Do success and happiness go together? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2015)

Question: Is it necessary to be successful in order to lead a happy life?

Acharya Prashant: Let us, first of all, understand something. You are assuming that we all want happiness. That’s not a fact. You will feel little surprised, but I am insisting, we do not want happiness. All we want is freedom from sadness. Because you are sad, that is your real experience, you are sad, you want freedom from sadness. And what do you conclude? See, we live in a world of duality. If I want freedom from day, what do I get? Night. Its opposite. Are you getting it?

You want freedom from winters, what do you get? Summers. The opposite. So what do you think is, that freedom from one thing is a movement into its opposite. That’s your assumption. I am insisting that nobody in this world wants happiness. We want freedom from sadness, and we have erroneously concluded that freedom from sadness means happiness. Because we live in duality, that has been our experience.

Happiness is a kind of an excitement, attention. You cannot handle too much of happiness. And if you have happiness, then happiness will lose its value. Fact is you are sad. That is acceptable. You are sad. You want freedom from sadness, but that freedom from sadness is not happiness. That freedom is freedom from sadness and happiness both.

You are saying, “Is it necessary to be successful in order to be happy?” First of all see that you want to be successful because you are sad. Because you are sad, you want to be successful. No man who is not sad will try to be successful. When you are calm, relaxed, loving, in that matter, in that movement, is there anything called success. Do you bother for success? You don’t, right?