Let us say you want to be dependent on a particular pond for a year-round supply of fish. Suppose the pond completely dries up in summer. Would that pond be a reliable source of food for the whole year? NO WAY!!!
It would be better to depend on a large supermarket for your supply of fish. A supermarket gets hold of fish from any of several sources — – — if one source dries up, it gets the fish from a different source. The net result is that you can depend on the supermarket for a year-round supply of fish (I know this is not a perfect example, I’m only too aware that supermarkets do close. Just get my drift for now.)
In an exactly similar manner, anything permanent cannot depend on something non-permanent for its existence. Permanent happiness is not exempt.
So what should your permanent happiness depend on?
- If you try to make it depend on pleasant thoughts, you run into trouble. You can’t be thinking those pleasant thoughts all the time … for instance, if someone screams insults at you for 48 minutes nonstop , can you imagine yourself thinking pleasant thoughts while it’s going on? Your permanent happiness, therefore, cannot depend on your thought process.
- Can your permanent happiness depend on a person? In that case, what happens when that person falls out with you, or dies?
- Can your permanent happiness depend on an object (like a car)? What happens if the object is stolen, sold or broken in two?
- Can it depend on being at a particular place? What happens when you have to leave the place?
- OK, how about it depending on your job. What happens when you retire or lose your job?
- What about depending on a mental image? Let’s say whenever you visualize a particular religious figure or a certain kind of light, you feel happy. But can you be in that state all the time? How’ll you go about your day-to-day tasks?
Basically what you want to know is: the identity of an unchanging, permanent thing that you can hitch your happiness to.
When I say “permanent” I mean something that doesn’t disappear at any time.
There are very few things that fit that bill. Let me save you the trouble of searching: the answer to that question lies in your own mind, or, more precisely, in the background of your own mind.
This is what I mean by “the background”: behind all your thoughts and emotions is a quiet observer which is your basic state of existence. It is the witness to all the thoughts that go on in your head as well as all the sights, sounds, smells and touches that hit you. It is your “sense of being“; when you emerged from your mother’s womb, it’s pretty much all that there was in your head. It never changes and has been there all your life, witnessing all external events (games with your childhood playmates, hours in classrooms, life with companions, weddings, holidays, et al) and internal events (thoughts, emotions and memories). That is what you have to make your happiness depend on. As a matter of fact that is itself happy and peaceful all the time.
It is the basic “YOU”, and if you want to locate that state of mind in your own head, follow the instructions in this earlier post.
Now get to it… every unhappy second is a wasted second!!
Take care,
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Happiness can exist only in acceptance. George Orwell
The present moment is all we ever have. Eckhart Tolle
Good site Lucky!
Thanks for those two gems, Kenny!
LOL! No, by heart I mean the gut level (yes, I realize that’s a bit below the heart, but like you said in your original post, just get my drift for now) feeling part of me. My head is just thoughts, but that deeper gut level is connected to something much bigger. That gut level is intuition, which is a part of God, and that is where permanent happiness comes from, at least for me…from the God that presides within me and everywhere else.
My Happiness can not depend on any thing or person because nothing stays the same. Circumstances and people are constantly changing.
I like your philosophy, except that for me my state of mind exists not in my head, but in my heart. Thanks for all you do.
Thanks for your deeply considered response, Karen. By “heart” you mean somewhere in your left chest?
Happiness is indeed there and is cluttered with the debris that we pick up along our paths. As we are taught by parents, teachers and society, we become magnets to others’ unhappiness. And, by doing so, we have clinging thoughts that mar our real existence and reason for being here. This is just my beliefs, and I have reasoned as well as the next person about happiness being a constant. It cannot happen….true happiness unless we become AWARE. We can babble about worldly happiness, about our gifts, parties, vacations, but when we are alone, then happiness must be within. We must be happy with ourselves. I am still trying to achieve the goal of letting go of much….
Namaste, Margaret