Skip to main content

HAPPINESS WITHOUT REASONS

Everyday there is a different reason for not being happy. Someday, it is because someone hurt us and we keep thinking about it, someday our health is not good. Someday it's simply because we are not in a mood. Someday, it's because a plan of ours didn't work out....and the list goes on and on. Very rarely are we happy.

All these reasons are valid and true. But the question is 'when will there be a day when the mind will offer no reasons to be happy?' Material world is a place of continuous drama and happenings, and the mind knows how to perfectly en-cash on it. Even if all our problems went away, will we be happy? A new set of problems will come or even if there are no further problems, the mind will make one. After all it's expert at it - creating problems where none exists. 



Happiness, joy, peace or love are unconditional, which means that they are not dependent on any conditions. Waiting for the perfect condition to be happy or peaceful is a great trap. One of the keys to happiness is to learn to see these reasons not as reasons but as excuses we give ourselves not to be happy. Our problems are not the real problems, our excuses are the real problems. These excuses are precisely what is coming between us and true joy.

When we say - I can't be happy because of 'so and so reason', is it really that we don't have the power to be happy despite that problem. Let's analyse this. What if someone held a gun on our head and told us, "just be happy, stop cribbing or I will shoot you!"  What will we do? Remember, our reasons are still there as it is. Will we be able to be happy? 100%, we will be happy irrespective of all our reasons. Why? Because our life is at stake.

Two points from this example. 
  1. We always have the power to be happy even when we think otherwise.
  2. ‎Many times we are not happy because we don't see it as very important or as important as life for us. It's not our number one priority.

Another justification we give ourselves for not being happy is - "if someone else would have been in my situation, he or she would have also been miserable, he or she would have behaved in similar ways." This is not true. There have been many people with more difficult issues and complications than us but who still manage to be happy and peaceful. Srimad Bhagvatam has the example of the devotee-child, Prahlad who was tortured so much by his father but still managed to fully focus on his Bhakti and be perfectly peaceful. We might say "He was from a different Yuga. It was easier for him". But we have contemporary examples of so many people who in spite of great challenges still chose to be happy.

Mind always makes exceptions. It will justify our situation by saying, "I am different, my situation is unique. My problem is unique". Just see we find identity in our problems too. If we feel we are special because of our problems, if we make an identity of our problems, how we will we ever give them up.

Even if all our reasons are valid, the question at the end of the day is do we want to be left with 'valid reasons' or 'happiness'. The ball is in our court...

- Achyut Gopal Das

P.S - This article can also apply to spiritual life or japa in particular. The principles remain the same. Just replace the word 'Happiness' with 'Bhakti' or 'Japa'.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PREPARING OUR MINDS & HEARTS FOR 2020

Take sometime to think about all the things you wanted to do in 2019 and is still undone.   Think about the state of your mental and emotional well-being at the end of 2019. Are you happy about it or do you want to change it for good as you enter 2020? Think about the spiritual advancement you have made in 2019. Do you think you could have advanced much more than you presently have?   How do you want to see yourself placed at the end of 2020   Let these questions act as catalysts and springboard for our thought process so that, we enter the year 2020 with razor sharp focus, unwavering clarity, passionate purpose and unending zeal to upgrade every aspect of our life like never before, break all dis empowering barriers that are holding us down and thus make 2020 a hallmark year in the journey of our life.
Post a Comment
Read more

RACE AGAINST TIME

Time and tide wait for none. Time is one of the most powerful feature of this world. In fact, Lord Krishna introduces Himself as time in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita. However powerful a personality one may be, at the end everyone has to bow down in front of time and surrender to it. History is the proof of the power of time. Big, big people reduced to dust by time. Time is so imperceptible in it's working that we don't even realize how days, weeks, months and years pass away - until it's too late . Our life can be compared to a video game with a timer on. Only, the one who wins the game before the time runs out is declared the winner. The only difference between the video game and and the game of life is that in the video game, you know how much time is left but in the game of life, you don't know how much time is left. If while playing a simple game we have to be fully focused and conscious not to waste time to win it, how much more, we hav...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIME TO WAKE UP

"jīv jāgo, jīv jāgo, gauracānda bole kota nidrā jāo māyā-piśācīra kole" "Lord Gauranga is calling, "Wake up, sleeping souls! Wake up, sleeping souls! How long will you sleep in the lap of the witch called Maya?" - from a song by Bhaktivinode Thakur. When someone is fast asleep and he needs to woken up, there are two ways to do it. One is "a soft way" and the other, is "the hard way". The soft way is by making a sound or by ringing an alarm and the hard way is by shaking the person up till he wakes up. If the soft way doesn't work then one has to incorporate the hard way. Similarly, there are two ways in which we, the sleeping souls are woken up from our slumber of ignorance and illusion. The first and the soft way is when we wake up from illusion by hearing the sound of the truth, the sound of God, either in the form of His message or in the form of His Holynames. This sound vibration is called "shabda-bra...
Post a Comment
Read more