What is happiness? What is this within that is referred to? Why is happiness like an eel which seems to slip away from the rich and poor, kind and commoner, president and pedestrian? Why it is that no one on the face of earth is happy? Most people say that before the age of five, children are happy, but I beg to differ. I have seen enough children below the age of five having nightmares, obsessions and fears. A young child of three once asked me, “why do my parents fight and scream at each other, why can’t they be friends?’ Her innocent eyes brimmed with tears and she was distraught with fright. Her parents in their fights figured to the word divorce and she had never heard of it before. The next day in her kindergarten class her teacher asked D for and she said Divorce. Her teacher looked at her shocked and said, “No, child, this is not a good word… say D for Dog.” In the growing confusion of the adult world our sweet innocent children are losing their childhood. Do we care??
Every time I ask a parent; what do you want your child to be when she grows up… pat comes the reply, “Happy!!” And I stare at them and nonchalantly answer, “Gosh! What a lie!” They look back open mouthed. I continue saying that if that was so, how come they have been spanking the child, calling her stupid and dull, not speaking to her calmly and they reply, “Well, it’s all for her own good!’ I am amazed how hitting or calling people names can do them any good. It definitely can’t make them happy.
Adults want to turn children either into their fathers who would look after them or mothers who will nurture them and give them what they want. They see what they want for themselves growing up. Their unmet ambitions and goals are thrust on the young shoulders. Why do we forget that a child comes with some unmet desires and wishes and chooses you to transform her into an epitome of love and peace? She may try your patience but only to teach you self control and acceptance. As adults we too are children with unmet needs and so this turmoil. I just saw on CNN the tragedy of a 12 year old boy shooting his parents, the drug charges on actor Charlie Sheen… close to home the triple suicide by a chartered accountant Nidhi who pushed her three and six year old children off the terrace and then embraced death jumping from the 19th floor of her building in Malad. There is a serious and grave situation waiting for us to learn from. The muddle in our minds over our expectations and unrealistic desires of love and understanding from others has to stop. STOP! We must comprehend that no one, and I mean no one has the ability nor the capacity to give you love. STOP searching for love outside. It’s not available. It never was and it will never be. We have to look within. So now we come to understanding within.
Happiness is not because you have what you have or what you want or get rid of what you do not want. Happiness is not because you are rich or poor, with or without material things of life happiness is not in giving or in receiving. Happiness has nothing to do with a person or place or thing. The wonderful part is that happiness is unrelated, unconnected independent of anything, any situation, any person; happiness is not a gift or lack of it... thank God for that! What a relief! Then what is happiness?
My father Manu made me understand this many years ago and it still holds good. He said and I quote from his writings, “Happiness is an absence of one self. When self is not, happiness is; because it is a substratum, an invisible, impalpable, ungraspable nothing. It is the foundation of all that created life. When the animal, vegetable, solar, astral, everything contained in the crucible of space disappears then there is a house without a householder, happiness without anyone or anybody to experience it. Happiness is when the bubble of within with its ignorant ego, bursts merges with the without the last illusion of self is broken forever and what remains is nothing but space without all created life contained in it, happiness is living. “
Space is where happiness is- open, infinite and inestimable. There is no more coming and going, wanting and not wanting, being and not being. Can we experience this while we live so that in death we can embrace our essence which is about to extinguish? Yes … meditation is the answer. Meditate …. And you will experience an ion of yourself … happy just vanishing.
Happiness is experienced many times in a lifetime but we are unable to grasp it. Man has become so used to securing everything, keeping it nearby, obsessing about it and locking it. Everything Man considers important has a safety lock around it. Happiness too must suffer the same fate if Man has to have it. But Alas! That’s not going to happen. If Man was to understand that happiness is not something or somebody but a invisible yet palpable feeling that is within he will stop looking for it outside. He will know that no one can steal it nor does it have to be secured. Man must stop looking for it … for it is not lost.
You are a happy being and will always be. Once you know this you will learn to BE.
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