You deal with people and situations effectively only when you are happy. Otherwise, in your unhappiness, it won’t matter what good intentions you have, you will only spread misery in the world. Being happy or unhappy is actually your choice. People have chosen to be unhappy because they think that by being unhappy they will get something. Once you are unhappy, whatever you get, what does it matter? If you are happy if you don’t get anything, what does it matter? This is not a philosophy. This is your true nature.

By nature, you want to be happy. Every creature wants to be happy. Everything that you are doing, every single act you are performing, is in pursuit of happiness in some way. Why would you want to serve people? Serving people gives you happiness. Somebody wants to wear good clothes; somebody wants to make a lot of money because that gives them happiness.

Even if he is giving away his life to somebody, he is doing it because it gives him Happiness. So happiness is the fundamental goal of life. Why do you want to go to Heaven? Only because you’ve been told that if you go to Heaven, you will be happy.

After doing all that you are doing, if you didn’t gain happiness, somewhere you have missed the basics of life. When you were a child, you were simply happy. Without doing anything, you were happy. Then somewhere along the way, you lost simply because you got deeply identified with many things around you, your body, and your mind.

What you call your mind is actually just the stuff you have picked up from social situations around you. The kind of mind you have depends on the kind of society you have been exposed to. Everything in your mind right now is something you picked up from outside. You got so identified with it and now it is causing you misery.

This body is not yours; you have picked it from the earth. You were born with a tiny body, which your parents gave you. After that, you ate plants and animals and grew. You borrowed it from the earth; it is not yours. For a while, you have to use it, so enjoy it and go. But you have become so deeply identified with it, you think this body is you. No wonder you suffer. The basis of all this misery is: you have established yourself in truth. You are deeply identified with that which you are not. Hence, you go through all the suffering.

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