Sadhguru Answers - How to Live Happily ?

Questioner: Good evening, sir. I happened to listen to a lecture of yours that talked about joy and happiness. You talked that joy depends on oneself, whereas happiness depends on others. I tried a little while to practice it but what I found was that I was not able to sustain those small moments of joy. I could experience joy when I was completely into it, very passionate about what to do, but somehow when an external person or say, some external entity recognizes what I do, the joy is just out of my life. So how do you sustain those moments of joy and not succumb to these pleasures of happiness? If you could… it would be nice if you can share the difference between joy and happiness to this crowd too.

Sadhguru: See, right now if I tell you... or if you're… not me, let’s say your Dean tells you, from tomorrow, all of you, what kind of clothes you should wear, immediately there’ll be protests in the college. If your Dean goes further and says, ‘Everybody must eat only four idlis in the morning.’ If your Dean tells you, ‘Everybody should get up at five o’clock in the morning.’ Let’s say he put ten different rules like this, physical things to do, you will think he's trying to convert you into slaves and you will shout and scream for your freedom, isn't it? But look at yourself and see. Right now somebody else, if they determine what should happen around you, you feel like a slave, but right now somebody else is determining what should happen within you. Is this not slavery? Somebody can decide whether you're happy or unhappy, is this not slavery? Somebody can decide whether you will be a pleasant human being or an unpleasant human being, is this not slavery
What happens within you, somebody else determines – this is the worst form of slavery, isn't it? Isn't it so? It is just that because everybody is like that it seems to be normal; it is not. It is not normal. Just because everybody is like that, it does not become normal. This human being, life around you will not happen… will never happen hundred percent the way you want it, and it should not happen; because if everything happens the way you want it, where do I go? I'm very happy it's not happening your way. And now that you're a student? You're still a student? I believe about sixty, seventy percent is happening your way. When you get married, the percentage will get reversed. We don’t know. We don’t know whether which way it'll go. So if… life around you will never happen hundred percent the way you want it and it should not. Unless you're living with machines, life will not happen and even those machines will freak on you, isn't it? Aren’t the machines troubling you every day for something or the other? They do. So outside will never happen hundred percent the way you want it and if your happiness or your joyfulness or let’s not use all these so many words – essentially it is pleasantness versus unpleasantness. For pleasantness we have many names, we call it peace, happiness, joy, bliss, ecstasy.

Yogi, mystic and visionary, Sadhguru is a spiritual master with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serves as a reminder that yoga is a contemporary science, vitally relevant to our times.