Obstacles to Happiness

The following is the 24th chapter in, “AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the DeMello Stroud Spirituality Center.

“What I’m about to say will sound a bit pompous, but it’s true. What is coming could be the most important minutes in your lives. If you could grasp this, you’d hit upon the secret of awakening. You would be happy forever. You would never be unhappy again. Nothing would have the power to hurt you again. I mean that, nothing. It’s like when you throw black paint in the air; the air remains uncontaminated. You never color the air black. No matter what happens to you, you remain uncontaminated. You remain at peace. There are human beings who have attained this, what I call being human. Not this nonsense of being a puppet, jerked about this way and that way, letting events or other people tell you how to feel. So you proceed to feel it and you call it being vulnerable. Ha! I call it being a puppet. So you want to be a puppet? Press a button and you’re down; do you like that? But if you refuse to identify with any of those labels, most of your worries cease.

“Later we’ll talk about fear of disease and death, but ordinarily you’re worried about what’s going to happen to your career. A small-time businessman, fifty-five years old, is sipping beer at a bar somewhere and he’s saying, ‘Well, look at my classmates, they’ve really made it.’ The idiot! What does he mean, ‘They made it’? They’ve got their names in the newspaper. Do you call that making it? One is president of the corporation; the other has become the Chief justice; somebody else has become this or that. Monkeys, all of them.

“Who determines what it means to be a success? This stupid society! The main preoccupation of society is to keep society sick! And the sooner you realize that, the better. Sick, every one of them. They are loony, they’re crazy. You became president of the lunatic asylum and you’re proud of it even though it means nothing. Being president of a corporation has nothing to do with being a success in life. Having a lot of money has nothing to do with being a success in life. You’re a success in life when you wake up! Then you don’t have to apologize to anyone, you don’t have to explain anything to anyone, you don’t give a damn what anybody thinks about you or what anybody says about you. You have no worries; you’re happy. That’s what I call being a success. Having a good job or being famous or having a great reputation has absolutely nothing to do with happiness or success. Nothing! It is totally irrelevant. All he’s really worried about is what his children will think about him, what the neighbors will think about him, what his wife will think about him. He should have become famous. Our society and culture drill that into our heads day and night. People who made it! Made what?! Made asses of themselves. Because they drained all their energy getting something that was worthless. They’re frightened and confused, they are puppets like the rest. Look at them strutting across the stage. Look how upset they get if they have a stain on their shirt. Do you call that a success? Look at how frightened they are at the prospect they might not be reelected. Do you call that a success? They are controlled, so manipulated. They are unhappy people, they are miserable people. They don’t enjoy life. They are constantly tense and anxious. Do you call that human? And do you know why that happens? Only one reason: They identified with some label. They identified the ‘I’ with their money or their job or their profession. That was their error.

“Did you hear about the lawyer who was presented with a plumber’s bill? He said to the plumber, ‘Hey, you’re charging me two hundred dollars an hour. I don’t make that kind of money as a lawyer.’ The plumber said, ‘I didn’t make that kind of money when I was a lawyer either!’ You could be a plumber or a lawyer or a businessman or a priest, but that does not affect the essential ‘I’. It doesn’t affect you. If I change my profession tomorrow, it’s just like changing my clothes. I am untouched. Are you your clothes? Are you your name? Are you your profession? Stop identifying with them. They come and go.

“When you really understand this, no criticism can affect you. No flattery or praise can affect you either. When someone says, ‘You’re a great guy,’ what is he talking about? He’s talking about ‘me,’ he’s not talking about ‘I.’ ‘I’ is neither great nor small. ‘I’ is neither successful nor a failure. It is none of these labels. These things come and go. These things depend on the criteria society establishes. These things depend on your conditioning. These things depend on the mood of the person who happens to be talking to you right now. It has nothing to do with ‘I.’ ‘I’ is none of these labels. ‘Me’ is generally selfish, foolish, childish—a great big ass. So when you say, ‘You’re an ass,’ I’ve known it for years! The conditioned self—what did you expect? I’ve known it for years. Why do you identify with him? Silly! That isn’t ‘I,’ that’s ‘me.’

