The elusive Bird of Joy!

Dear Sri,

Can zero possessions be a source of happiness? I don't think so. Even if it is true it is not possible to follow this rule. When we are living this life, from birth to death, we do possess somethings, crave (we should also) for some things for ourselves, family, friends and for the world also. Nothing wrong with it. World is a beautiful place,may be bad in some aspects, but not very bad. Keeping always the end in view that we would be engulfed by disease, death etc. Why should we? Is not life worth living? Only thing is we have to balance the inner and outer world. Look into yourself periodically and enjoy this present life also, our aspirations, spreading love, ambitions and many more things.We can experience the song of soul also and feel the joy also which is elusive.
You must have read the short story The Bet by Anton Chekov. In the last paragraph how he describes the futality of life after learning so much from books in seclusion and leaves the place foregoing two million due to him in the Bet.

But is life futile? Does wisdom comes only after we are frustrated with life? I haven't understood quote by Osho. May be some inner meaning is there which only some can understand.

I wanted to keep away from this thread because many questions and many contradictions are there (for me). Does not want to contradict elders and learned people too often. But mind is a wandering monkey as you said in one of your Ramblings. Hence this FB.

If anything wrong, sorry.

Syamala

 

I had not heard this shirt story , but know other very similar parables .
If having no shirt is happiness, all our half naked beggars would be embodiments of joy . Moreover, even if this particular person feels happy having no shirt ( i.e. possessions ) and another person feels happy owning two dozen shirts, is it possible to say the latter's happinesss is of a lesser value or quality than the former's ? As you have stated , its all subjective. There can be no universal formula.


Osho's observation is more illuminative. ‘To be bitterly frustrated with life is the beginning of wisdom'. Working backwards from there, one should be able to reach the wisdom that material accumulations and emotional attachments do not guarantee happiness , only after one has enjoyed to the hilt and then sickened of such external factors to the point of renouncing them and liberating oneself from dependance on them. I remember an episode in a movie ( "arunachalam" i think) where the father, to cure a son's smoking habit, gives him a heap of cigarettes and tells him to smoke for a whole day. As expected, the disgusted son quits smoking for good.


Philosopher kings of yore, Janaka for example, continued being the king with all rich royal accourtments till the end, but had seen light and developed detachment. The short conversation between him and Ashtavakra is a profound " be happy" guide for all ages, showing new meanings and dimensions with each reading.


A young daughter of a friend once asked this : " if true happiness and bliss is only possible with poverty , why do we propitiate our gods with hymns like the chamakam , replete with demands for wealth, cattle, grains, land, good wife and sons, power over enemies, robust health etc ( the 16-m perta peruvazhvu) ? " Her mother was a bit rattled by this , but hurriedly told her that we needed to live well and fulfilled, so that after an stage of life, we can concentrate fully on the greater ideals like finding God without thoughts of other worldly things. And that is why we say , before eating : jnana, vairagya siddhyartham, bhiksham dehi parvathi, asking Her to not only nurture our body , but also our mind." This was a on -the -spur response, but I thought it made sense.

 

How very true words of wisdom sir!

 

Dear Cheeniya Sir,

What a liberating post this is. We seek happiness from outside of us whereas we are a repository of happiness if we search deep inside of us. Pleasure and pain are two sides of a coin and how to consider them with equanimity is the lesson I try to learn every day. I ask a firm question to myself every day. How can I be any different if the cause of my birth is the Grace of the happy Lord who wished to vanish the burden of all my bad actions of the past and reward me for my past good actions? I am born to a happy parent who loved each other and if that is the case, why I experience pain and suffering in my life?

