The third is joy; joy is spiritual. It is different, totally different from pleasure, happiness. It has nothing to do with the other: it is inner. It is not dependent on circumstances; it is your own. It is not a titillation produced by things; it is a state of peace, of silence, a meditative state. It is spiritual.

But Buddha has not talked about joy either, because there is still one thing that goes beyond joy. He calls it bliss. Bliss is total. It is neither physiological nor psychological nor spiritual. It knows no division, it is indivisible. It is total in one sense and transcendental in another sense. Buddha only talks about two words. The first is pleasure; it includes happiness. The second is bliss; it includes joy.

Bliss means you have reached to the very innermost core of your being. It belongs to the ultimate depth of your being where even the ego is no more, where only silence prevails; you have disappeared. In joy you are a little bit, but in bliss you are not. The ego has dissolved; it is a state of nonbeing.

Buddha calls it nirvana. Nirvana means you have ceased to be; you are just an infinite emptiness like the sky. And the moment you are that infinity, you become full of the stars, and a totally new life begins. You are reborn.

Pleasure is momentary, of time, for the time being; bliss is nontemporal, timeless. Pleasure begins and ends; bliss abides forever. Pleasure comes and goes; bliss never comes, never goes – it is already there in the innermost core of your being. Pleasure has to be snatched away from the other; you become either a beggar or a thief. Bliss makes you a master. Bliss is not something that you invent but something that you discover. Bliss is your innermost nature. It has been there since the very beginning, you have just not looked at it, you have taken it for granted. You don’t look inwards.

This is the only misery of man: that he goes on looking outwards, seeking and searching. And you cannot find it in the outside because it is not there.

One evening, Rabiya was searching for something on the street in front of her small hut. The sun was setting; slowly, slowly darkness was descending. A few people gathered. They asked the old woman – she was a famous Sufi mystic – “What are you doing? What have you lost? What are you searching for?”

She said, “I have lost my needle.”

The people said, “The sun is setting now and it will be very difficult to find a needle, but we will help you. Where exactly has it fallen? – because the road is big and the needle is so small. If we know the exact place it will be easier to find it.”

Rabiya said, “It would be better if you don’t ask me that question – because in fact it has not fallen on the road at all! It has fallen inside my house.”

The people started laughing and they said, “We had always thought that you are a little insane! If the needle has fallen inside the house, then why are you searching on the road?”