The study of Yogasutras has been the most beneficial to me. While the generic reading may list out concepts and solutions for better living, the curiosity to try those concepts in real life has been very rewarding. There is a sense of contentment when the application of concepts made my life better than before.
Let us look at this concept of happiness in detail, from whatever I have understood from Yogasutras.
The mind is always active and keeps giving one thought after another. These thoughts bring in the sense of unhappiness (klishta) or the lack of unhappiness (aklishta) – the neutral state (the lack of unhappy state). Only these two states are defined which is a result of all the thoughts that the mind makes or brings to our awareness.
When I first listened to this, I was very confused. For all these years, I was under the impression that it is HAPPINESS that humans keep looking for in their life. We try to find it in the work we do, in the relationships we hold, in people who are precious to us, in the art we do, in the poetry we write – we attribute our happiness to something else that is outside.
Sir gave a beautiful explanation which went like this – when we are born, we are in the state of happiness. We are happy beings in the natural state. Like we can be happy even when we don’t do anything productive. We can be happy when we are still. This is our natural state.
When we undergo experiences in our life, we learn from those experiences on how to feel other emotions other than the natural state of happiness. This is not wrong. We need to go through all these experiences, feel all other emotions and then slowly and gently nudge our inner self to go to the natural state of happiness.
Here we delve into the different kinds of thoughts and how they are categorised. We begin by deciding on a goal. And then we learn how we can bring in a routine of practice to work towards that particular goal, all the way learning to shed those skins of unhappiness. We slowly tread on the path to happiness; even though we are born in this state, this is the journey we go through in our life.
We might take our whole lifetime to do this and sometimes we may not be able to reach to that level. But we can strive to shed those things which cause unhappiness (this route is evolving our inner self to reach the natural state of happiness – we need to work on our self here) rather than keep looking for things which give happiness (this is transient and keeps changing – the happiness giving things are not within us).
Here I am on a journey to my natural state of happiness, slowly working on shedding those skins which cause unhappiness within me!
UmaS Reflections 