“Do you want to be happy? Uninterrupted happiness is uncaused. True happiness is uncaused. You cannot make me happy. You are not my happiness. You say to the awakened person, ‘Why are you happy?’ and the awakened person replies, ‘Why not?’

“Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don’t have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don’t you experience it? Because you’ve got to drop something. You’ve got to drop illusions. You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!”

Labels

The following is the 23rd chapter in, “AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the DeMello Stroud Spirituality Center.

“The important thing is not to know who I is or what ‘I’ is. You’ll never succeed. There are no words for it. The important thing is to drop the labels. As the Japanese Zen masters say, ‘Don’t seek the truth; just drop your opinions.’ Drop your theories; don’t seek the truth. Truth isn’t something you search for. If you stop being opinionated, you would know. Something similar happens here. If you drop your labels, you would know. What do I mean by labels? Every label you can conceive of except perhaps that of human being. I am a human being. Fair enough; doesn’t say very much. But when you say, ‘I am successful,’ that’s crazy. Success is not part of the ‘I.’ Success is something that comes and goes; it could be here today and gone tomorrow. That’s not ‘I.’ When you said, ‘I was a success,’ you were in error; you were plunged into darkness. You identified yourself with success. The same thing when you said, ‘I am a failure, a lawyer, a businessman.’ You know what’s going to happen to you if you identify yourself with these things. You’re going to cling to them, you’re going to be worried that they may fall apart, and that’s where your suffering comes in. That is what I meant earlier when I said to you, ‘If you’re suffering, you’re asleep.’ Do you want a sign that you’re asleep? Here it is: You’re suffering. Suffering is a sign that you’re out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there’s falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere. Suffering points out that there is falsehood somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.”

How Happiness Happens

The following is the 19th chapter in, “AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the DeMello Stroud Spirituality Center.

 “Come home to yourself. Observe yourself. That’s why I said earlier that self-observation is such a delightful and extraordinary thing. After a while you don’t have to make any effort, because, as illusions begin to crumble, you begin to know things that cannot be described. It’s called happiness. Everything changes and you become addicted to awareness.

“There’s the story of the disciple who went to the master and said, ‘Could you give me a word of wisdom? Could you tell me something that would guide me through my days?’ It was the master’s day of silence, so he picked up a pad. It said, ‘Awareness.’ When the disciple saw it, he said, ‘This is too brief. Can you expand on it a bit?’ So the master took back the pad and wrote, ‘Awareness, awareness, awareness.’ The disciple said, ‘Yes, but what does it mean?’ The master took back the pad and wrote, ‘Awareness, awareness, awareness means—awareness.’

“That’s what it is to watch yourself. No one can show you how to do it, because he would be giving you a technique, he would be programming you. But watch yourself. When you talk to someone, are you aware of it or are you simply identifying with it? When you got angry with somebody, were you aware that you were angry or were you simply identifying with your anger? Later, when you had the time, did you study your experience and attempt to understand it? Where did it come from? What brought it on? I don’t know of any other way to awareness. You only change what you understand. What you do not understand and are not aware of, you repress. You don’t change. But when you understand it, it changes.

“I am sometimes asked, ‘Is this growing in awareness a gradual thing, or is it a whammo kind of thing?’  There are some lucky people who see this in a flash. They just become aware. There are others who keep growing into it, slowly, gradually, increasingly. They begin to see things. Illusions drop away, fantasies are peeled away, and they start to get in touch with facts. There’s no general rule. There’s a famous story about the lion who came upon a flock of sheep and to his amazement found a lion among the sheep. It was a lion who had been brought up by the sheep ever since he was a cub. It would bleat like a sheep and run around like a sheep. The lion went straight for him, and when the sheep-lion stood in front of the real one, he trembled in every limb. And the lion said to him, ‘What are you doing among these sheep?’ And the sheep-lion said, ‘I am a sheep.’ And the lion said, ‘Oh no you’re not. You’re coming with me.’ So he took the sheep-lion to a pool and said, ‘Look!’ And when the sheep-lion looked at his reflection in the water, he let out a mighty roar, and in that moment he was transformed. He was never the same again.

