There is a path to happiness...

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There is a path to happiness...

There is nothing called tomorrow as far as life is concerned , it  is only today. Our friend brought to me a sheet of paper in which he wrote (not scribbled) about his fears, hopes , aspirations and also his strength and weaknesses . I was surprised and was pleased with the sincerity with which he did it in one day.

When I looked at the paper I found that he was very serious in writing those words and I was sure that much thought must have gone into every word of it. He had actually done a 360 degrees analysis , that is , he made an assessment of all conceivable aspects surrounding him .

But when I went through it and found that he had dealt with both his external and internal states. I was really surprised at the inherent ability of man to make an attempt to discover himself ,his realities .The paper was a  concise critical spiritual autobiography of my friend ( Our friend ) with his own perceptions of his actions.

He had used three different colours on the paper. On close scrutiny I found to my amusement that he used blue colours for all the things he did which he thought was right ,the red colour was used for all the things he should not have done or said, according to him and the  feeling of guilt attached to it .Green colour was used for writing what he wants to be and what he aspired for now and in future – He wrote only one sentencethere.. “I feel relieved now and I want to be happy, but how ? I am not sure . but I may get an answer ,from within or without” ... he had written at the end of the second page ...there is a path ,he must have thought, for the first time ,towards real  happiness which he was yet to experience ... 

Did he find an answer or did somebody gave him an answer? 

Let us  see... what happened to him next .......

TOTAL EMPTINESS

Total Emptiness happens when you have nothing to hold on to. When you become  a sort of puppet controlled by somebody else you will have a sort of  internal vacuum which will affect your total personality. It is all a matter of choice which is under your control

It is this moment that counts and that is the only reality. As one saying goes “yesterday is a cancelled cheque ,tomorrow us a promissory note , today is CASH “ Hence extracting maximum of today’s possibilities is the only way to be happy. My friend ,who fell from the pedestal he created for himself, was really living in the past and thinking about the unknown future. What will happen to him ? But the truth is that what will happen to him tomorrow could be the result of what he does today .. may or may not be.. it is uncertain but everything is uncertain in life. 

You have to live your life and you have to make your choices at every step and you are responsible for your actions. I f you live and act according to the plans made for you by others you lose out on everything and you will feel that you have accomplished anything lie And at last you will think about the uselessness of the life that you had been living .This exactly was the case of our friend who went on living looking outside without looked within himself as to what he really wants .Tolstoy makes this point clear through one of his characters, IVAN ILYCH as he awaits his moment of truth .Ivan contemplates on his past thoroughly dominated by others opinions which he thought his own and gave up control of himself and thus living a “false life “.Our friend was also making an attempt to fit into a system which was not his but which others made for him and hence falling down into a chaotic situation. Freedom to choose has been a tragedy for him because he did not exercise his choice well, and hence ends up in regret . Now read what TOLSTOY says :

“

What if my whole life has been wrong ?”It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before ,namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done ,might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely noticeable impulses ,which he had immediately suppressed ,might have been the real thing the rest false .And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interest, might all have been false . He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend...

Happiness is our right and you alone can deny it to yourself. Hence you cannot blame anybody else for your unhappiness. I told our friend to write down on a sheet of paper whatever comes to his mind about what he really wants after careful thought .This is to effect a sort of catharsis ( Because he will definitely think about some significant things in his past before he thinks about the future)..

Then what happened ?.... continues

You are the sum total of your CHOICES

       

You are the sum total of your CHOICES

The greatest gift and the greatest tragedy of human beings is that every one of us has been vested with the power to choose between any number of choices.

The gift is a real one and great one is because we can consciously accept or reject things ,ideas ,people, and what not! But the greatest tragedy is that we find it extremely difficult tot exercise this power to choose when occasion arises .Our dilemma is always Hmalet-ian one TO BE OR NOT TO BE ... TO DO OR NOT TO DO.. TO ACCEPT OR NOT AND IT CONTINUES as long as life continues. We regret our decisions too often ,and engage in blame games often trying to find out a scapegoat when things go wrong. But the fact is that we ourselves are the culprits for our own suffering.

