"Then what is joy? Joy is a state of transcendence. One is neither happy nor unhappy, but is utterly peaceful, quiet, in absolute equilibrium; so silent and so alive that his silence is a song, and his song is nothing but his silence. Joy is forever, happiness is momentary. Happiness is caused by the outside, hence can be taken away from the outside. You have to depend on others for happiness, and any dependence is ugly, any dependence is bondage. Joy arises within; it has nothing to do with the outside. It is not caused by others. It is not caused at all, it is the spontaneous flow of your own energy.

"If your energy is stagnant there is no joy. If your energy becomes a flow, a movement, a river, there is great joy – for no other reason, just because you become more fluid, more flowing, more alive. A song is born in your heart, a great ecstasy arises.

"It is a surprise when it arises, because you cannot find any cause for it. It is the most mysterious experience in life: something uncaused, something beyond the law of cause and effect. It need not be caused because it is your intrinsic nature, you are born with it. It is something inborn, it is you in your totality, flowing.

"Whenever you are flowing, you are flowing towards the ocean. That is the joy: the dance of the river moving towards the ocean to meet the ultimate beloved. When your life is a stagnant pool you are simply dying. You are not moving anywhere – no ocean, no hope. But when you are flowing, the ocean is coming closer every moment, and the closer the river comes, the more dance there is, the more ecstasy there is.

"Your consciousness is a river. Buddha has called it a continuum. It is a continuity, an eternal continuity, an eternal flow. Buddha has never thought of you and your being as something static. In his vision, the word being is not right. According to him, being is nothing but becoming. He denies being, he accepts becoming –because being gives you the idea of something static inside you, like a rock."