“If you’re lucky and the gods are gracious or if you are gifted with divine grace (use any theological expression you want), you might suddenly understand who ‘I’ is, and you’ll never be the same again, never. Nothing will ever be able to touch you again and no one will ever be able to hurt you again.

“You will fear no one and you will fear nothing. Isn’t that extraordinary? You’ll live like a king, like a queen. This is what it means to live like royalty. Not rubbish like getting your picture in the newspapers or having a lot of money. That’s a lot of rot. You fear no one because you’re perfectly content to be nobody. You don’t give a damn about success or failure. They mean nothing. Honor, disgrace, they mean nothing! If you make a fool of yourself, that means nothing either. Isn’t that a wonderful state to be in! Some people arrive at this goal painstakingly, step by step, through months and weeks of self-awareness. But I’ll promise you this: I have not known a single person who gave time to being aware who didn’t see a difference in a matter of weeks. The quality of their life changes, so they don’t have to take it on faith anymore. They see it; they’re different. They react differently. In fact, they react less and act more. You see things you’ve never seen before.

“You’re much more energetic, much more alive. People think that if they had no cravings, they’d be like deadwood. But in fact they’d lose their tension. Get rid of your fear of failure, your tensions about succeeding, you will be yourself. Relaxed. You wouldn’t be driving with your brakes on. That’s what would happen.

“There’s a lovely saying of Tranxu, a great Chinese sage, that I took the trouble to learn by heart. It goes: ‘When the archer shoots for no particular prize, he has all his skills; when he shoots to win a brass buckle, he is already nervous; when he shoots for a gold prize, he goes blind, sees two targets, and is out of his mind. His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him. He cares! He thinks more of winning than of shooting, and the need to win drains him of power.’  Isn’t that an image of what most people are? When you’re living for nothing, you’ve got all your skills, you’ve got all your energy, you’re relaxed, you don’t care, it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose.

“Now there’s human living for you. That’s what life is all about. That can only come from awareness. And in awareness you will understand that honor doesn’t mean a thing. It’s a social convention, that’s all. That’s why the mystics and the prophets didn’t bother one bit about it. Honor or disgrace meant nothing to them. They were living in another world, in the world of the awakened. Success or failure meant nothing to them. They had the attitude: ‘I’m an ass, you’re an ass, so where’s the problem?’

“Someone once said, ‘The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are wrong.’  But these are the easiest things in the world if you haven’t identified with the ‘me’.  You can say things like ‘I’m wrong! If you knew me better, you’d see how often I’m wrong. What would you expect from an ass?’  But if I haven’t identified with these aspects of ‘me’, you can’t hurt me. Initially, the old conditioning will kick in and you’ll be depressed and anxious. You’ll grieve, cry, and so on. ‘Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed: after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed’. But there’s a difference: I don’t identify with it anymore. Do you know what a big difference that is?

“You step outside of yourself and look at that depression, and don’t identify with it. You don’t do a thing to make it go away; you are perfectly willing to go on with your life while it passes through you and disappears. If you don’t know what that means, you really have something to look forward to. And anxiety? There it comes and you’re not troubled. How strange! You’re anxious but you’re not troubled.

“Isn’t that a paradox? And you’re willing to let this cloud come in, because the more you fight it, the more power you give it. You’re willing to observe it as it passes by. You can be happy in your anxiety. Isn’t that crazy? You can be happy in your depression. But you can’t have the wrong notion of happiness. Did you think happiness was excitement or thrills? That’s what causes the depression. Didn’t anyone tell you that? You’re thrilled, all right, but you’re just preparing the way for your next depression. You’re thrilled but you pick up the anxiety behind that: How can I make it last? That’s not happiness, that’s addiction.

“I wonder how many nonaddicts there are reading this book? If you’re anything like the average group, there are few, very few. Don’t look down your nose at the alcoholics and the drug addicts: maybe you’re just as addicted as they are. The first time I got a glimpse of this new world, it was terrifying. I understood what it meant to be alone, with nowhere to rest your head, to leave everyone free and be free yourself, to be special to no one and love everyone—because love does that. It shines on good and bad alike; it makes rain fall on saints and sinners alike.