Everybody wants to be happy but have you ever thought how you can become happy. Happiness is relative and the cause of happiness changes every moment .Just reflect a while to find out when was the last time you were happy. You may vaguely recollect some incidents in the past which made you happy ( and this can happen only if you know what is happiness , which I doubt many of us may not know ).

I know a person( who owned a two-wheeler for a long time )  thought that  buying any car ( a four-wheeler ) will make him happy. He worked hard and entered into real estate business ( he was an employee in  a small finance company).there was a boom and he entered the business on a full time business and money flowed in as he bought and sold lands .And fro his first car ( Maruti 800) he reached a BMW in less that five years . I used to meet him frequently during his Maruti days but I do not meet him in his BMW days as before . But when I met him once he casually told me that he would like to buy a ROLLS ROYCE car !! My jaws dropped not because he wanted to buy a RR but because the kind of dynamic desire a man can have .But the anticlimax is that he retraced swiftly back to a  Maruti Swift D Zire and I heard that he lost somewhere in his journey stumbled and fell.

After one year I happened to meet him in a marriage function and he tried to move away from me but could not. I asked him how he was and he drew me to corner , we sat on plastic chairs and he told me his tragic story  of losing everything due to his indulgence in luxury .I asked him whether he was happy .. he reflected for a moment and asked me back .. what do mean by happiness ? I think I was never neither I am now “ But I am not sure what happened to me and what is happening to me. Nobody asked this question to me till now” "To be frank with you I do not know". He was about to break down when somebody came up and addressed him .

I left him and walked away.

Then what happened..   read on... to be continued ....

Live a Better Life

Live a Better Life 

Photo. Varma

“ Do not blame people so much as the environments into which they are born .Their surroundings and circumstances force them to become worse than they  really are .That is true of both EAST and WEST. Society must be brought into tune with a higher note. Materialism must be balanced by idealism ; there is no other real cure for the world’s difficulties. The troubles into which countries are everywhere being plunged are really agonies which will force this change ,just as failure is frequently a sign-post pointing to another road”

PAUL BRUNTON… A Search In Secret India  

Brunton was one of the twentieth century’s greatest explorers of the spiritual traditions of the East. He was also a journalist with a healthy regard for critical impartiality and for commonsense. These characteristics ,together with a rich inner life ,made him a superb writer on spirituality of the ORIENT .

A Search In secret INDIA is one of the great classics of spiritual travel writing.

“ Paul Brunton was surely one of the finest mystical flowers to grow on the wasteland of our civilization. what he has to say is important to us all”

..George Feuerstein

THE STATEMENT and MY understanding

Brunton is a fine writer( WITH SPIRITUAL LEANINGS ) who wrote convincingly about abstract things in a very clear, understandable language Though he was initially confused about the contradictions he found in Hinduism , he pursued the subject passionately and discovered very satisfying answers. This passage deals with two important aspects which haunt us even now. We are not able to decide what is more important : Materialism or Spiritualism in the modern situation. but the thing is that materialism has tremendous limitation  whereas spiritualism has no limits .

Materialism is nothing but pursuing material things and pleasures which becomes and end in itself. this usually ends up in frustration and disappointment But the problem that arise out of our material pursuit could be solved by spirituality which has the power to pierce to the root the problem and solve it permanently. Many think that idealism is madness but it is not. Idealism  is “the cherishing or pursuit of high or noble principles, purposes, or goals” . This means that we have to aim high to achieve something in life.

” Hitch one’s wagon to a star To aim high, to have high ideals, to be idealistic. Ralph Waldo Emerson apparently coined this metaphor which appeared in his Society and Solitude (1870):

Now that is the wisdom of a man
… to hitch his wagon to a star.

  

Just read  the following words by SAINT GURU NANAK

Self -willed fools crave for peace,but 

find it not.

The God-oriented are exceptionally

joyful ever

the worldly folk are engrossed in

false pursuit

But in the hereafter,the account of

one's actions is taken

Says  Nanak,never forget the 

True lord

remember His name with Love

And He shall bless you with the

mark of His grace

Photo. Varma