How to be happy?

December 4, 2024

What is happiness? How to be happy? What prevents happiness? Happiness is simply a state of being, a state of you, of the ego, of the mind, of the conscious part of the brain, in which it is in harmony. Harmony with what? What is harmony? In my sense, in this context, harmony is the alignment, synchronisation, or the movement of the mind with truth or actuality.

See, the mind with all its ideas and images lives in its own self-made petty world or reality, which is illusory in nature. It enjoys being there and so clings to that illusory world. But the world being illusory sooner or later gets struck by the hammer of truth and actuality, which shakes, disturbs, or destroys the world. As the mind was attached to the world, this sudden disturbance and destruction breeds suffering because the mind doesn’t like this new unpleasant feeling. As the mind holds memories, it wants the repetition of the pleasant times it once had. It seeks to avoid and escape from this turmoil it is in, and so there is conflict, struggle, and efforts which is the whole suffering.

In simple, the mind cannot accept the present, doesn’t let go of the past, and seeks the hopeful future with its desires. This creates unhappiness and disharmony. I refer to the great quality of letting go and acceptance as neverminding, which the mind lacks. The mind minds to what has happened, and to what is yet to happen.

So what is truth and actuality? It is so plain and simple that the very word “truth” and “actuality” alone are enough for anyone to understand what it means. But since one is so complex, it hardly notices and understands the simple and subtle things. Okay, but what is truth and actuality? It is nothing except this very moment, this present moment, this now. Whatever it is, in this very present moment, is truth and actuality.

We are in the present, but we are not present. This is absolutely fine as the mind cannot be totally present. It is a reaction machine, which reacts to the happening, sensed by the sensations. The mind is like a computer; it requires some time, however subtle, to process and display the result. It cannot keep receiving and instantly displaying the result without taking the processing time. So, the mind lacks the ability to be truly present. So what’s the problem?

The problem is, the mind has been heavily conditioned. The mind, after physical birth, starts receiving its conditioning. The unnatural upbringing, the unnatural education system, the unnatural society —which in fact are products of nature— has heavily conditioned our mind. It has snatched from us the great quality of neverminding. The mind has been conditioned to seek, desire, compete, and so on. In this race, we are caught.

We are so busy with our daily mechanical life. There is so much fear of being left behind, of not being enough, and so on. The fear is so much that the people are just running and running and running. Working and working and working like a machine, a robot, to live a stable and happy life, which perhaps the poor man would never be able to. There is such a busy machinery life that there is literally no time for neverminding. In fact, these things, these philosophical things, these wonderful things, are considered as the lazy man’s talk, boring topics, and a waste of time.

Such heavily conditioned we are. When we were children, everything piqued our interest. A simple peek-a-boo made us laugh so much. A simple walk in the park was a grand adventure, where each pebble and flower held a secret world only we could see. But as we grew, these things gradually became boring or a waste of time. It is because of how busy we became, how machinery we became through the conditioning. But it is fine; everything is perfect and as it should be.

But if one wishes to end suffering, slow down, my friend. Stop, take a pause, and look around. See what you have already missed and realise what you could miss this very instant if you keep up your never-ending race leading to nowhere. But there is barely time for the pause. If I don’t work hard now, how will I enjoy later, right?

See? We have been so conditioned to seek a hopeful and promising future. The religion tells you if you do this, you will enjoy a good life after death. The schools tell you if you work hard, you will lead a successful life. The parents are telling you, the husband, the wife, he, she, this, and that are telling you.

And even if such a future really comes, till then you would have been so heavily conditioned that now, the present, no matter how beautiful it is, no matter it was once your dream, no longer excites you. It would have become your habit to chase the future. Perhaps this is why desires have no end. They have this nicotine quality, which makes them habitual and addictive. So the fulfilment of one desire is not enough anymore. And so, the accomplishment of the dream you have, the so-called “successful life” you want, would no longer excite you or make you happy.

If one wishes to end his suffering, realisations after realisations must dawn upon him as such that it shakes or destroys the heavy walls of conditioning he is confined into. This is the job of life. Life hammers you; the very suffering of yours has the great potential to end all of your sufferings. It is life reminding you again and again, shaking you in the hope that you would wake up. The suffering is capable of triggering realisations after realisations. One or two realisations cannot do anything because of the heavy and thick walls of conditioning, realisations after realisations must dawn upon. This is a rare and random phenomenon.