Looking for happiness? You might be searching in the wrong place

By Satyendra

Once upon a time, a saint was passing through a village during the night.

Inside the village he found that an old woman, with her hands on her bent waist, was trying to search something under a lamp post.

The saint went near her and asked, “Mother, tell me what are you searching for? I will help you to find it.”

The old woman replied, “I have lost the keys of my box.”

For some time, the saint tried to search for the keys but couldn’t find it.

Then he asked the old woman again, “Mother, do you remember the place where you dropped them?”

“Yes, I remember very well that I dropped it in my room,” the woman replied.

“Oh! When you lost it in your room, then why are you searching for them here? Go search in your room,” the saint said.

“But how can I search in my room? It is too dark over there and there is no light,” the woman replied.

Something like this happens in our lives, when we try to locate the keys of our happiness.

We search for the key of our happiness where there is light, but we never take light to a dark place where there is the possibility of finding the key.

The result …

The key of our happiness remains lost, and we pass on after living an unfulfilled life.

We keep on searching happiness in physical possessions, in money and in social recognition.

We do not try to find time for our family and friends. We never try to instil hope in the heart of someone who is disheartened. We try to overcome our sorrow but, we never try to alleviate the suffering of those around us.

So how do we try to find this key of happiness?

If we look at it closely, we find that our lives are full of two types of experiences.

The name of one experience is happiness and the name of the other experience is sorrow.

These two states are so interdependent that they do not have an independent existence.

Happiness and sorrow are superimposed on each other.

They are two sides of the same coin.

You cannot keep heads in your pocket and throw the tails out.

Heads and tails will always remain together.

You are happy when you get married, but you become sorrowful when you face a divorce.  When money comes you are happy, when you lose it you are sad.

The joy of getting and the pain of losing … life hovers like a pendulum between these two states.

So, how do we find a permanent freedom from sorrow?

A world of contrasts

We must always remember that this is a world of contrasts.

In this world, one state exists because of the existence of the opposite.

Light exists because of darkness; night exists because of day; and happiness is there because of sorrow.

Night takes birth in the arms of the setting sun, and the day is born in the lap of vanishing stars.

Actually, we desire a state where no circumstance can dethrone us from our seat of happiness.

Such a state can neither be happiness nor sorrow. Because these two are interdependent.

There is a non-dual state which is neither happiness nor sorrow.  That state is known as anand.

There is perhaps no concept of anand in English language hence, translating this concept in one word is difficult.  However, the closest word that we can think of is bliss or peace.

This anand is independent and is unaffected by the dimensions of time and space. Circumstances cannot rule the state of anand.

When we realize our real selves, then a distance gets created between our real selves and our body-mind organism with which we identify ourselves.

Then we find that that real Me is unaffected by what is happening to our body-mind organism. Then we realize that we are suffering not because of life, but because we are confused by the psychological drama that is playing out, and we are confusing it with life.

Remember, the self is unaffected by the ups and downs that the body-mind faces.

Once we realize our selves, then this non-dual world dissolves and we are out of the game.

(The column Spiritual Shades appears every Monday.)

Read also:
To be happy, compete with yourself not with the world
The ‘past’ and ‘future’ does not let us live in the ‘present’
How to take fear out of death