| |
trembling inside like a leaf in a strong wind. He was pretending. He said: 'I have attained to happiness.' But his eyes were desert-like, no happiness, no greenery. He was almost a dead person, shrunken, wasted.
The other man belonged to a political party and he said: 'I am also happy because the party needs me. Without me, they cannot win the coming election. I am needed. That's my happiness.'
One thinks that because he has accumulated much riches, he is happy. What have riches to do with happiness? Riches are outside; happiness is an inner flowering. A poor man can be happy; it has no intrinsic relationship with poverty or riches. A beggar like Buddha can be happy. And a man who says he is happy because he has attained to many riches is just befooling himself, pretending.
The other man said: 'I am happy because I am needed.' A certain significance comes to you when you are needed. You think you are essential to somebody, to some political organization, to some religious sect. But a man who is happy is not dependent on others. If the political party can find a better man than this, or a worse man than this -- which is the same in politics -- then he will feel frustrated. Happiness never feels frustrated. If it does, it is not happiness -- it is a covering of the reality by a false notion.
Then there was one woman. She said that she was also happy. She had five children, beautiful persons, all growing. Her hopes were fulfilled in them. And her husband loved her deeply; he had always remained faithful to her. The woman must have been beautiful when she was younger. Now near about fifty, just a skeleton, a memory -- a memory of the past. Eyes shrunken. The whole life gone. Death approaching. She was clinging to the children; they would fulfill her hopes. She could not fulfill herself so now they would fulfill; now she would live though their ambitions.
Happiness never lives though anybody else. It needs nobody; it is enough unto itself. And she insisted that her husband had been faithful to her, but I could see that whatsoever she was saying she didn't believe it -- her eyes were showing something else. In fact, whenever you say
|
|
|