It is my expectation that causes pain to me. My focus as a child is to cry so that I can get milk. When I grow further, I cry so that I can get a toy. I am trying to follow my legacy of crying for things I need. Slowly, things I need become things I want but my crying never stopped. I cried for help when I was a child because I could not function independently. That habit die hard and I continue to be dependent on someone or the other. Instead of focusing on my performance to become a better person all my life, my focus becomes what should I expect from this world. We all scratch the surface of the world to make a living and when we get what we want, we believe it is because of the individual performance. Instead of holding all as a Trustee, we become owners expecting more and more. If I learn to focus on my performance to become a better person and lower my expectations, my life becomes better. If Wall Street stock value is based on Price/Earnings (P/E) Ratio, our value is based on how our performance as an individual to become a better person outweighs the expectations we have from this world(Our P/E ratio).

We also consider the birth as the beginning and the death as an end whereas our visit to this beautiful planet is one of the many pilgrimages we make. The purpose of the pilgrimage is to derive some lessons out of it and certainly we don't want to walk away empty-handed. We try to establish some sort of permanency in our existence in physical form and that is why when we get old and sick, it hurts us. We have role models like Ramana Maharishi who lived happily despite his body hurting because of cancer. Adi Sankara embraced his friend Mrityunjaya happily at the age of 32 when his other friend Gnana agreed to remain with him always.

It is not the possession that causes the trouble for happiness but it is the manobava with which we have that possession that makes the difference in life. A perfect mind is like a cone with sharp edge at the top and the round circular shape at the bottom with better gravity. The trouble is when it is upside down with sharp edge at the bottom (self focus). When we read the relevant part called Anandavalli in Veda, we understand that Bliss is Zillion times (1 Brahmananda = 1,000,000,000,000,000 Ananda) of the normal happiness we experience in our day to day life. When we analyze our sheaths, we divide them into Annamaya Kosha (Food Sheath), Pranamaya Kosha (Vital-air Shealth), Manomaya Kosha (Mental Sheath), Vignanamaya Kosha (Intellectual Sheath) and finally the Anandamaya Kosha (Bliss Sheath). If our core is already Blissful, what is it that we are searching outside?

 

Dear Sir!

"‘Only the present, no past or future’. Chakravaka claimed divine inspiration for his views." .

To know he had 'divine inspiration' for such views causes me consternation for it sounds like something my husband would say and I would frown upon!! I admit the 'frowning upon' is a habit many wives like me have carefully cultivated to show displeasure when husband's utterances become inconvenient at times! Like I might say let's go to the temple to atone for our sins and hubby will try to dissuade me with his 'gyan', example, one can do that from anywhere, right from the sitting room where we are sitting..Uff! I can fully understand why the orthodox Brahmins opposed such views!

"Philosophers and founders of religion have looked at happiness from many perspectives. But it is you and me that have to do the experiencing! It is your experience that decides whether you are happy or not" You hit the nail on the head!

It is more often than not that the fear of old age and the attendant disabilities that drives man to seek solace in spirituality! All that meditation to develop detachment from attachments which seems to be the Mantra for most is a type of escapism as I see it.:hide: From the ashram, one has to come home and pay bills, talk to people and do what one has to do to keep living. Yes, there are those who give up everything and decide to live in the ashrams for good. But then, even they have to be fed and cared for! Today's ashrams are in convenient reach of every amenity! I of course am ignorant of those who have really traveled to the Himalayas in their search for bliss and have disappeared from the world, world as known to us...

That elusive bird of joy is surely a little elusive! Just as we think we are at peace and comfortable with our thoughts and being, something always lurks just around the corner and throws our little world helter skelter. What most of us are seeking is surely the equanimity to face whatever it is that comes our way and not be shattered or elated by it. For, as much as I would want to believe, I don't think there is anyone who is totally blissed-out! Say that few of us did achieve that state of 'Satchitananda', surely that person will be having a following from world over..and beyond? That can be daunting too going by Bach's Illusions! (courtesy Srama!!).

For now, happiness for me is to log in and read great snippets from The Rambler and note what others have to say in response.

L, Kamla

 

Do forgive me Sri. I read this piece more than a couple of times and felt more elated each time I re-read it. Elated for a number of reasons. One of them being my total ignorance of the fact till this day that the much proclaimed piece of wisdom -- yavajjivet sukham jivet, rinam kritva ghritam pitvet -- was preached by no less an individual than Brahaspati himself. Most interesting indeed, even if it was only a

.

