Everyone wants to be happy — you and all 8 billion inhabitants of this planet. But where do you look for it? Where do you try to find it? And if you do find it, how long does that happiness last? How soon are you back on the trail looking for something else to make you happy again?
As Swami Nirmalananda points out in this month’s teaching article, the problem is you look for happiness in all the wrong places. “It’s not located at the end of a rainbow,” she says.
You won’t find happiness by possessing certain things (or else all the millionaires and billionaires in the world would be the happiest people on earth — they are not). You won’t find happiness by having things go your way (things that go your way will soon be going someone else’s way). Another human being or animal friend won’t make you truly happy, though relationships with fellow humans and pets are so important.
In other words, true happiness won’t come from anything outside you. And if you find happiness coming from outside, it won’t last long enough, and it will fall far short of the greatest happiness possible: that happiness that the yogic sages say is already yours but yet to be claimed.
That greatest happiness does not come from outside. The greatest happiness could not be any closer to you. As Swami Nirmalananda puts it, “Happiness lies inside you. It’s always there.”
The greatest happiness is right there within your own heart! And what you will find in your own heart is much more than happiness; it’s bliss. Swami explains:
“Yoga warns you not to settle for mere happiness. Happiness is only a superficial taste of the bliss that is your innermost feeling. Happiness and other emotions are like waves on the surface of the ocean, but bliss is deeper. Bliss is the feeling of Self, your Divine Essence. Meditation is the way you get there. When you’re experiencing your own Self, the deep inner bliss bubbles up and fills your mind, which makes you happy. Happiness is a state of mind; bliss is a state of being.”
The state of your mind is like the weather in New England. It changes all the time. It’s like the surface of the ocean, highly susceptible to changing winds and currents. A state of being is much steadier and deeper. It is unaffected by externals or by what is on the surface. Your bliss is already deep inside. It’s your nature, and it’s waiting for you to find it.
So has happiness been eluding you? Happiness is like a butterfly: if you chase after a butterfly, it takes flight, evading your grasp. If you sit still, it alights on your shoulder. That’s what meditation does. Sit still, sit quietly. The greatest happiness will be yours. It not only alights on your shoulder: it comes to light within your own heart.