Only Individuals Can Be Happy

Swami Chaitanya Keerti

"I'm one of those people who just want to make everybody's day. I love humanity! Each man's joy is joy to me! " says Martha Beck on Oprah.com

Yes, most of us think in this way that we can make everybody around us happy, also we can make the whole humanity happy. This kind of thinking is nothing more than a hallucination. Even God who is considered omnipotent is not so powerful to make everybody happy on earth, as God does not interfere with the freedom of the individual. All individuals come into this world with a certain inbuilt program of freedom or possibility to choose whether they want to be happy or miserable. God gives them dignity of making choice of their own. Potentially everybody has the seed of Buddha-being within himself, but it is his choice to become Angulimal or the Buddha. God gives every individual plenty of time, one can say "whole eternity" to make a choice between happiness or misery. God is never in a hurry like us to achieve any goal in a limited period of time. God lives in total let-go for the whole eternity.

Those who do not understand this attribute of godliness, are always in a hurry to bring happiness to the humanity. They become revolutionaries and missionaries, priests and politicians to promise happiness to all...Acche Din for all (Good Days for all). Unfortunately, this has never happened, and this will never happen. What can always happen is the happiness in the life of an individual. A happy person will be happy to share his happiness for the sake of his own happiness. A happy person would like to see everybody around him to be happy, though it will not be his mission. It will be his life--his life will exude happiness.

In one of his discourses on mystic Kabir, Osho talks about an old cartoon: Snoopy is dancing, really going crazy, utterly blissful, in samadhi. And Lucy looks at him and says: “Stop this! Stop this! The world is in great misery. Can’t you see that people are suffering? How can you be so happy when the world is in such hell?” There is great condemnation in her eyes. For a moment, even Snoopy stops. And Lucy says: “Are you not aware, you stupid? Are you not aware of what is happening in the world? Is this the time to dance in such a mad way?” Snoopy replies: “But my legs are feeling very happy and I’m really enjoying it. And thank God that I am an ignorant person.” And he starts dancing again.

To most of us, Snoopy’s character may look like a selfish person as we think that we have to make others happy first, only then we can be happy ourselves. Our mind tells us repeatedly: “When the world is in such misery how can you be happy? You have to share, you have to go and serve. You are not alone, you exist in a society — you are part of it, you have to serve the society.” This is a cunning device of the mind to avoid one's own transformation. It is certainly not selfishness to first think of one's own happiness. One has to love oneself first.

In the next sentence, Martha Beck says: "Let's be honest, though: I can't spend all my time bringing bliss to others—I have work to do and bills to pay."