Question: If all of us could be sincerely happy, would all your problems be over?

Sri Chinmoy: Happiness is of different types. Sometimes we call something happiness, but it is not happiness; it is pleasure. We have so much difficulty separating them. In the morning you are supposed to get up at six o’clock to meditate. Now suppose you get up at six o’clock, and then you start looking at the sunrise. By looking at the sunrise you become so happy. You think, “I am so happy. Now Guru should be happy.” But you are actually enjoying pleasure-life. At six o’clock you are supposed to pray and meditate. If you had gotten up and prayed and meditated, that happiness would have really helped me. But instead, you found your so-called happiness in pleasure.

Then perhaps you want to sleep five minutes more, ten minutes more, half an hour more. By establishing friendship with your lethargy, you feel that you are getting joy. But you do not realise that you are only enjoying pleasure-life. In a clever way you are feeding your lethargy, and you are saying you are so happy. You have gone farther than the farthest away from me. I want you to get up at six o’clock and pray and meditate. That happiness would have really helped me, because you would have become one with my will. Instead you are becoming happy by feeding your lethargy. You get up two hours late, and then you feel that you are so happy. If I see that you are losing your inner capacity, will I be happy?

So you see how clever human beings can be. Your pleasure-life you are identifying with your real happiness-life. True happiness-life can only be found in your oneness with the will of your Master. It is very difficult to separate pleasure-life from true innocent happiness. Your innocent happiness definitely helps me. Good disciples come to me with pure happiness, innocent happiness. Some good disciples come to me like a flower that has blossomed. Others come with forced happiness. In their minds they are thinking, “Guru will be displeased if I do not show him a happiness-face.” That happiness is not helping me at all.

Like an arrow, you are piercing me when you are not sincerely happy. Again, when good disciples come to me with an innocent, sweet smile, they are definitely helping me. Some are coming with happiness only in their mind, while some are coming with an open heart. Then do I not see the difference? In the line some are giving me so much joy, while some are giving me so much pain. Next to you somebody may be coming who is only giving me a false smile. But if anybody gives me a true smile, it takes away so much of my suffering. Your smile is the only thing that helps me. At that time you are not adding anything to my problems. On the contrary, you are sharing my suffering through your happiness.

To come back to your question, we must always separate pleasure from happiness. Very easily you can distinguish between the two if you are sincere, if you are strict with yourself. Otherwise, so many times pleasure-life is taking the place of our innocent happiness.