It seems that man can not be happy. If you speak of your depression, of sadness, of unhappiness, everyone believes it; it seems natural. If you speak of your happiness, nobody believes you; seems unnatural. Happiness is something fictitious, that the human being cannot be happy. At most, we can make things a little more pleasant, but nothing more. At best, we can reduce unhappiness a little, but what is said to be happy, that man can not reach. It seems very pessimistic ... but if you look at humanity, that seems to be the situation; it seems that it is so. Only humans are unhappy. Something goes wrong in the deepest.

I tell you from experience: human beings can be happy, happier than birds, happier than trees, happier than stars because humans have something that has no bird, no tree, no star. We are aware. But to be aware, there are two alternatives: to reach happiness or unhappiness. You choose. Trees are happy because they cannot be unhappy. Your happiness is not a matter of freedom; they have to be happy. They do not know how to be unhappy; they have no other possibility. Birds that tread on trees are not happy by choice; they are simply happy because they know nothing else. Your happiness is unconscious, natural.

Humans can be tremendously happy and tremendously unhappy, and they are free to choose. That freedom is dangerous, that freedom is risky because you are only responsible. And something has happened with that freedom, something has gone wrong. The human being seems to be walking upside down. People go in search of meditation. You need meditation only because you have not chosen to be happy. Meditation is a medicine; If you are sick, you need medicine. As soon as you decide for happiness, as soon as you decide that you are going to be happy, you do not need meditation. Then the meditation begins to arise by itself.

If there are so many religions it is because there are many people unhappy. A happy person does not need any religion; a happy person does not need temples, nor churches because for a happy person the whole universe is a temple, the whole existence is a church. The happy person does not engage in religion because his whole life is religious. How much is done with happiness is a prayer: your work becomes a cult, your breathing itself is a wonder, a grace.

Happiness comes when you fit into your life when you fit so harmoniously that whatever you do gives you joy. Then you realize that meditation is after you. If you love the work you do, if you love your way of life, you are a person of meditation. Then nothing distracts you. When things distract you, that simply shows that you really do not care about those things.

They have distracted us with unnatural concerns: money, prestige, power. Listening to the birds will not provide you money. Listening to the birds will not give you prestige or power. Contemplating a butterfly will not help you economically, politically or socially. Those things are not lucrative, but those things make you happy. A true human being gets the courage to keep ahead of things that make him happy. He says: "I have chosen my path, I have chosen the birds, the butterflies, and the flowers. I cannot be rich, but it does not matter. I'm rich because I'm happy. " But humans have gone crazy.

The human being has gone completely crazy. As soon as you see money, you stop being yourself. As soon as you see power, prestige, you cease to be yourself. As soon as you see respectability, you stop being yourself. You immediately forget everything, you forget the intrinsic values of your life, your happiness, your joy, your joy. You always choose something from the outside and you exchange it with something from the inside. You gain the exterior and you lose the interior. But what are you going to do? Even if you have the whole world at your feet but you have lost yourself, even if you have conquered all the riches of the world and lost your inner treasure, what will you do with all your wealth? That is unhappiness.

If you have to learn something, it is to be alert, to be aware of your inner motivations, your inner destiny. Never lose sight of him, or you will be unhappy. And when you are unhappy, people will tell you, "Meditate and you will be happy." They will say to you: "Pray and you will be happy; go to the temple, be religious, become Christian or Hindu and you will be happy. Silly stuff. Be happy, and then meditation will come. Be happy, and religiosity will come later. Happiness is the fundamental condition.

But people only become religious when they are unhappy; then religion is pseudo-religion. Try to understand why you are unhappy. Many people write to me and tell me that they are unhappy and want me to teach them to reflect. I say that the first thing is to understand why one is miserable. If you do not eliminate these basic causes of your unhappiness, you will be able to reflect, but it will not help you much because the basic causes will remain there.

You can repeat a mantra, you can do some kind of meditation; it may help you a little bit in this or that, but it can only help you to remain what you are. It is not a transformation. Therefore, my proposal is for the really daring, for the daredevils who are willing to change their way of life, who are willing to play it all because there is really nothing to play: only your happiness, your unhappiness. But people still cling to that.

What else do you have to put in the game? Only your unhappiness. The only pleasure you have is talking about her. Look at people when they talk about their unhappiness, how happy they are. They pay for that; go to psychoanalysts to talk about their unhappiness and pay for it. Someone listens carefully, and they are delighted. People do not stop talking about their unhappiness. They even exaggerate, adorn it, to make it look bigger. They make it seem larger than it is in reality. Why? You have nothing to play but your unhappiness, but people cling to the familiar, the familiar. The only thing they have known is unhappiness; is your life. They have nothing to lose, but they are afraid of losing it.

As I see it, happiness comes first, joy comes first. A festive attitude comes first, a philosophy of affirmation of life. Enjoy! If you do not enjoy your work, change jobs. Do not wait, because the whole time you wait you are losing opportunities, and will never come. Hoping you will waste your life. What, who are you waiting for?

If you understand that you are miserable following a certain way of life, and all the old traditions say that you are wrong, I would like to say that the wrong thing is that way of life. Try to understand the difference. You are not wrong; the wrong thing is your way of life, the way of living that you have learned. The motivations you have learned and accepted as yours are not yours; they do not fulfill your destiny. Go against your principles, go against your element.

Remember: no one can decide for you. All his commandments, all his morality, serve only to render useless. You have to decide for yourself, you have to take your own life in your hands. In another case, life will knock at your door and you will not be there; you will always be somewhere else. If you were going to be a dancer, life comes out of that door because life thinks you should be a dancer. Call that door, but you're not: you're a banker. How would I know the life that you would be a banker? Life comes to you the way your nature wanted you to be; only knows the address, but never finds you there, because you are elsewhere, hiding behind the mask of another, with the outfit of another, with the name of another. 

Existence is still looking for you. Know your name, but you have forgotten that name. Know your address, but you have never lived in that direction. You've let yourself be distracted by the world. Your destiny can only find you one way, when you blossom inwardly, as the existence wanted you to be. Unless you find your spontaneity, unless you find your item, you can not be happy. And if you can not be happy, you cannot be meditative.

Why does the idea that meditation gives happiness arises in people's minds? In fact, whenever they have found someone happy they have found a meditative mind: the two things are associated. Whenever they have found a person in a beautiful, meditative environment, they have always seen that person to be immensely happy, resplendent of bliss, radiant. They associate it. 

People think that happiness comes when you meditate. Well, it's just the opposite: meditation comes when you are happy. But being happy is difficult and learning to meditate, easy. Being happy is a drastic change in your way of life, a sudden change because there is no time to lose. A sudden change, a break with the past. A thunderclap and all of a sudden the old customs are gone; you start again, from the beginning. You begin your life again as you would have done if you had not imposed that lifestyle of your parents, society, state, as you would have done if you had not been distracted. But you distracted yourself. You have to abandon all the models that have imposed you and find your inner flame.