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

Popular posts from this blog

CHOOSE YOUR CHAOS

There is a very interesting theory called the Deterministic Chaos Theory. I was quite fascinated when I first learnt about this theory and the impact it can have on our life. We live in a world with so many laws both gross and subtle. Better to understand them and live our life in accordance with them, because as the saying goes " You can't break the law but can break yourself against it ". With this little introduction let us try to understand this theory in action. Deterministic Chaos Theory in it's simplistic sense states that a minor difference at the start of a process can make a major change in it as time progresses . Just like an avalanche. It starts with a small ball of snow falling down, slowly it gathers more and more snow and very soon the ball becomes so big that an entire village is destroyed. Another example to explain this phenomenon is the example of a plane. If there is an error by a slightest degree when the plane takes off then it could land in an...

RELAX YOUR WAY THROUGH LIFE

We all have problems in life, that's given but the question is - how do we deal with them? Generally when faced with difficulties, we panic and stress out, but this doesn't solve the problem rather aggravates it. The best way to deal with our problems is by being calm . How can one remain calm amidst problems? That's a question of practice. The point is unless we are calm we will not be able to see the problem for what it is, what to speak of solving it. Just like if a pond is agitated we can't see our reflection, similarly we can't see the obvious as long as our mind remains agitated. We always think that peace is obtained by solving our problems. That may be true but we forget that to solve our problems we need to be at peace first. This is something most of us don't get. By being calm and relaxed in face of a difficulty, we are placing ourselves in the mode of goodness and only in goodness can solutions come forth because the symptoms of the mode of g...

LIFE BEYOND LABELS

One of the main pastimes of the mind is to label. It loves labeling, in fact it thrives and exits on labeling . Labeling is a wonderful tool to learn concepts by making it simple, but when it comes to experiencing life, it doesn't work so well for us especially if our labels of life are negative. Simple words, labels affect us in ways beyond our wildest imagination. They shape our views, color our lives with different perspectives. These mental labels affect practically every aspect of our life - be it personal, relationships or our experience of life in general. The mental labels start right from our birth. We identify ourselves as our body, our name, our gender. Then as we grow older, so many other labels add up to our identity. Our education, our profession, our economic status. What others tell about who we are slowly become important to us, our new labels. If someone repeatedly calls us ' useless ', slowly that turns into a label. It's not that only others ...