Everyone wants to be happy. Irrespective of gender, age, lifestyle, profession, country, culture, belief, background, or any other differentiating factor, anyone who has ever been born, is currently alive or will ever be born wants one and only one thing: to be happy. It is not just one of the wants but it is THE want. Every other want or need is only a means to happiness, with the goal always set to happiness. Whether one engages in sense enjoyment by the way of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching nice things, or one engages in mental enjoyment by thinking about nice things, or any type of intellectual engagement or emotional engagement or even spiritual engagement — it is all for experiencing happiness, although different flavors and degrees of happiness but still happiness. One is even willing to take pain if it can bring happiness, like bearing a child. Even the basic needs of survival are only a means, as one wants to survive only to be able to experience happiness. In fact, people tend to end their lives if they only see sadness in the foreseeable future.
As a result, in the case of most people, the whole life is spent chasing things that seem to bring happiness and avoiding things that seem to do the opposite, so much so that one starts spending more and more time in the chase, trying to be happy rather than actually being happy, and taking on a lot of stress and worry in the process. And if a chase somehow pays off and the time to be happy finally comes, it is very short lived and is quickly overtaken by the next chase. This is the life of most people in a nutshell because they don’t understand the science of happiness. Seeking happiness without knowing how it works is like groping in the dark searching for something and constantly getting hit in the head. Such a blind chase inevitably leads to more miseries and sufferings than happiness itself.
So, let’s take a step back and try to understand the mechanics of happiness and find out if there is a better way to be more and more happy with less and less effort:
We generally experience happiness when we successfully get something we like or avoid something we don’t like. Basically, we all have certain likes and dislikes depending on our mental temperament that give rise to desires in the form of wanting what we like and not wanting what we don’t like. These desires lead to corresponding actions (mental, verbal or physical) of trying to get or avoid things. And if a desire is fulfilled we experience happiness otherwise we experience otherwise. These actions and experiences leave impressions on the mind that can modify our temperament resulting in either generating new likes and dislikes or strengthening/weakening already existing ones. This again leads to desires and then actions, and the cycle goes on and on and on. Although we are born with a certain mental temperament that can be attributed to either our genes or our past lives if one believes in that, the temperament itself keeps evolving as we repeat this cycle throughout life.
All this is fine as nature has designed it to be this way. But the problem is that most people turn this cycle into a vicious one. They act in such a way that they keep deepening their likes and dislikes thereby making their desires stronger and stronger and hence harder and harder to fulfill. And then they spend a lot of time and effort trying to fulfill these desires which brings along all the stress and worry. Many other negativities also arise like greed for more when a desire gets fulfilled, anger when a desire is not getting fulfilled, jealousy when someone else’s similar desire gets fulfilled, arrogance when one’s desire gets fulfilled but someone else’s doesn’t, and so on. All these negativities take people further and further away from happiness rather than towards it, and the situation keeps worsening over time through a snowball effect.
On the contrary, a much better way to more happiness is to make this cycle a virtuous one that constantly keeps attenuating the likes and dislikes over time by adopting appropriate means. Because the less powerful our likes and dislikes are, the easier it is to remain equanimous and accept the current situation and stay happy. And even when desires arise in such a scenario, they are not that strong and can be easily fulfilled or dropped, either way leading to continued happiness. This virtuous process is known as the purification of the mind and it is the key to experiencing more and more happiness with less and less effort. It is based on the fact that our innate state is to be happy. One evidence of this is that we find babies to be mostly happy unless something specific makes them unhappy like a physical discomfort of hunger, getting hurt, etc., whereas adults are mostly unhappy unless something specific makes them happy like a fulfilled desire, a sense-pleasure, etc. It is so because the impurities of the mind such as likes, dislikes, desires, etc. are much stronger in adults than in babies, and in their absence babies are innately happy. Another evidence is that everyone is innately happy when the mind and its impurities subside for a while, like during sleep or meditation, but not so much when they are otherwise active. Basically, just like clouds prevent the light of the sun from shining brightly in the surroundings, the clouds of impurities prevent the innate happiness from shining brightly in the mind. Hence, it makes a lot of sense to purify the mind by shifting the cycle from vicious to virtuous so that our innate happiness can easily shine forth more and more brightly in the mind and we can experience it at most times.
But how to actually shift the cycle? If we look at the different parts of this cycle carefully, we will notice that most of it is not under our direct conscious control. Our mental temperament, the resulting likes and dislikes, the bubbling up of desires from them, and how we experience the different outcomes are mostly not in our direct control. But one thing we can control directly and consciously are the actions, and these actions determine whether the cycle turns vicious or virtuous. As long as a desire remains in the mind, it keeps us in the chase mode and prevents us from being happy so we should remove it at the earliest. Since it is always best to nip a problem in the bud, as soon as a desire sprouts and we become aware of it, we should make a conscious effort of determining whether the desire is worth fulfilling or should it just be dropped, as these are the only two ways of removing a desire. More often than not, dropping a desire is the most effective way, but if it is not happening for some reason, we should at least try to reduce the intensity of the desire. This conscious self-control can be difficult in the beginning but through perseverance it becomes easier and soon we notice that the frequency and intensity of the desires start reducing and the likes and dislikes that give rise to these desires also start attenuating, and we are on our way to a purer mind. A purer mind is naturally happier so our focus should be on this purification and happiness will automatically come along as a side-effect.
Now, a very important point. We need to be clear that this purification and self-control is not about forceful suppression but about thoughtful regulation of desires. Such a thoughtful regulation is only possible with the power of knowledge. For instance, the knowledge about how happiness works itself can be helpful in motivating you to begin this virtuous process. And you could also gather more psychological know-how to learn better ways of regulating desires. Although quite helpful, all of this knowledge is still at the same level as the problem. Whereas, it is always better to tackle a problem from a level deeper or higher, and that is where knowledge about a deeper or higher truth can be extremely beneficial. For example, every religion of this world, whether it be Hinduism or Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or any other religion, primarily focuses on the purification of the mind. They have various practices such as meditation, devotion, prayer, chanting, service, moral values, etc. that might look different on the surface but they are all very harmonious and complementary and never in conflict with each other, as they all have a common goal of purification. But another thing they all have in common is that they all talk about a higher truth which also might look different on the surface but is exactly the same. They might talk about it variously but they are all pointing to the same truth just like different trails leading to the same mountain top. And the power of the knowledge of this higher truth makes it easier for sincere practitioners to tackle the problem of the purification of the mind. Every saint that any religion ever produced infallibly had a pure mind and the knowledge of the truth.
It is a personal decision whether one wants to take on a religion or not, but the purification of the mind and the higher truth are not tied to any particular religion. The truth is always available to be known by anyone who tries diligently through either religious or secular means. And the truth is that you are not this limited mind-body complex that you take yourself to be which seems to separate you from others. This misidentification and sense of separation is the root cause of developing likes and dislikes towards seemingly other things. Instead, you are the infinite consciousness, the one and only reality that actually exists, in which the whole universe is appearing. There is no question of liking or disliking something, as everyone and everything is appearing within you and is one with you. This is the reason why your innate state is to be happy as there is a natural inkling of this infinitude and oneness. The knowledge of this truth is a silver bullet to attenuate and even transcend all your likes and dislikes and to remain established in supreme happiness and unconditional love. If you are not convinced about this truth, please check out the video titled “It is Impossible for the Brain to Know or Experience anything” as it takes you through a meticulous process of discovering this truth purely based on logic and experience. May the power of the knowledge of this truth be with you, and you relish the innate happiness shining forth brightly in a pure mind!