The Art of Happy Living: Towards Peace and Freedom

Happiness, that one feeling which has been the constant quest of human actions and endeavors.  With thousands of self help books around and with all privileges of life many humans continue to live without being happy. Most of the time the absence of happiness is blamed upon unfulfilled wishes and negative outcomes. Here we face a fundamental question, 'what is happiness dependent upon?'. Is it material object of our desire? Is it a certain sense of accomplishment? Or is it a mental state which is produced as an outcome of the above? Common sense will lead us to the third answer that it is a mental state that is an outcome of material achievements and mental accomplishment. Then rises the question of discussion we have today, if it is a mental state, is it possible to be happy as we wish without the reasons that generally lead to that state? For thousands of years spiritual masters have taught that it is possible and happiness is our normal state. But since here today we don't wish to go into the pure spiritual angle of it, the question we look to is not about being in bliss all the time like a sage but the ability to be happy most of the time. Today being happy at least a few times is a big achievement! And from my experiments in the subject, I can tell you that, it is absolutely possible to disconnect happiness from material or mental goals but make it a way of life. So here comes my blog as promised after the Instagram poll results.

Now how can we make ourselves more happier with life? The answer is simple, by accepting yourself and getting to know yourself better. Today most people don't spend time with themselves, they are very less aware about themselves and understand them only as a set of thoughts produced by the mind. There are several ways to make yourself a happier person, it includes living in the moment, the ability to laugh at yourself and finally understanding yourself better. 

Living in the Moment:

Most of the time, it is not the absence of happiness that cause sorrow but the unwanted thoughts about past and future. This is the most common reason that keeps people away from being happy about the small things around them. While travelling in a Mumbai local, I met a small girl aged around 2-3. She would laugh out loud each time the train stopped and restarted. The little kid was able to extract happiness from a small incident of movement of a train because she had no thoughts of past or future keeping her busy. This gave me a great lesson!  I kept aside my thoughts about politics and society and looked around. A cold breeze kissed me and I smiled! The experience was powerful and instantly I realized that I was happy all the time about several things from getting a seat to it being a window seat and having cold breeze! But all this was clouded by my thoughts about some incident in future!  Life is a beautiful balance, and yet it has all sorts of incidents and emotions, but it is indeed possible to be a happy being by living in the moment. From the next time, at each instance the mind starts to wander around in past and future thoughts, you should bring it back to the present and see the profound effect it has on your life. 

Ability to Laugh at Yourself:

You would have obviously seen certain people who during failure seem untouched and on the contrary joke about themselves freely. This is an ability that comes with time and mind control. The core of being able to do so is in seeing yourself and your thoughts separately. It is technique used in meditation and thus as a cause and effect, people who practice meditation seem to easily work under pressure situations. But it is not a necessary to meditate. The crux is in seeing your thoughts and responding to it rather than just going along with it. The reason why this helps in being happy is  because it helps to disconnect yourself as being separate from all thoughts created in the mind. Those are just thoughts that have come across and there is no need to cling on to them. But this journey is not easy. When one starts to do this or for that matter any step in the direction of mind control is one filled with failures and setbacks, but the beauty is in the fact that you measure your progress by looking at the way you react to failures in the path. 

How does meditation help in the process? In the normal process of simple meditation one starts to observe his/her thoughts. It is big misconception that meditation is about suppression of thoughts! This misconception is the reason for many leaving the practice all together. Actually meditation is about observing your thoughts but not following them. It lets all thoughts to pop up but does't hold on to them or follow them until thoughts stop and peace sets in. Now a separate blog on the practice of meditation shall be done later, coming back to our subject. As one starts to look at his/her own thoughts, they separate themselves from the thoughts. Now what happens is that, with constant practice even in day-day life thoughts are seen as separate. This leads to 'response' to situations in the place of 'reaction'!

 (Note: There are several other types of meditation techniques such as breath observation, mantra etc. I have mentioned the most simple mediation used for calm mind and peace.)

Towards Freedom and Peace: Simplified living:

Here I would like to introduce two concepts: 1) Simplified living and 2) Living in Peace towards freedom. These are two principles/values/philosophy or whatever you may like to call it, which I believe in. 

Firstly the idea of simplified living has multiple layers. In literal terms it means leading a simple life and finding your joy in smallest of small things in life. But in a deeper sense it means that making life and decisions less complex. For example if you have a misunderstanding with someone, go and talk to them directly instead of pondering over it in your head. And the mother of all dilemmas teenagers face, (LOL) if you like someone just go and tell them rather than thinking over it and wasting your energy. This way of simple living and simplified life has a great impact on one's happiness and joy. At times it is rather advisable to remain silent than saying something, in such situations do no think over the decision you had made after it is done, because it is of no use and only does damage to your mind. 

Now the second concept is about living in peace towards freedom. This ideal reviews each of your action before it is done and can have great impact on ones peace and happiness. Each decision in life can be evaluated against a simple principle, " Is this leading to greater freedom?" This is an age old spiritual ideal preached by many great teachers. Now this is a brilliant tool to get rid of intoxicants and liquor since they take away a lot of your freedom and trap you in anger and illusion. And greater freedom means greater happiness. 

The next time you are angry at someone or something, sit alone and ask yourself why are you angry? Ask yourself is there anything that can be done to undo it? If no, try to let it go and forgive the person. The sense of joy that rises from within as you forgive someone is far far beyond any revenge and sweeter that carrying the bitter emotion within. Try this next time! 

Conclusion:

A normal person's life unlike a saint has sorrow, anger and all sort of emotions. But it is entirely in our capacity to being a happy being overall. Have't me met those people who are always smiling, always happy, just their thought brings a smile on your face, does't it? So why not try being such a person!! If one can overcome unwanted thinking, try to live in the present as much as possible and lead a simple life, that person shall be a source of happiness and inspiration to everyone around and will be usually a happy being within! From my experiments I have realized even showing the guts to embark on this journey starts to bring joy to you and fear not of failures as they make the journey eventful! 

Throw your worry to the wind, turn within and find peace!
                                                                                           -Ramana Maharshi 

As you finish reading this, now smile, give a wide smile at yourself and feel the happiness within!! Let's embark on the journey of self transformation or at a spiritual level the journey back to the self ! We are all comrades in the journey and have each other's back at all time! 

The Revolution of Love shall Win!!!!!

With Love. 

Sreesreshta Nair (SN)