Aug 21, 2015: Thoughts that fill positivity in me, may appear negative or anti-national (as per new trends) to others, and vice-versa. Happiness feels intolerably elusive for many of us since time immemorial. Like fog, you can see it from afar, dense and full of shape. But upon approach, its particles loosen and suddenly it becomes out of reach, even though it’s all around you, just like the eternal cosmic energy called, Shiva! We put so much emphasis on the pursuit of happiness and so-called good health, but if you stop and think about it, to pursue is to chase something without a guarantee of ever catching it. Some essential elements are:

☛ Positive Emotion: Peace, gratitude, satisfaction, pleasure, inspiration, hope, curiosity, and love fall into this category.
☛ Engagement: Losing ourselves to a task or project that provides us with a sense of “disappeared time” because we are so highly engaged.
☛ Relationships: People who have meaningful, positive relationships with others are happier than those who do not. Imp Note: What’s positive for you can very well be negative for any other!
☛ Meaning: Meaning comes from serving a cause bigger than ourselves. Whether a religion or a cause that helps humanity in some way, we all need meaning in our lives.
☛ Accomplishment / Achievement: To feel significant life satisfaction, we must strive to better ourselves in some way. No winners or losers here.

In vedic culture, Bhagavad Gita has verses rendering divine Krishna – Arjun churning which stress on importance of doing duty & faith in creator, singularity.

1. Happiness is seen as derived from a combination of senses, though senual objects are always a cause of distress and should be avoided by all means.

2. A person realizes peace who, relinquishing all desires, exists without craving and is unidentified with the mortal ego and its sense of greed.

3. A person steady in his determination for the advanced stage of spiritual realization and can equally tolerate onslaughts of distress and happiness is certainly a person eligible for liberation.

4. The impermanent appearance of happiness and distress and their disappearance in due course are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer. They arise from a sense of perception, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.

5. Happiness is a state of mind and has nothing to do with the external world or their judgements, unless you have a rotten criminal mindset.

6. With intuitive discrimination, saturated in patience, with mind absorbed in soul, a Yogi, feeling his mind, all thoughts, will by slow degrees attain tranquillity.

7. A person is dear to God who runs not after profit or away from pain, grieve – but lets things come and go as they happen naturally.

8. Happiness which comes from long practice, leads to the end of suffering, at first is like poison, but at last like nectar – this kind of happiness arises from the serenity of one’s own mind.

9. You grieve for those who should not be grieved for, yet you speak wise words. Neither for the dead nor those alive do the wise grieve for.

10. Pleasures conceived in the world of the senses have a beginning and an end and give birth to misery. The wise do not look for happiness in them. But those who overcome the impulses of lust and anger which arise in the body are made whole and live in joy. They find their joy, their rest, and their light completely within themselves. United with the Lord, they attain nirvana in Brahman.

11. There are three gates to this self-destructive hell: lust, anger, and greed. Renounce these.

12. Some people spread happiness wherever they go, others create happiness wherever they go!

13. Those who realize the self are always satisfied. Having found the source of joy and fulfillment, they no longer seek happiness from the external world. Happiness can only be found within the self.

14. He who has no attachments can love others, for his love is pure and divine. And it is from those small acts of love you truly can be happy.

15. The supreme truth stands revealed in the consciousness of those who have conquered themselves. They live in peace, alike in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, love or hate.

16. Free from all thoughts of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, a man finds absolute peace. Ignore the finance branded leader’s arts of copy preaching, NLP-way.

17. You came here empty-handed and so will you leave. What is yours today belonged to someone else yesterday. And tomorrow someone else will own it.

18. The person who is not disturbed by happiness and distress and is steady in both, is certainly eligible for liberation.

19. Make it easy for yourself. Get Organized, Live the moment. Your day to day activities should not steal your happiness.

20. One has to learn tolerance in the face of dualities, Such as happiness or distress, or cold and warmth and by tolerating such duality, become free from anxieties regarding gain and loss.

21. There is neither Self-knowledge nor Self-perception to those whose senses are not under control; Without self-perception, there is no peace and without peace, there can be no happiness.

22. Delusion arises from anger; The mind is bewildered by delusion; Reasoning is destroyed when the mind is bewildered; One falls down when reasoning is destroyed

23. We are like fish out of water; Just as fish cannot be happy unless he is in water; We cannot be happy apart from the spiritual world.

24. The real sense of happiness is not cursing your destiny, Not wanting every second to change your scene or bank balance, to change another mind, But to change your own mind to change the world.

25. The Key to happiness is the Reduction of desires & greed.

26. When you move amidst the world of sense; free from the attachments and aversions alike, there comes the peace in which the sorrow ends, and you live in the wisdom of the self.

27. It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly but happily than to live an imitation of somebody’s life with perfection and sorrow.

28. In that joyous state (samadhi), one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness and enjoys himself through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth.

He who creates a poison, also has the cure.
He who creates a virus, also has the vaccine.
He who creates war, can also create peace.
He who sparks hate, can transform it to love.
He who creates misery, can also destroy it with kindness.
He who creates sadness, can also convert it to happiness.
He who creates darkness, can also produce brightness.
He who spreads fear, can also spread comfort.
Any problems created by the left hand of man,
Can also be solved with the right,
For he who manifests anything,
Also has the ability to destroy it.

– Suzy Kassem