Happiness turning into unhappiness simply shows that the two are not separate – maybe two aspects of the same coin. And if you have one side of the coin, the other is always there hidden behind it, waiting for its opportunity to assert – and you know it. When you are happy, deep down somewhere is the lurking fear that it is not going to last, that sooner or later it will be gone, that the night is descending, that any moment you will be engulfed into darkness, that this light is just imaginary – it can’t help you, it can’t take you to the other shore.
Your happiness is not really happiness but only a hidden unhappiness. Your love is not love but only a mask for your hate. Your compassion is nothing but your anger – cultivated, sophisticated, educated, cultured, civilized, but your compassion is nothing else than anger. Your sensitivity is not real sensitivity but only a mental exercise, a certain attitude and approach practiced.
Remember: the whole humanity is being brought up with the idea that virtue can be practiced, that goodness can be practiced, that one can learn how to be happy, that one can manage to be happy, that it is within your power to create a certain character which brings happiness. And that is all wrong, utterly wrong.
The first thing to be understood about happiness is that it cannot be practiced. It has only to be allowed, because it is not something that you create. Whatsoever you create is going to remain something smaller than you, tinier than you. What you create cannot be bigger than you. The painting cannot be bigger than the painter himself and the poetry cannot be bigger than the poet. Your song is bound to be something smaller than you.
If you practice happiness you will be always there at the back, with all your stupidities, with all your ego trips, with all your ignorance, with all your chaos of the mind. With this chaotic mind you cannot create a cosmos, you cannot create grace. Grace always descends from the beyond; it has to be received as a gift in tremendous trust, in total surrender. In a state of let-go true happiness happens.
But we have been told to achieve, to be ambitious. Our whole mind has been cultivated to be that of an achiever. The whole education, culture, religion, they all depend on this basic idea that man has to be ambitious; only the ambitious man will be able to attain fulfillment. It has never happened, it will never happen, but so deep is the ignorance that we go on believing in this nonsense.
No ambitious person has ever been happy; in fact, the ambitious person is the unhappiest in the world. But we go on training children to be ambitious: “Be the first, be at the top, and you will be happy!” And have you ever seen anybody at the top and happy together? Was Alexander happy when he became a world conqueror? He was one of the unhappiest men who has ever lived on the earth. Seeing the blissfulness of Diogenes he became jealous. Becoming jealous of a beggar…?
Diogenes was a beggar; he had nothing, not even a begging bowl. At least Buddha had a begging bowl with him and three robes. Diogenes was naked and with no begging bowl. In the beginning he used to carry a begging bowl; he must have got the idea from the East. He’s exactly a man like Buddha, Mahavira – more like Mahavira. Mahavira also lived naked with no begging bowl; his hands were his begging bowl.