International Day of Happiness

March 20 is a global celebration to mark the United Nations International Day of Happiness. It is coordinated by Action for Happiness, a non-profit movement of people from 160 countries, supported by a partnership of like-minded organisations. In 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution which recognised happiness as a “fundamental human goal” and called for “a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes the happiness and well-being of all peoples”. Since then, a profound shift in attitudes is underway all over the world. People are now recognising that 'progress' should be about increasing human happiness and wellbeing, not just growing the economy.

As we continued to respond to the Covid pandemic, 2021’s theme revolved around taking action to “Build Back Happier” and make people’s overall wellbeing the top priority. And while we come close to the end of the pandemic this year, the theme for International Day of Happiness, 2022 is “ Keep Calm, Stay Wise, Be Kind”, three basic factors of attaining happiness.

Osho talks about happiness extensively in his discourses and says, “Man can be tremendously happy, and tremendously unhappy -- and he is free to choose. This freedom is hazardous. This freedom is very dangerous -- because you become responsible. And something has happened with this freedom, something has gone wrong. Man is somehow standing on his head. You have come to me seeking meditation. Meditation is needed only because you have not chosen to be happy. If you have chosen to be happy there is no need for any meditation... Once you have started choosing happiness, once you have decided that you have to be happy, then no meditation is needed. Then meditation starts happening of its own accord. Meditation is a function of being happy. Meditation follows a happy man like a shadow: wherever he goes, whatsoever he is doing, he is meditative…

So many religions are there because so many people are unhappy. A happy person needs no religion; a happy person needs no temple, no church -- because for a happy person the whole universe is a temple, the whole existence is a church. The happy person has nothing like religious activity because his whole life is religious. Whatsoever you do with happiness is a prayer: your work becomes worship; your very breathing has an intense splendor to it, a grace. Not that you constantly repeat the name of God -- only foolish people do that -- because God has no name, and by repeating some assumed name you simply dull your own mind. By repeating His name you are not going to go anywhere. A happy man simply comes to see God is everywhere. You need happy eyes to see Him.”

HAPPINESS IS UNBELIEVABLE. It seems that man cannot be happy. If you talk about your depression, sadness, misery, everybody believes it. It seems natural. If you talk about your happiness nobody believes you -- it seems unnatural. Sigmund Freud, after forty years of research into the human mind, working with thousands of people, observing thousands of disturbed minds, came to the conclusion that happiness is a fiction: man cannot be happy. At the most, we can make things a little more comfortable, that's all. At the most we can make unhappiness a little less, that's all. But happy man cannot be. Looks very pessimistic -- but looking at the modern man it seems to be exactly the case, it seems to be a fact.

Buddha says that man can be happy, tremendously happy. Krishna sings songs of that ultimate bliss -- satchitanand. Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God. But how can you believe so few people, who can be counted on the fingers, against the whole mass, millions and millions of people down the centuries, remaining unhappy, growing more and more into unhappiness, their whole life a story of misery and nothing else? And then comes death! How to believe these few people? Either they are lying or they are deceived themselves. Either they are Lying for some other purpose, or they are a little mad, deceived by their own illusions. They are living in a wish-fulfillment. They wanted to be happy and they started believing that they were happy. It seems more like a belief, a desperate belief, rather than a fact. But how did it come to happen that very few people ever become happy?

If you forget man, if you don't pay much attention to man, then Buddha, Krishna, Christ, they will look more true. If you look at the trees, if you look at the birds, if you look at the stars, then everything is shimmering in tremendous happiness. Then bliss seems to be the very stuff the existence is made of. Only man is unhappy. Something deep down has gone wrong. Buddha is not deceived and he is not Lying. And I say this to you, not on the authority of the tradition -- I say this to you on my own authority. Man can be happy, more happy than the birds, more happy than the trees, more happy than the stars -- because man has something which no tree, no bird, no star, has. Man has consciousness! But when you have consciousness then two alternatives are possible: either you can become unhappy or you can become happy. Then it is your own choice! Trees are simply happy because they cannot be unhappy. Their happiness is not their freedom -- they have to be happy. They don't know how to be unhappy; there is no alternative. These birds chirping in the trees, they are happy! not because they have chosen to be happy -- they are simply happy because they don't know any other way to be. Their happiness is unconscious. It is simply natural.

