chapter 1 - we all want to be happy

Everyone wants happiness and don’t want unhappiness. We want to have good health, good living conditions, and good relationships with family and friends. We also want success, abundance and to enjoy life to the fullest. We want to fulfill all our dreams and desires if possible.

At the same time we also have fear of pain, suffering, disappointment, failure, old age, illness, death and the unknown.

We don’t want to be with the people that we don’t like and we don’t like the separation from our loved ones.

Even babies know the difference of comfort and discomfort. They will laugh when they feel good, and cry if they don’t feel good.

These are what the Vedanta (philosophy of Yoga) called attachments.

These are the common features of everyone, although everyone has different temperaments, beliefs and talents.

And there are some people who are also looking for spiritual evolution, seeking for enlightenment.

But not many people can have their lives as they wish and not having any disappointment, frustration and fear at all.

We are being conditioned by all sorts of feelings and emotions because we have the senses, differentiation of comfort and discomfort and we have likes and dislikes, needs and wants.

As a human being, it is our birth-rights to feel good or feel bad. It is very normal and nothing wrong to have negative feelings. Never label ourselves with the term ‘weak’ or ‘bad’ when we have negative feelings. They will go away after sometimes. It is the same for good feelings as well. They will pass away too. We don’t need to attach to neither one of them. And we need a lot of training to be able to detach from our feelings. This is Yoga practice.

Negative feelings do not bring much harm unless we attached to them and generate reaction. Even though we do not show it outside through action and speech, but the actual attachment is happening in the mind and it will create havoc sooner or later like a time-bomb waiting to blow up. It is like suppressing the anger deep inside and the fire of anger grows so intense and finally explodes.

The stronger the attachment towards the condition (both positive and negative), the stronger the disappointment, fear and worries there will be.
We just need to learn how to detach ourselves from these conditions either completely or just by decreasing the level or amount of attachment will help to reduce so much unhappiness.

Look at the people around us, how many people are really happy and content with what they already have?

Most of the people that we see in our neighborhood, on the street, in the society, they dress well, they look well, they eat well, they have studied or still studying, they have a job or doing business or being supported by somebody, they talk and laugh, they have a home to go back to, they have family or friends waiting for them, they look like they are enjoying life.
Look at ourselves. Aren’t we all the same having a life like this?

But deep inside our heart, are we really happy and satisfied with everything that we come in contact with?

If we have gratitude, appreciation and contentment, we will be thankful to have a life like this and feeling happy always, not complaining about anything at all. But do we?

There is still something bothering our mind. A feeling of ‘something is missing out’ but we don’t know what it is?

And some people had chose to take alcohol or drugs, or both to get a temporally ‘getaway’ from their problems. But this will only bring further destruction to our body and mind. It doesn’t really solve our problems.

There are some other people who are struggling everyday in life just to get a place to stay and have food to eat. Even though life is hard for them, they are not less humanity or less respect/value or less happy than people who are having better and easier life. They have the same equal rights just like anybody else.

But there are something in common among all of these people including everyone of us, which are, we all have fear and worries inside us whether we show it or not, there are planning for the future, there are some complaints about something, there is anger and dissatisfaction inside us, we all had experienced some disappointments before, we have things that we like and don’t like, and we all want to be loved by somebody or everybody.

How often that we ourselves have gone through or have seen or heard people shouting at each other, parents shouts at the children or vice versa, husband shouts at the wife or vice versa, friends and lovers shout at each other, teachers shout at the students or vice versa, youngster shouts at old people, boss shouts at the employee, or even some people are shouting at God or at themselves, so many arguments and conflicts here and there, and so on. Why? What is happening? Where did all these unhappiness come from? Why are we feeling upset and angry?