearing, because there is no connection between
happiness and the mind. Happiness is something of the beyond. That's
why the mind will create some problems sooner or later. Even when
there is no problem, the mind will create them - fantasy problems,
out of the blue, to make you unhappy. Once you are unhappy, the mind
is happy. You are back on earth then and things start moving in the
rut.
The mind is the root cause of unhappiness and whenever you are happy
you are mindless. Watch a moment of tremendous happiness. Suddenly
there are no thoughts. You are simply happy; not even the thought of
unhappiness is there. That too you have to recapture later on. Later
on you suddenly realise, 'Ah, so I have been happy for so many
minutes without any unhappiness arising, popping up!'
You recapture it only when it has passed. But in a really intense
moment of happiness there is no thought. It is pure. It is
completely empty of thoughts, so the mind is disturbed very much. It
lives through unhappiness. It has a great investment in unhappiness.
So watch that. Once one has learned how to be happy, one should by
and by start dropping habits of being unhappy. And they are simply
habits, nothing else.
It is unbelievable that people are unhappy just because of habits.
There is no causality for being unhappy. The world is absolutely
ready to make you happy. Everything is as it should be, but somehow
one goes on missing. One goes on living in one's own cloud - dark,
dismal. By and by one gets too attached to it. One almost starts
liking it. In fact without it, one will feel at a loss as to what to
do. People are wed to unhappiness. It is almost like a marriage
unknowingly.
So you have found a track; a window has opened. Now don't lose that
track. Whenever you see that the mind is arising again with its old
tricks, immediately jump out of it. Immediately do something to
distract yourself. Even jogging will do. A good jerk to the body
will do or slapping your face. Anything that gives a shock just a
cold shower or running around the house - anything that simply
changes the trend, and you will find that you have regained the
track. This is only for a few days.
Once you start living in happiness, once you know the taste of it
and it enters deeply into your being, there is no need then. It is
simply there.