April 16, 2012Dear Sir,Misery has many things to offer you which happiness cannot. In fact, happiness takes away many things from you.Happiness takes all that you have ever had — all that you have ever been!Happiness destroys you — misery nourishes your ego!Happiness is basically a state of being void of ego.Hence that is the problem, the very crux of the problem. That is why people find it very difficult to be happy. That is why millions of people in the world have to live in misery — have decided to live in misery.If this principle is properly understood, then things become very clear. Misery makes you specialHappiness is a universal phenomenon — there is nothing special about it. Trees are happy, animals are happy, birds are happy — the whole existence is happy — except man!Being miserable, man becomes very special — misery makes you capable of attracting people’s attention. Whenever you are miserable you are attended to — sympathised with — loved. Everybody starts taking care of you.Who wants to hurt a miserable person? That would be too mean! The miserable person is cared for, loved and attended to.There is great investment in misery eg if the wife is not miserable, the husband simply tends to forget her — if she is miserable the husband cannot afford to neglect her. If the husband is miserable — the whole family, the wife, children and all around him are worried about him.It gives great comfort when you are ill, depressed, in misery — friends come to visit you, to solace and console you.When you are happy, the same friends become jealous of you. When you are really happy, you will find the whole world has turned against you! Nobody likes a happy person, because the happy person hurts the egos of the others. The others start feeling like “So you have become happy and we are still crawling in darkness, misery and hell. How dare you be happy when we all are in such misery!”Of course the world consists of miserable people, and nobody is courageous enough to let the whole world go against him; it is too dangerous — too risky.It is better to cling to misery, it keeps you a part of the crowd.Happy — and you are an individual — miserable, and you are part of a crowd!This is the Zen teachings of OshoIn conclusion — I would rather be happy — than right!SENSEI BURNESS WILLIAMSHamilton