“Is it possible for the rose to say, ‘I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the bad?’ Or is it possible for the lamp to say, ‘I will give my light to the good people in this room, but I will withhold it from the evil people.’ Or can a tree say, ‘I’ll give my shade to the good people who rest under me, but I will withhold it from the bad’? These are images of what love is about.

“It’s been there all along, staring us in the face in the scriptures, though we never cared to see it because we were so drowned in what our culture calls love with its love songs and poems—that isn’t love at all, that’s the opposite of love. That’s desire and control and possessiveness. That’s manipulation, and fear, and anxiety—that’s not love. We were told that happiness is a smooth complexion, a holiday resort. It isn’t these things, but we have subtle ways of making our happiness depend on other things, both within us and outside us. We say, ‘I refuse to be happy until my neurosis goes.’ I have good news for you: You can be happy right now, with the neurosis, You want even better news? There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing what in India we call anand—bliss, bliss. There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it’s because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have. Otherwise you would be experiencing bliss. You’re focusing on what you don’t have. But, right now you have everything you need to be in bliss.

“Jesus was talking horse sense to lay people, to starving people, to poor people. He was telling them good news: It’s yours for the taking. But who listens? No one’s interested, they’d rather be asleep”.

Our Illusion About Others

The following is the 11th chapter in, “AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the DeMello Stroud Spirituality Center.

“So if you stop to think, you would see that there’s nothing to be very proud of after all. What does this do to your relationship with people? What are you complaining about? A young man came to complain that his girlfriend had let him down, that she had played false. What are you complaining about? Did you expect any better? Expect the worst, you’re dealing with selfish people. You’re the idiot—you glorified her, didn’t you? You thought she was a princess, you thought people were nice. They’re not! They’re not nice. They’re as bad as you are—bad, you understand? They’re asleep like you. And what do you think they are going to seek? Their own self-interest, exactly like you. No difference.

“Can you imagine how liberating it is that you’ll never be disillusioned again, never be disappointed again? You’ll never feel let down again. Never feel rejected. Want to wake up? You want happiness? You want freedom? Here it is: Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself, you will see through everyone. Then you will love them. Otherwise you spend the whole time grappling with your wrong notions of them, with your illusions that are constantly crashing against reality.

“It’s probably too startling for many of you to understand that everyone except the very rare awakened person can be expected to be selfish and to seek his or her own selfinterest [sic] whether in coarse or in refined ways. This leads you to see that there’s nothing to be disappointed about, nothing to be disillusioned about. If you had been in touch with reality all along, you would never have been disappointed. But you chose to paint people in glowing colors; you chose not to see through human beings because you chose not to see through yourself. So you’re paying the price now.

“Before we discuss this, let me tell you a story. Somebody once asked, ‘What is enlightenment like? What is awakening like?’ It’s like the tramp in London who was settling in for the night. He’d hardly been able to get a crust of bread to eat. Then he reaches this embankment on the river Thames. There was a slight drizzle, so he huddled in his old tattered cloak. He was about to go to sleep when suddenly a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce pulls up. Out of the car steps a beautiful young lady who says to him, ‘My poor man, are you planning on spending the night here on this embankment?’ And the tramp says, ‘Yes.’ She says, ‘I won’t have it. You’re coming to my house and you’re going to spend a comfortable night and you’re going to get a good dinner.’ She insists on his getting into the car. Well, they ride out of London and get to a place where she has a sprawling mansion with large grounds. They are ushered in by the butler, to whom she says, ‘James, please make sure he’s put in the servants’ quarters and treated well.’ Which is what James does. The young lady had undressed and was about to go to bed when she suddenly remembers her guest for the night. So she slips something on and pads along the corridor to the servants’ quarters. She sees a little chink of light from the room where the tramp was put up. She taps lightly at the door, opens it, and finds the man awake. She says, ‘What’s the trouble, my good man, didn’t you get a good meal?’ He said, ‘Never had a better meal in my life, lady.’ ‘Are you warm enough?’ He says, ‘Yes, lovely warm bed.’ Then she says, ‘Maybe you need a little company. Why don’t you move over a, bit.’ And she comes closer to him and he moves over and falls right into the Thames.