Man can be tremendously happy, and tremendously unhappy -- and he is free to choose. This freedom is hazardous. This freedom is very dangerous -- because you become responsible. And something has happened with this freedom, something has gone wrong. Man is somehow standing on his head. You have come to me seeking meditation. Meditation is needed only because you have not chosen to be happy. If you have chosen to be happy there is no need for any meditation. Meditation is medicinal: if you are ill then the medicine is needed. Buddhas don't need meditation. Once you have started choosing happiness, once you have decided that you have to be happy, then no meditation is needed. Then meditation starts happening of its own accord. Meditation is a function of being happy. Meditation follows a happy man like a shadow: wherever he goes, whatsoever he is doing, he is meditative. He is intensely concentrated.

The word 'meditation' and the word 'medicine' come from the same root -- that is very significant. Meditation is also medicinal. You don't carry bottles of medicines and prescriptions with you if you are healthy. Of course, when you are not healthy you have to go the doctor. Going to the doctor is not a very great thing to brag about. One should be happy so the doctor is not needed. So many religions are there because so many people are unhappy. A happy person needs no religion; a happy person needs no temple, no church -- because for a happy person the whole universe is a temple, the whole existence is a church. The happy person has nothing like religious activity because his whole life is religious. Whatsoever you do with happiness is a prayer: your work becomes worship; your very breathing has an intense splendor to it, a grace. Not that you constantly repeat the name of God -- only foolish people do that -- because God has no name, and by repeating some assumed name you simply dull your own mind. By repeating His name you are not going to go anywhere. A happy man simply comes to see God is everywhere. You need happy eyes to see Him.

What has gone wrong?

I have heard about a man who became very famous in Germany -- even today his statues are there and some squares and some streets are still named after him. His name was Dr. Daniel Gottlieb Schreber. He was the real founder of Fascism. He died in 1861, but he created the situation for Adolf Hitler to come -- of course, unknowingly.

This man "... had very pronounced views on how to bring up children. He wrote many books. Those books were translated into many languages. Some of them ran into fifty editions." His books were loved tremendously, respected tremendously, because his views were not exceptional -- his views were very common. He was saying things which everybody has believed down the centuries. He was the spokesman for the ordinary mind, the mediocre mind.

"Hundreds of clubs and societies were set up to perpetuate his thoughts, his ideas, and when he died many statues were installed, many streets were named after him.

"He believed in disciplining children from the time they were six months old" -- because he said if you don't discipline a child when he is six months old you will miss the real opportunity of disciplining him. When a child is very tender and soft, unaware of the ways of the world, make a deep imprint -- then he will always follow that imprint. And he will not even be aware that he is being manipulated. He will think he is doing all this of his own will -- because when a child is six months old he has no will yet; the will will come later on, and the discipline will come earlier than the will. So the will will always think: 'This is my own idea.' This is corrupting a child. But all the religions of the world and all the demagogues and all the dictatorial people of the world, and all the so-called gurus and the priests, they all have believed in doing this.

This seems to be the basic cause why man is unhappy, because no man is moving freely, no man is sensing, groping his path with his own consciousness. He has been corrupted at the very root. But Schreber called it discipline, as all parents call it. "He believed in disciplining children from the time they were six months old in such a way that they would never after question their parents and yet believe that they were acting of their own free will. He wrote that on the first appearance of self-will one has to..." stop it immediately, kill it immediately. When you see the child becoming a person, an individual, you have to destroy the first ray of his individuality, immediately, not a single moment should be lost. When the first appearance of self-will is noticed "... one has to step forward in a positive manner... stern words, threatening gestures, rapping against the bed... bodily admonishments, consistently repeated until the child calms down or falls asleep. "This treatment was needed only once or twice or at the most thrice," the doctor told people.

Make the child so afraid, shake him to his very roots! And those roots are very tender yet -- a six-month-old child. Threaten him with gestures, with a deep hatred, enmity in your eyes, as if you are going to destroy the child himself. Make it clear to the child that either he can live or his self-will -- both cannot be allowed to live. If he wants his self-will then he will have to die. Once the child comes to know that he can live only at the cost of self-will, he will drop his self-will and he will choose survival. That's natural! Survival one has to choose first; everything else comes secondary. "And then one is master of the child forever. From now on, a glance, a word or a single threatening gesture is sufficient to rule the child." What happened to his own children? Nobody bothered. Everybody liked the idea. Parents all over the world became very enthusiastic and everybody started trying to discipline their children. And that's how, according to Schreber, the whole of Germany was disciplined. That paved the way for Adolf Hitler.

Such a beautiful country, intelligent, became the victim of a fool who was almost mad. And he ruled the whole country. How was it possible? It is still a question which has not been answered. How could he rule so many intelligent people so easily, with such foolish ideas? These people were trained to believe; these people were trained not to be individuals. These people were trained always to remain in discipline. These people were trained that obedience is the greatest virtue. It is not! Sometimes it is disobedience which is the greatest virtue. Sometimes, of course, it is obedience. But the choice has to be yours: you have consciously to choose whether to obey or not to obey. That means you have consciously to remain the master in every situation, whether you obey or you disobey.

