Dear members of BCAS family,
It is nearing the year end as I write this communique. Christmas and New Year are round the corner. Festivities are in the air. Many colleagues and friends are going for their vacations. Some coincide with the vacations of their children and some availing leaves before they lapse. Whatever the reason, there’s a lot of family time. A lot of happiness. A time to take stock of the year gone by. Time to make New Year resolutions and plans. Today the GM of BCAS sent me a list of proposed BCAS holidays for my approval. Likewise my office HR is finalising the holidays for our various offices.
A list which has numerous festivals. Many birthdays of Gods and Godly figures. Some occasions to commemorate victories of good over evil and freedom from slavery. All reasons to celebrate and spread happiness. Barring a couple of days of mourning the death of founders of religions, all reasons to cheer and make merry. These are formal occasions to be happy. Add to these the birthdays, anniversaries, births, promotions and many other events in our personal lives. The society that we are a part of presents us with ‘ocassions’ to be happy. Being happy is mandated. So what happens on the remaining days? Are we happy without a societal diktat? A lot of what one has read, heard, discussed and believed comes to mind.
Mind has thoughts. The heavy traffic of thoughts, some nice and some not so nice, sucks on the energy and creates a state of restlessness. Man needs a structure, a guidance if you may, to reduce the pace of thoughts, channelise them and organise the pace to be able to maintain sanity. Most of us throng to religions to satisfy this need. Many scriptures talk of this. Many modern thinkers have studied and tried to rationalise this. Some have even prescribed ways to bring peace of mind and happiness. Triumph of good over evil is the universal strand running through most religions. The most motivating and optimist belief that all will be well in the end is a very important and powerful thought that keeps us going. Then there are variants. Meditation is another way to control the mind through reaching a state of nothingness.
No thoughts. Sufism follows a similar belief, that of entering into a trance where one feels one with the God. Chanting too probably has the same impact. Various ways to achieve the same objective – control over thoughts. Hence by inference, thoughts are disturbing. May be not all, may be the pace of thoughts, the quality of thoughts and the conscious hierarchy of thoughts. I don’t know much about the chakras and kundalis but there’s a science in the segregation of various thoughts and their hierarchy. I recently had a conversation with a friend which gave me some insights into Buddhism. Buddhism believes that one is responsible for one’s own happiness or unhappiness. There are four needs that need to be fulfilled to attain happiness. The degree and hierarchy is not defined.
1. Health – it is our dharma to maintain a healthy body which houses our mind.
2. Wealth – money is important but how much and how is your choice. A simple arithmetic formula is: Resources ÷ Needs. The lesser your needs the lesser the resources needed. If the needs exceed the resources then there’s mental disturbance.
3. Relationships – there must be peace and contentment with the relations around you.
(1) Have fewer but deeper relationships and
(2) Reduce the expectations to a level where there is never any disappointment. Forgiveness plays an important part here.
4. Peace with self – this probably is the most important aspect. Morals, ethics, acceptance, detachment all are ends to reach this state. Such a simple approach. In modern times, one can see a similar analysis done by the Psychologist Abraham Maslow through his famed Need-Hierarchy theory. He ranked needs into 5 categories and concluded that as each need is satisfied, one moves from the lower needs to higher needs.
Starting from bottom and going up, these are:
1. Physiological needs – air, water, food, clothing
2. Safety needs – safe housing, job security, safety of family, property etc.
3. Belonging needs – Need for acceptance in society, family, friends, community
4. Esteem needs – respect, appreciation, recognition, rewards, etc.
5. Self-actualisation need – Peace with self.
As can be seen, it is universally recognised that left to itself, the mind can cause a havoc. Mind needs to be tamed. Thoughts need to be organised. Needs to be recognised, defined, prioritized and satisfied. Moving from one level to another. It is true that we are responsible for our own happiness. The solutions are not external. Happiness does not come from outside. What is common between meditation, music, sports, chanting, etc?
All are aimed at controlling the mind and it’s thoughts and sharpening the focus to think clearly. This makes it easy to believe that happiness is a state of mind. (No, I am not inspired by the politician who recently said something similar in the context of poverty). The other observation is that some of us are besieged with problems, much more than the others. These problems deny us the opportunity to be happy. If we were to categorise our problems into those that are God-given and those that are self-created, we would realise that the former are far fewer than the latter. Terminal illness, natural calamities, accidents caused due to negligence of others could all be in the former category.
Fights, rashness, badmouthing others, carelessness, disregard to safety, crimes, revenge, jealousy and many such are self-created problems. Apart from bringing grief along with them, they also suck your energies into resolving them and thus denying you the opportunity to do something more satisfying or self-actuating. So another mantra to be happy is to create as little problems for oneself as possible and save your strength and energy for battling challenges thrown by nature or the Almighty. Many of our griefs are due to our attachments. In many cases one has seen that on the loss of a person or possession, people lose the will to live and start living in a perpetual state of misery.
Hence if you notice, all scriptures and thinkers concur on the state of detachment being the ultimate level of a happy mind. Not very easy. Very few would have reached this elevated state of mind. Is this the state of mind they call Moksha? If proof is needed that the mind wanders, then this write up of mine is an apt example. How a list of festivals led my mind to wander into so many directions. Need to put into practice all that I have read, heard, discussed, pondered or propagated.