“Ha! You didn’t expect that one! Enlightenment! Enlightenment! Wake up. When you’re ready to exchange your illusions for reality, when you’re ready to exchange your dreams for facts, that’s the way you find it all. That’s where life finally becomes meaningful. Life becomes beautiful.

“There’s a story about Ramirez. He is old and living up there in his castle on a hill. He looks out the window (he’s in bed and paralyzed) and he sees his enemy. Old as he is, leaning on a cane, his enemy is climbing up the hill—slowly, painfully. It takes him about two and a half hours to get up the hill. There’s nothing Ramirez can do because the servants have the day off. So his enemy opens the door, comes straight to the bedroom, puts his hand inside his cloak, and pulls out a gun. He says, ‘At last, Ramirez, we’re going to settle scores!’ Ramirez tries his level best to talk him out of it. He says, ‘Come on, Borgia, you can’t do that. You know I’m no longer the man who ill-treated you as that youngster years ago, and you’re no longer that youngster. Come off it!’ ‘Oh no,’ says his enemy, ‘your sweet words aren’t going to deter me from this divine mission of mine. It’s revenge I want and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ And Ramirez says, ‘But there is!’ ‘What?’ asks his enemy. ‘I can wake up,’ says Ramirez. And he did; he woke up! That’s what enlightenment is like. When someone tells you, ‘There is nothing you can do about it,’ you say, ‘There is, I can wake up!’ All of a sudden, life is no longer the nightmare that it has seemed. Wake up!

“Somebody came up to me with a question. What do you think the question was? He asked me, ‘Are you enlightened?’ What do you think my answer was? What does it matter!

“You want a better answer? My answer would be: ‘How would I know? How would you know? What does it matter?’ You know something? If you want anything too badly, you’re in big trouble. You know something else? If I were enlightened and you listened to me because I was enlightened, then you’re in big trouble. Are you ready to be brainwashed by someone who’s enlightened? You can be brainwashed by anybody, you know. What does it matter whether someone’s enlightened or not? But see, we want to lean on someone, don’t we? We want to lean on anybody we think has arrived. We love to hear that people have arrived. It gives us hope, doesn’t it? What do you want to hope for? Isn’t that another form of desire?

“You want to hope for something better than what you have right now, don’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be hoping. But then, you forget that you have it all right now anyway, and you don’t know it. Why not concentrate on the now instead of hoping for better times in the future? Why not understand the now instead of forgetting it and hoping for the future? Isn’t the future just another trap?”

Obstacles to Happiness

The following is the 24th chapter in, “AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the DeMello Stroud Spirituality Center.

“What I’m about to say will sound a bit pompous, but it’s true. What is coming could be the most important minutes in your lives. If you could grasp this, you’d hit upon the secret of awakening. You would be happy forever. You would never be unhappy again. Nothing would have the power to hurt you again. I mean that, nothing. It’s like when you throw black paint in the air; the air remains uncontaminated. You never color the air black. No matter what happens to you, you remain uncontaminated. You remain at peace. There are human beings who have attained this, what I call being human. Not this nonsense of being a puppet, jerked about this way and that way, letting events or other people tell you how to feel. So you proceed to feel it and you call it being vulnerable. Ha! I call it being a puppet. So you want to be a puppet? Press a button and you’re down; do you like that? But if you refuse to identify with any of those labels, most of your worries cease.

“Later we’ll talk about fear of disease and death, but ordinarily you’re worried about what’s going to happen to your career. A small-time businessman, fifty-five years old, is sipping beer at a bar somewhere and he’s saying, ‘Well, look at my classmates, they’ve really made it.’ The idiot! What does he mean, ‘They made it’? They’ve got their names in the newspaper. Do you call that making it? One is president of the corporation; the other has become the Chief justice; somebody else has become this or that. Monkeys, all of them.