What happened to his own children? Just now the whole history of his children has come to light. "One of his daughters was melancholic and her doctor suggested putting her in a mad asylum. One of his sons suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized. He recovered, but eight years later had a relapse and died in a madhouse. His other son went mad and committed suicide." And the autopsies of both the sons proved that there was nothing wrong physically with their brains -- still both went mad: one died in a madhouse, another committed suicide. What happened? Physically their brains were perfect, but psychologically they were damaged. This mad father damaged all of his children. And that is what has happened to the whole of humanity.

Down the centuries, parents have been destroying people. They were destroyed by their parents, and so on and so forth. It seems to be a chronic state. Your parents were not happy; whatsoever they knew made them only more unhappy and more unhappy -- and they trained you for it, and they have made a replica of themselves in you. Arthur Koestler has coined a beautiful word for this whole nonsense. He calls it 'bapucracy'. 'Bapu' means father -- it is an Indian term. Indians used to call Mahatma Gandhi, 'bapu'. This word 'bapucracy' is perfect. India suffers more than any other country from bapucracy. The Indian leadership is still suffering from its bapu, Mahatma Gandhi. Each child is destroyed by the bapus. Of course, they were destroyed by their bapus. So I am not saying that it is their responsibility; it is an unconscious, chronic state that perpetuates itself. So there is no need of complaining against your parents -- that is not going to help. The day you understand it, you have to consciously drop it and come out of it.

Be an individual if you want to be happy. If you want to be happy, then start choosing on your own. There are many times when you will have to be disobedient -- be! There are many times when you will have to be rebellious -- be! There is no disrespect implied in it. Be respectful to your parents. But remember that your deepest responsibility is towards your own being. Everybody is dragged and manipulated, so nobody knows what his destiny is. What you really always wanted to do you have forgotten. And how can you be happy? Somebody who could have been a poet is just a moneylender. Somebody who could have been a painter is a doctor. Somebody who could have been a doctor, a beautiful doctor, is a businessman. Everybody is displaced. Everybody is doing something that he never wanted to do -- hence unhappiness. Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you. If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative. Then nothing distracts you. When things distract you, that simply shows that you are not really interested in those things.

The teacher goes on telling the small children: "Pay attention to me! Be attentive!" They are attentive, but they are attentive somewhere else. A cuckoo is crying with all its heart outside the school building, and the child is attentive -- nobody can say he is not attentive, nobody can say he is not meditative, nobody can say he is not in deep concentration -- he is. In fact, he has completely forgotten the teacher and the arithmetic that he is doing on the board. He is completely oblivious. He is completely possessed by the cuckoo. And the teacher says: "Be attentive! What are you doing? Don't be distracted!" In fact, the teacher is distracting. The child is attentive -- it is happening naturally. Listening to the cuckoo, he is happy. The teacher is distracting and the teacher says: "You are not attentive." He is simply stating a lie. The child was attentive. The cuckoo was more attractive to him, so what can he do? The teacher was not so attractive. The arithmetic has no appeal. But we are not born here to be mathematicians. There are a few children who will not be interested in the cuckoo. The cuckoo may go on getting madder and madder, and they will be attentive to the blackboard. Then arithmetic is for them. Then they have a meditation, a natural meditative state.

We have been distracted into unnatural motivations: money, prestige, power. Listening to the cuckoo is not going to give you money. Listening to the cuckoo is not going to give you power, prestige. Watching the butterfly is not going to help you economically, politically, socially. These things are not paying, but these things make you happy. A real person takes the courage to move with things that make him happy. If he remains poor, he remains poor; he has no complaint about it, he has no grudge. He says: "I have chosen my way -- I have chosen the cuckoos and the butterflies and the flowers. I cannot be rich, that's okay! But I am rich because I am happy." This type of man will never need any method to concentrate, because there is no need -- he is in concentration. His concentration is spread all over his life. Twenty-four hours he is in concentration.

Man has gone topsy-turvy. I was reading: Old Ted had been sitting on the edge of the river for some hours without getting a bite. The combination of several bottles of beer and a hot sun caused him to nod off, and he was completely unprepared when a lively fish got himself hooked, tugged at his line and woke him up. He was caught completely off balance and, before he could recover, found himself in the river.

A small boy had been watching the proceedings with interest. As the man struggled to get out of the water, he turned to his father and asked, "Dad, is that man catching a fish or is that fish catching a man?"

