Bliss: Living Beyond Happiness and Misery (Talks on The Shiva Sutras)

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Everyone is searching for happiness, says Osho, but because they are looking in the wrong direction –outside – no one ever really finds it. Real happiness, bliss, can only be found inside. It can be reached by6 learning the “Knack” of dis-identifying with the mind.

This book on the ancient wisdom of the Shiva Sutras explains how to do this.

These sutras will challenge and disturb people’s ideas about how life can be lives, but they also reveal how bliss is already hidden within the states we all experience daily: waking dreaming and sleeping.

Osho shows how to dis-identify from the desires and attachments of the mind that trap everyone during this life, and pull them into the next. “The beginning of being human happens only when we get out of this circle called mind.”

Osho is a revolution, inspiring millions of people worldwide with his approach to the science of inner transformation. Yet in his own words, he says, “I am nobody, I don’t belong to any nation, I don’t belong to any political party. I am simply an individual, the way existence created me.”

His books and audiobooks are international bestsellers and cover an extraordinary range of topics form the wisdom of the world’s mystics to intensely personal questions about the inner search.

Osho defies categorization. His thousands of talks cover everything from the individual quest for meaning to the most urgent social and political issues facing society today. Osho's books are not written but are transcribed from audio and video recordings of his extemporaneous talks to international audiences. As he puts it, "So remember: whatever I am saying is not just for you ... I am talking also for the future generations."

Osho has been described by The Sunday Times in London as one of the "1000 Makers of the 20th Century" and by American author Tom Robbins as "the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ." Sunday Mid-Day (India) has selected Osho as one of ten people - along with Gandhi, Nehru and Buddha - who have changed the destiny of India.

About his own work Osho has said that he is helping to create the conditions for the birth of a new kind of human being. He often characterizes this new human being as "Zorba the Buddha" - capable both of enjoying the earthy pleasures of a Zorba the Greek and the silent serenity of a Gautama the Buddha.

Running like a thread through all aspects of Oshos talks and meditations is a vision that encompasses both the timeless wis- dom of all ages past and the highest potential of todays (and tomorrow's) science and technology.

Osho is known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, with an approach to meditation that acknowledges the accelerated pace of contemporary life. His unique OSHO Active Meditations are designed to first release the accumulated stresses of body and mind, so that it is then easier to take an experience of stillness and thought-free relaxation into daily life.

“Misery is a tension, happiness also is a tension. There is excitement in both. Bliss is a non-excited state of mind; there is light there, but no heat. There is dance there, but no excitement. There is a silent, serene dance without any sound. This dance is in emptiness: it causes no fatigue, it is not of the body. Both happiness and misery belong to the body, but bliss belongs to your being; it is a different dance altogether.”

The most important question of all questions is: What is true happiness? And is there a possibility to achieve it? Is true happiness possible at all, or is all momentary? Is life only a dream, or is there something substantial in it too? Does life begin with birth and end with death, or is there something that transcends birth and death? — because without the eternal there is no possibility of true happiness. With the momentary, happiness will remain fleeting: one moment it is here, the other moment gone, and you are left in great despair and darkness.

That’s how it is in ordinary life, in the life of the unawakened. There are moments of bliss and there are moments of misery; it is all mixed, hodgepodge. You cannot keep those moments of happiness that come to you. They come on their own and they disappear on their own, you are not the master. You cannot avoid the moments of misery; they too have their own persistence. They come on their own and they go on their own, you are simply a victim. And between the two, happiness and unhappiness, you are torn apart. You are never left at ease.

This being torn apart into all kinds of dualities... The duality of happiness and unhappiness is the most fundamental and the most symptomatic, but there are a thousand and one dualities: the duality of love and hate, the duality of life and death, day and night, summer and winter, youth and old age, and so on, so forth. But the fundamental duality, the duality that represents all other dualities, is that of happiness and unhappiness. And you are torn apart, pulled into different, polar opposite directions. You cannot be at ease: you are in a dis-ease.

According to the buddhas man is a dis-ease. is this dis-ease absolute — or can it be transcended?

Hence the basic arid the most fundamental question is: What is true happiness? Certainly the happiness that we know is not true; it is dream stuff and it always turns into its own opposite. What looks like happiness one moment turns into unhappiness the next.

Happiness turning into unhappiness simply shows that the two are not separate, they may be 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 in 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 other than anger. Your sensitivity is not real sensitivity but only a mental exercise, a certain attitude and approach practiced.

Remember: the whole of 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. True happiness happens in a state of let-go.