bliss /blis/ (noun): perfected happiness
I most appreciate Osho’s discussion of bliss as it relates to consciousness. Osho divides humanity into those who are sleeping, those who are awake and those who are in between. Happiness depends on where you are in your consciousness.
The Sleeping Ones
If you are sleeping, then pleasure is happiness. Pleasure is trying to force the body to achieve something it is not capable of. People are trying, in every possible way, to achieve happiness through the body, but it cannot be done. The body can give you only momentary pleasures, and each pleasure is balanced by pain in the same amount, in the same degree. The body exists in a world of duality, just as the day is followed by night, your pleasure will be followed by your pain…and your pain will be followed by pleasure.
But you will never be at ease. When you are in a state of pleasure, you will be afraid that you are going to lose it…and that fear will poison it. And when you are lost in pain, of course, you will be in suffering…and you will try every possible effort to get out of it — just to fall again back into it. Buddha calls this the wheel of birth and death. To the sleeping, pleasurable sensations are happiness. He lives from one pleasure to another pleasure. He is just rushing from one sensation to another sensation. He lives for small thrills. His life is very superficial; it has no depth, it has no quality. He lives in the world of quantity.
Those in-between being sleep and being awake
When one starts meditating, one will begin to move from being sleep to being awakened. In this transitory state, happiness has a different meaning: it becomes more of a quality, and less of a quantity; it is more psychological, less physiological. She enjoys music more, she enjoys poetry more, she enjoys creating something. She enjoys nature, its beauty. She enjoys silence…she enjoys what she had never enjoyed before, and this is far more lasting. Even if the music stops, something goes on lingering in you.
The difference between pleasure and THIS happiness is: it is not a relief, it is an enrichment. You become more full, you become a little overflowing. Listening to good music, something is triggered in your being, a harmony arises in you — you become musical. Or dancing, suddenly you forget your body; your body becomes weightless. The grip of gravitation over you is lost. Suddenly you are in a different space: the ego is not so solid, the dancer melts and merges into the dance. This has a depth. But this is also not the ultimate.
The Awakened Ones
The ultimate happens only when you are fully awake, when you are a buddha, when all sleep is gone and all dreaming is gone. This happens when your whole being is full of light, when there is no darkness within you. All darkness has disappeared and with that darkness, the ego is gone. All tensions have disappeared, all anguish, all anxiety. You are in a state of total contentment. You live in the present; no past, no future anymore. You are utterly herenow.
This moment is all. Now is the only time and here is the only space. And then suddenly the whole sky drops into you. This is bliss. This is REAL happiness. Seek bliss, it is your birthright. Don’t remain lost in the jungle of pleasures; rise a little higher. Reach to happiness and then to bliss.
Pleasure is animal, happiness is human, bliss is divine. Pleasure binds you, it is a bondage, it chains you. Happiness gives you a little more rope, a little bit of freedom, but only a little bit…it is possible to slip back into unhappiness. Bliss is absolute freedom. You start moving upwards; it gives you wings. You are no more part of the gross earth; you become part of the sky. You become light, you become joy.
Pleasure is dependent on others. Happiness is not so dependent on others, but still it is separate from you. Bliss is not dependent, is not separate either; it is your very being, it is your very nature. To attain it is to attain to God, to nirvana.
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