People are trying, in every possible way, to achieve happiness through the body. The body can give you only momentary pleasures, and each pleasure is balanced by pain in the same amount, in the same degree. Each pleasure is followed by its opposite because the body exists in the world of duality, just as the day is followed by night and death is followed by life and life is followed by death. It is a vicious circle.
Your pleasure will be followed by pain, your pain will be followed by pleasure. But you will never be at ease. When you will be 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 will be 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.
We know only a few sensations of the body. This is our world. And whatsoever you call pleasure is, at the most, just a relief of a tense state. A tension was there, now it is no more there; but it will accumulate again and this we call it as pleasure and run after it. We think, pleasurable sensations are happiness. We live from one pleasure to another pleasure. We are just rushing from one sensation to another sensation. We live for small thrills. Our lives are very superficial; it has no depth, it has no quality. We live in the world of quantity.
Then happiness has a totally different meaning: it becomes more of a quality, less of a quantity; it is more psychological, less physiological. We enjoy music more, we enjoy poetry more, we enjoy creating something. We enjoy nature, its beauty. We enjoy silence. We enjoy what we had never enjoyed before, and this is far more lasting. Even if the music stops, something goes on lingering in you. And it is not a relief.
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 is far higher, far deeper than the joy, you gain from the acts that give you momentary pleasure. This has a depth.
Author and Credits: Osho