Guiding Light: Is there a recipe to be happy?

Though we all want to be happy, happiness remains elusive. The problem is that we haven’t understood what happiness really is. Happiness is a state of being. We just have to be happy instead of trying to become happy. Happiness is not a product that can be bought. Nor is it a person that we can live with, or a place we can go to.

Most of us think that happiness comes from achievement, from success, from money. If happiness truly came from wealth or success, then all successful people would be happy, wouldn’t they? But they aren’t. However, those who stop climbing the illusory peak of achievement, and live with fulfilment, attain a state of peace. Peace is the foundation of happiness.

Living a life of contentment gives happiness and peace that is more enduring than running after transient pleasures that come from achievement. We allow our need to be overtaken by greed. If we constantly want more, how can we be happy?

We need to realize that happiness is in the NOW. We must live in the moment. But instead of being blissful and peaceful in the present moment, we lose it, either by living in the past or the future. It is our monkey mind that takes us into the past or the future. We must tame our mind, make it silent and still by observing it jumping from thought to thought.

Happiness is like a shadow. The more we chase it, the further it goes away. This is the ‘happiness paradox’. However, if we stop, we will find that happiness is with us wherever we are. Most of us don’t realize that happiness is within us, but we are searching for it outside. We live and die like that musk deer who is searching for the fragrance of the musk that is inside its own navel all along. Ultimately, it falls off the cliff and dies.

We all experience suffering — we experience physical pain of the body, misery of the mind, and agony of the ego. Those who go in quest of the ultimate peak of happiness, Enlightenment, realize the truth. They realize who we are, the Divine Soul. They experience Divine bliss. They discover the true meaning of life and with that, live a life of eternal peace and everlasting bliss, Satcitananda, as they escape from the triple suffering of the body, mind, and ego.

(The author is a spiritual leader and the founder of AiR Institute of Realization and AiR Center of Enlightenment)