“Who determines what it means to be a success? This stupid society! The main preoccupation of society is to keep society sick! And the sooner you realize that, the better. Sick, every one of them. They are loony, they’re crazy. You became president of the lunatic asylum and you’re proud of it even though it means nothing. Being president of a corporation has nothing to do with being a success in life. Having a lot of money has nothing to do with being a success in life. You’re a success in life when you wake up! Then you don’t have to apologize to anyone, you don’t have to explain anything to anyone, you don’t give a damn what anybody thinks about you or what anybody says about you. You have no worries; you’re happy. That’s what I call being a success. Having a good job or being famous or having a great reputation has absolutely nothing to do with happiness or success. Nothing! It is totally irrelevant. All he’s really worried about is what his children will think about him, what the neighbors will think about him, what his wife will think about him. He should have become famous. Our society and culture drill that into our heads day and night. People who made it! Made what?! Made asses of themselves. Because they drained all their energy getting something that was worthless. They’re frightened and confused, they are puppets like the rest. Look at them strutting across the stage. Look how upset they get if they have a stain on their shirt. Do you call that a success? Look at how frightened they are at the prospect they might not be reelected. Do you call that a success? They are controlled, so manipulated. They are unhappy people, they are miserable people. They don’t enjoy life. They are constantly tense and anxious. Do you call that human? And do you know why that happens? Only one reason: They identified with some label. They identified the ‘I’ with their money or their job or their profession. That was their error.

“Did you hear about the lawyer who was presented with a plumber’s bill? He said to the plumber, ‘Hey, you’re charging me two hundred dollars an hour. I don’t make that kind of money as a lawyer.’ The plumber said, ‘I didn’t make that kind of money when I was a lawyer either!’ You could be a plumber or a lawyer or a businessman or a priest, but that does not affect the essential ‘I’. It doesn’t affect you. If I change my profession tomorrow, it’s just like changing my clothes. I am untouched. Are you your clothes? Are you your name? Are you your profession? Stop identifying with them. They come and go.

“When you really understand this, no criticism can affect you. No flattery or praise can affect you either. When someone says, ‘You’re a great guy,’ what is he talking about? He’s talking about ‘me,’ he’s not talking about ‘I.’ ‘I’ is neither great nor small. ‘I’ is neither successful nor a failure. It is none of these labels. These things come and go. These things depend on the criteria society establishes. These things depend on your conditioning. These things depend on the mood of the person who happens to be talking to you right now. It has nothing to do with ‘I.’ ‘I’ is none of these labels. ‘Me’ is generally selfish, foolish, childish—a great big ass. So when you say, ‘You’re an ass,’ I’ve known it for years! The conditioned self—what did you expect? I’ve known it for years. Why do you identify with him? Silly! That isn’t ‘I,’ that’s ‘me.’

“Do you want to be happy? Uninterrupted happiness is uncaused. True happiness is uncaused. You cannot make me happy. You are not my happiness. You say to the awakened person, ‘Why are you happy?’ and the awakened person replies, ‘Why not?’

“Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don’t have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don’t you experience it? Because you’ve got to drop something. You’ve got to drop illusions. You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!”

Labels

The following is the 23rd chapter in, “AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the DeMello Stroud Spirituality Center.

“The important thing is not to know who I is or what ‘I’ is. You’ll never succeed. There are no words for it. The important thing is to drop the labels. As the Japanese Zen masters say, ‘Don’t seek the truth; just drop your opinions.’ Drop your theories; don’t seek the truth. Truth isn’t something you search for. If you stop being opinionated, you would know. Something similar happens here. If you drop your labels, you would know. What do I mean by labels? Every label you can conceive of except perhaps that of human being. I am a human being. Fair enough; doesn’t say very much. But when you say, ‘I am successful,’ that’s crazy. Success is not part of the ‘I.’ Success is something that comes and goes; it could be here today and gone tomorrow. That’s not ‘I.’ When you said, ‘I was a success,’ you were in error; you were plunged into darkness. You identified yourself with success. The same thing when you said, ‘I am a failure, a lawyer, a businessman.’ You know what’s going to happen to you if you identify yourself with these things. You’re going to cling to them, you’re going to be worried that they may fall apart, and that’s where your suffering comes in. That is what I meant earlier when I said to you, ‘If you’re suffering, you’re asleep.’ Do you want a sign that you’re asleep? Here it is: You’re suffering. Suffering is a sign that you’re out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there’s falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere. Suffering points out that there is falsehood somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.”

