Reading happiness
I love to read. A skilled author has the ability to take you in completely into his story so that you are removed, temporarily, from your self, your own little world: your troubles, your pain, your anger, your desires, your worries, your passions, your personality all drop away like no more than leaves from a tree while the shedding tree remains unperturbed.
It is in reading that I realised this experientially: to be happy means to be totally absorbed in what we are doing. This expanded into an experiment to find the same kind of happiness in all tasks, by being completely consumed by the task. It could be cleaning the toilet, mopping the floor, sorting the trash. It could be having lunch with friends, having dinner alone, not eating. It could be sitting quietly in meditation, talking extensively, animatedly, to answer all my students’ questions after yoga class, writing this blog.
Am I in a campaign of self-denial? Yes! It is when we dwell on ourselves that we wind up in depression, essentially a situation where you are assaulted by a battery of uncontrolled thoughts on all that is unfulfilled in you. It is when we dwell on others (other people’s welfare and other tasks) that we free ourselves from excessive and pointless self-centricity. . . and be MORE than just our selves. Take it from me. Before I started to make progress in yoga, I was visited by bouts of dark depression. Alternately, when I was inspired, I could work with boundless energy creating art, writing, even motivating others to be inspired and to create.
These days, instead, a quiet steady well of happiness is slowly swelling up from the depths within me. I find fewer and fewer tasks that cannot be an exercise of happiness. This differs so much from the excitement of a vacation to come in to future or the recollection of a pleasant memory in the past: while these bring us short but super bursts of happiness, they also plunge us deep into disappointment when they are past. This kind of happiness is not real and these episodes sap your energy and zest for life. I grew tired of the roller coaster ride of excitements and depressions. There is a better way: As long as you do not lose your awareness of how you are doing what you are doing, you are happy. You dwell in joy for longer than the duration of a good long book, unruffled by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes, regardless of any illusory past or future. I guess this is what it means to be free.
It is in reading that I realised this experientially: to be happy means to be totally absorbed in what we are doing. This expanded into an experiment to find the same kind of happiness in all tasks, by being completely consumed by the task. It could be cleaning the toilet, mopping the floor, sorting the trash. It could be having lunch with friends, having dinner alone, not eating. It could be sitting quietly in meditation, talking extensively, animatedly, to answer all my students’ questions after yoga class, writing this blog.
Am I in a campaign of self-denial? Yes! It is when we dwell on ourselves that we wind up in depression, essentially a situation where you are assaulted by a battery of uncontrolled thoughts on all that is unfulfilled in you. It is when we dwell on others (other people’s welfare and other tasks) that we free ourselves from excessive and pointless self-centricity. . . and be MORE than just our selves. Take it from me. Before I started to make progress in yoga, I was visited by bouts of dark depression. Alternately, when I was inspired, I could work with boundless energy creating art, writing, even motivating others to be inspired and to create.
These days, instead, a quiet steady well of happiness is slowly swelling up from the depths within me. I find fewer and fewer tasks that cannot be an exercise of happiness. This differs so much from the excitement of a vacation to come in to future or the recollection of a pleasant memory in the past: while these bring us short but super bursts of happiness, they also plunge us deep into disappointment when they are past. This kind of happiness is not real and these episodes sap your energy and zest for life. I grew tired of the roller coaster ride of excitements and depressions. There is a better way: As long as you do not lose your awareness of how you are doing what you are doing, you are happy. You dwell in joy for longer than the duration of a good long book, unruffled by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes, regardless of any illusory past or future. I guess this is what it means to be free.