Man has gone completely topsy-turvy. The fish is catching you and dragging you; you are not catching the fish. Wherever you see money, you are no more yourself. Wherever you see power, prestige, you are no more yourself. Wherever you see respectability, you are no more yourself. Immediately you forget everything -- you forget the intrinsic values of your life, your happiness, your joy, your delight. You always choose something of the outside, and you bargain with something of the inside. You lose the within and you gain the without. But what are you going to do? Even if you get the whole world at your feet and you have lost yourself, even if you have conquered all the riches of the world and you have lost your own inner treasure, what are you going to do with it? This is the misery.

IF YOU CAN learn one thing with me, then that one thing is: Be alert, aware, about your own inner motives, about your own inner destiny. Never lose sight of it, otherwise you will be unhappy. And when you are unhappy, then people say: "Meditate and you will become happy!" They say: "Concentrate and you will become happy; pray and you will become happy; go to the temple, be religious, be a Christian or a Hindu and you will be happy!" This is all nonsense. Be happy! and meditation will follow. Be happy, and religion will follow. Happiness is a basic condition. People become religious only when they are unhappy -- then their religion is pseudo. Try to understand why you are unhappy.

Many people come to me and they say they are unhappy, and they want me to give them some meditation. I say: First, the basic thing is to understand why you are unhappy. And if you don't remove those basic causes of your unhappiness, I can give you a meditation, but that is not going to help very much -- because the basic causes remain there. The man may have been a good, beautiful dancer, and he is sitting in an office, piling up files. There is no possibility for dance. The man may have enjoyed dancing under the stars, but he is simply going on accumulating a bank-balance. And he says he is unhappy: "Give me some meditation." I can give him! -- but what is that meditation going to do? what is it supposed to do? He will remain the same man: accumulating money, competitive in the market. The meditation may help in this way: it may make him a little more relaxed to do this nonsense even better.

That's what TM is doing to many people in the West -- and that is the appeal of transcendental meditation, because Maharishi Mahesh Yogi goes on saying, "It will make you more efficient in your work, it will make you more successful. If you are a salesman, you will become a more successful salesman. It will give you efficiency." And American people are almost crazy about efficiency. You can lose everything just for being efficient. Hence, the appeal. Yes, it can help you. It can relax you a little -- it is a tranquillizer. By constantly repeating a mantra, by continuously repeating a certain word, it changes your brain chemistry. It is a tranquillizer! a sound-tranquillizer. It helps you to lessen your stress so tomorrow in the marketplace you can be more efficient, more capable to compete -- but it doesn't change you. it is not a transformation.

Just the other day, a small sannyasin asked me -- whenever he comes he asks beautiful questions -- very small, maybe seven years old. When he took sannyas... he must be courageous -- he took sannyas before his mother decided to take sannyas; he took sannyas before his father decided to take sannyas. Has an individuality of his own. He took sannyas and I asked him. "Have you something to say?"

He said, "Yes, what group should I do?"

And the other night he came and I asked, "Now, what do you have to say?"

He said, "What do you think about Maharishi?" A seven year-old child!

I told him, "Maharishi is a good man, a very nice guy -- but doing very ordinary work."

You can repeat a mantra, you can do a certain meditation; it can help you a little bit here and there -- but-it can help you to remain whatsoever you are. It is not a transformation. Hence, my appeal is only for those who are really daring, dare-devils who are ready to change their very pattern of life, who are ready to stake everything -- because in fact you don't have anything to put at the stake: only your unhappiness, your misery. But people cling even to that.

I have heard:

In a certain remote training camp, a squad of rookies had just returned to their billet after a day's route-march under the boiling sun.

"What a life!" said one new soldier. "Miles from anywhere, a sergeant who thinks he's Attila the Hun, no women, no booze, no leave -- and on top of all that. my boots are two sizes too small."

"You don't want to put up with that, chum," said his neighbor. "Why don't you put in for another pair?"

"Not likely." came the reply. "Taking'em off is the only pleasure I've got!"

Source:
Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.
Discourse Series: The Art of Dying, Chapter #10
Chapter title: Just a Hotch-potch
20 October 1976 am in Buddha Hall

References:
Osho has spoken on ‘Happiness, meditatio‘ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Dang Dang Doko Dang
2. A Sudden Clash of Thunder
3. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 4, 8, 11
4. The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3
5. The New Dawn
6. Philosophia Perennis, Vol 1
7. Tao: The Pathless Path, Vol 1
8. YAA-HOO! The Mystic Rose
9. Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 1, 6, 10
10. Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet
11. Beyond Psychology
12. Dogen, the Zen Master: A Search and a Fulfillment
13. The Rebel