How Happiness Happens

The following is the 19th chapter in, “AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the DeMello Stroud Spirituality Center.

 “Come home to yourself. Observe yourself. That’s why I said earlier that self-observation is such a delightful and extraordinary thing. After a while you don’t have to make any effort, because, as illusions begin to crumble, you begin to know things that cannot be described. It’s called happiness. Everything changes and you become addicted to awareness.

“There’s the story of the disciple who went to the master and said, ‘Could you give me a word of wisdom? Could you tell me something that would guide me through my days?’ It was the master’s day of silence, so he picked up a pad. It said, ‘Awareness.’ When the disciple saw it, he said, ‘This is too brief. Can you expand on it a bit?’ So the master took back the pad and wrote, ‘Awareness, awareness, awareness.’ The disciple said, ‘Yes, but what does it mean?’ The master took back the pad and wrote, ‘Awareness, awareness, awareness means—awareness.’

“That’s what it is to watch yourself. No one can show you how to do it, because he would be giving you a technique, he would be programming you. But watch yourself. When you talk to someone, are you aware of it or are you simply identifying with it? When you got angry with somebody, were you aware that you were angry or were you simply identifying with your anger? Later, when you had the time, did you study your experience and attempt to understand it? Where did it come from? What brought it on? I don’t know of any other way to awareness. You only change what you understand. What you do not understand and are not aware of, you repress. You don’t change. But when you understand it, it changes.

“I am sometimes asked, ‘Is this growing in awareness a gradual thing, or is it a ‘whammo’ kind of thing?’  There are some lucky people who see this in a flash. They just become aware. There are others who keep growing into it, slowly, gradually, increasingly. They begin to see things. Illusions drop away, fantasies are peeled away, and they start to get in touch with facts. There’s no general rule. There’s a famous story about the lion who came upon a flock of sheep and to his amazement found a lion among the sheep. It was a lion who had been brought up by the sheep ever since he was a cub. It would bleat like a sheep and run around like a sheep. The lion went straight for him, and when the sheep-lion stood in front of the real one, he trembled in every limb. And the lion said to him, ‘What are you doing among these sheep?’ And the sheep-lion said, ‘I am a sheep.’ And the lion said, ‘Oh no you’re not. You’re coming with me.’ So he took the sheep-lion to a pool and said, ‘Look!’ And when the sheep-lion looked at his reflection in the water, he let out a mighty roar, and in that moment he was transformed. He was never the same again.

“If you’re lucky and the gods are gracious or if you are gifted with divine grace (use any theological expression you want), you might suddenly understand who ‘I’ is, and you’ll never be the same again, never. Nothing will ever be able to touch you again and no one will ever be able to hurt you again.

“You will fear no one and you will fear nothing. Isn’t that extraordinary? You’ll live like a king, like a queen. This is what it means to live like royalty. Not rubbish like getting your picture in the newspapers or having a lot of money. That’s a lot of rot. You fear no one because you’re perfectly content to be nobody. You don’t give a damn about success or failure. They mean nothing. Honor, disgrace, they mean nothing! If you make a fool of yourself, that means nothing either. Isn’t that a wonderful state to be in! Some people arrive at this goal painstakingly, step by step, through months and weeks of self-awareness. But I’ll promise you this: I have not known a single person who gave time to being aware who didn’t see a difference in a matter of weeks. The quality of their life changes, so they don’t have to take it on faith anymore. They see it; they’re different. They react differently. In fact, they react less and act more. You see things you’ve never seen before.

“You’re much more energetic, much more alive. People think that if they had no cravings, they’d be like deadwood. But in fact they’d lose their tension. Get rid of your fear of failure, your tensions about succeeding, you will be yourself. Relaxed. You wouldn’t be driving with your brakes on. That’s what would happen.

