“Man wants to be happy, hence he creates misery. If you want to get out of misery, you will have to get out of your desire for happiness.

“Then nobody can make you miserable. Here is where Freud missed. He could not understand that the very desire for happiness can be the cause of misery. How does it happen? Why in the first place do you desire happiness? And what does it do to you, the desire for happiness?

The moment you desire happiness you have moved away from the present, you have moved away from the existential, you have already moved into the future which is nowhere, which has not come yet.

“You have moved in a dream. Now, dreams can never be fulfilling. Your desire for happiness is a dream. The dream is unreal. Through the unreal, nobody has ever been able to reach to the real. You have taken a wrong train.

“The desire for happiness simply shows that you are not happy right at this moment. The desire for happiness simply shows that you are a miserable being. And a miserable being projects in the future that some time, some day, some way, he will be happy. Out of misery comes your projection. It carries the very seeds of misery. It comes out of you – it cannot be different from you. It is your child: its face will be like you; in its body your blood will be circulating. It will be your continuity.

You are unhappy today; you project tomorrow to be happy, but tomorrow is a projection of you, of your today, of whatsoever you are.

“You are unhappy – tomorrow will come out of this unhappiness and you will be more unhappy. Of course, out of more unhappiness you will desire more happiness in the future. And then you are in a vicious circle: the more unhappy you become, the more you desire happiness; the more you desire happiness, the more unhappy you become. Now it is like a dog chasing its own tail.

“In Zen they have a certain phrase for it. They say: Whipping the cart. If your horses are not moving and you go on whipping the cart, it is not going to help. You are miserable, then anything that you can dream and anything that you can project is going to bring more misery.

So the first thing is not to dream, not to project. The first thing is to be herenow.

“Whatsoever it is, just be herenow, and a tremendous revelation is waiting for you. The revelation is that nobody can be unhappy in the herenow.

“Have you ever been unhappy herenow? Right this moment you are facing me: is there any possibility of being unhappy right now? You can think about yesterday and you can become unhappy. You can think about tomorrow and you can become unhappy. But right this very moment, this throbbing, beating, real moment, can you be unhappy right now without any past, without any future?

You can bring misery from the past, from memory.

“Somebody insulted you yesterday and you can still carry the wound, you can still carry the hurt, and you can still feel unhappy about it: Why? Why did it happen to you? Why did the man insult you when you have been doing so much good for him, and you have been always a help, always a friend – and he insulted you.

You are playing with something that is no more. The yesterday is gone.

To continue reading – and see all the available formats of this talk:
Osho, Learning Happiness, Talk#9 – The World Has Never Lacked Buddhas