If one succeeds in following this principle, it is unlikely that s/he will ever feel frustrated with life. And if so, it appears to me to be somewhat unlikely that s/he will perceive the

and embark on

.

Unless of course the person's creditors are awfully mean people who let loose the police on her/him to ensure that the consumed ghritam laid siege to his innards till he wished he were mritam.

Brahaspati you say! Can't be taken lightly you know. Well, so long as you have heard him clearly, this is a matter of serious concern. At your age and mine though, people develop hearing problems, leave alone problems concerning sight and other sensory organs. In other words, we can't rule out the possibility you know that you heard someone say this, but you didn't really see the guy. It could have been oj for example, hiding in a corner of your kitchen, behind the gas cylinder perhaps, in the middle of the night and claiming himself to be a shloka chanting Brahaspati. Or, for that matter, it could be the "it" in your bathroom!

Actually, I was led to these thoughts not because I wished to make fun of you, but entirely on account of what IL led me to at the end of your post. If you search carefully, or even carelessly, you will see an announcement at the bottom of the post that says "You Might Find These Useful". And a list follows, of which the very first entry is "Detective Shamu and the Elusive Lamp". Got me very curious you see. So I followed up the link hoping to land on Aladdin's magic lamp waiting to bring to an end all the sorrows I have endured since the day I figured out that I was no other than the miserable I. No Aladdin for me alas. Instead, I found a detective story by Anandachitra about a magpie running off with Aunty's shining lamp. It was Detective Shamu who finally solved the mystery and, as far as I could make out, Aunty lived happily ever after. Well, Anandachitra didn't exactly say so, but she came pretty close. The paragraph with which she ends her story runs (unlike yours) as follows:

Being a food lover, this is as close to everlasting happiness as far as I am concerned. Especially if you take into account the fact that the "You Might Find These Useful" list at the end of her post has "Recipe and the Ingredients" as the first item. And though there is nothing on cricket in the list, I thought the cricket part in the quoted para should make you reasonably happy as well.

The recipe thing took me back to my ruminations on the ghritam part of your post too. And from there to the seamlessness of happiness idea that you allude to at the conclusion of your own delightful thesis on happiness. Simpleton though I am, I was forced to contemplate. Why do you torture me so my friend? You force me to scratch the bottom of the near empty vessel containing my grey cells, thereby denying me whatever little chance I have of enjoying my cake of happiness, however shrivelled up it might look to you.

Happiness is one whole piece you tell me. That sounds like having my cake (shrivelled up I admit) and eating it too. Every time I nibble away a little piece of it, it's got to regenerate itself. And after having achieved that impossibly challenging task, I have to come to terms with yet another test:

But I agree. As an economist, and not being a politician, I know that happiness is not GDP, whether growing or constant (like my regenerating minuscule static cake), but a seamless identification with the universe it would seem. The universe is seamless I am almost sure, not a collection of bits and pieces. And that means of course that you and I are not exactly distinguishable from one another either. Unless we are willing to separate us (Siamese twin like) with the help of artificial boundaries, otherwise known as scientific analysis. But science is imperfect, isn't it? Less said the better as far as this goes.

Let me end up therefore with one more of my confusions. I kept reading your concluding lines:

And then I went through a mental exercise, replacing "happiness" by "unhappiness" and vice versa in the entire quote. And finally changed the words "bird of joy" by "sobbing Mock Turtle" and "singing" by "sighing".

I was no longer sure after going through this absurd exercise whether you were me or I were you. And finally, by extension, happiness (or unhappiness) was simply a name they found for unhappiness (or happiness).

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ... I am wondering now about what Kamla had to write too.

And readying to receive a thorough thrashing from both of you, except of course that shan't ever find out who was who!!

oj

 

Dear Sri,

I was editing my fb above when I received the message that I am not allowed to edit for more than 15 minutes! I don't like parts of what I have written. Feel free to delete the message if you like. Or ignore it. Or do whatever you wish to.

All the best.

oj