“There’s a lovely saying of Tranxu, a great Chinese sage, that I took the trouble to learn by heart. It goes: ‘When the archer shoots for no particular prize, he has all his skills; when he shoots to win a brass buckle, he is already nervous; when he shoots for a gold prize, he goes blind, sees two targets, and is out of his mind. His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him. He cares! He thinks more of winning than of shooting, and the need to win drains him of power.’  Isn’t that an image of what most people are? When you’re living for nothing, you’ve got all your skills, you’ve got all your energy, you’re relaxed, you don’t care, it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose.

“Now there’s human living for you. That’s what life is all about. That can only come from awareness. And in awareness you will understand that honor doesn’t mean a thing. It’s a social convention, that’s all. That’s why the mystics and the prophets didn’t bother one bit about it. Honor or disgrace meant nothing to them. They were living in another world, in the world of the awakened. Success or failure meant nothing to them. They had the attitude: ‘I’m an ass, you’re an ass, so where’s the problem?’

“Someone once said, ‘The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are wrong.’  But these are the easiest things in the world if you haven’t identified with the ‘me’.  You can say things like ‘I’m wrong! If you knew me better, you’d see how often I’m wrong. What would you expect from an ass?’  But if I haven’t identified with these aspects of ‘me’, you can’t hurt me. Initially, the old conditioning will kick in and you’ll be depressed and anxious. You’ll grieve, cry, and so on. ‘Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed: after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed’. But there’s a difference: I don’t identify with it anymore. Do you know what a big difference that is?

“You step outside of yourself and look at that depression, and don’t identify with it. You don’t do a thing to make it go away; you are perfectly willing to go on with your life while it passes through you and disappears. If you don’t know what that means, you really have something to look forward to. And anxiety? There it comes and you’re not troubled. How strange! You’re anxious but you’re not troubled.

“Isn’t that a paradox? And you’re willing to let this cloud come in, because the more you fight it, the more power you give it. You’re willing to observe it as it passes by. You can be happy in your anxiety. Isn’t that crazy? You can be happy in your depression. But you can’t have the wrong notion of happiness. Did you think happiness was excitement or thrills? That’s what causes the depression. Didn’t anyone tell you that? You’re thrilled, all right, but you’re just preparing the way for your next depression. You’re thrilled but you pick up the anxiety behind that: How can I make it last? That’s not happiness, that’s addiction.

“I wonder how many nonaddicts there are reading this book? If you’re anything like the average group, there are few, very few. Don’t look down your nose at the alcoholics and the drug addicts: maybe you’re just as addicted as they are. The first time I got a glimpse of this new world, it was terrifying. I understood what it meant to be alone, with nowhere to rest your head, to leave everyone free and be free yourself, to be special to no one and love everyone—because love does that. It shines on good and bad alike; it makes rain fall on saints and sinners alike.

“Is it possible for the rose to say, ‘I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the bad?’ Or is it possible for the lamp to say, ‘I will give my light to the good people in this room, but I will withhold it from the evil people.’ Or can a tree say, ‘I’ll give my shade to the good people who rest under me, but I will withhold it from the bad’? These are images of what love is about.

“It’s been there all along, staring us in the face in the scriptures, though we never cared to see it because we were so drowned in what our culture calls love with its love songs and poems—that isn’t love at all, that’s the opposite of love. That’s desire and control and possessiveness. That’s manipulation, and fear, and anxiety—that’s not love. We were told that happiness is a smooth complexion, a holiday resort. It isn’t these things, but we have subtle ways of making our happiness depend on other things, both within us and outside us. We say, ‘I refuse to be happy until my neurosis goes.’ I have good news for you: You can be happy right now, with the neurosis, You want even better news? There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing what in India we call anand—bliss, bliss. There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it’s because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have. Otherwise you would be experiencing bliss. You’re focusing on what you don’t have. But, right now you have everything you need to be in bliss.

“Jesus was talking horse sense to lay people, to starving people, to poor people. He was telling them good news: It’s yours for the taking. But who listens? No one’s interested, they’d rather be asleep”.