How to Find Happiness
An article from the Hindustan Times by Swami Kriyananda
There is a classic, and well-known, story of a farmer whose donkey refused to pull a heavy cart for him. He solved the problem by tying a stick to the donkey's head, then dangling a carrot from the end of the stick. The donkey strained energetically, but forever ineffectually, to reach that carrot. It didn't notice the cart dragging along behind it, with its heavy burden.
How much the majority of people resemble that donkey as they strain to reach their "carrot" of happiness! The carrot can never be reached through their senses. Happiness is a state of mind, not a thing.
An Indian friend of mine commented to me many years ago in San Francisco, "It amuses me to hear Americans scoff at superstitions of all kinds, when they themselves are steeped in the greatest superstition of all. I cannot imagine a greater one than this: the thought that happiness, which is a state of mind, exists in inanimate objects!" People strain to reach the unattainable, all the while dragging along behind them a cartload of cares and worries!
The way to find happiness is astonishingly simple. It is this: to be happy!
Well, one day after years of this grouchy attitude, this same fellow came bounding out of his home in the morning, waved cheerily at a few passing school children, wished his neighbors a very good morning, was a ray of sunshine all day at the office, and actually phoned someone to share a piece of good news he'd just heard on the radio in the evening! His fellow townsfolk observed this change in his behavior for a week, marveling at it. Finally they could stand the suspense no longer. A group visited him and asked, "What on earth has come over you?"
Happiness is self-generated. It depends on one's attitude of mind. The basis of happiness, moreover, is the simple fact that the deepest reality of our own nature is Satchidananda: ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new- joy, as my Gurudeva put it in his refreshing refinement of the classic expression of Adi Swami Shankaracharya. You have bliss already. So why not determine, from today, to live in bliss?
