Tuesday, August 21, 2007

You and your happiness

You are responsible only for your happiness. Nobody can blame you for their unhappiness.
On a spiritual level, this is absolutely true because the very first lesson of spirituality is to lead a life of moderation; and to not be attached to anything living or non-living. The moment you achieve this feat you've overcome the biggest hurdle in your path towards happiness. You'll not be hurt by anything or anybody. Hence, you will never be unhappy.

However, I'm in a conundrum as to whether this is true in a normal life or not? What if somebody hurt me and made me unhappy, isn't he/she to be blamed for my unhappiness? Or is it that nobody but I can "make" myself unhappy? Does that mean a person can do anything and not harbor any guilt of making another person unhappy?

What are your 2 cents?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I learned about your blog via Shashwati. You write sensible stuff and you write it quite well.

the very first lesson of spirituality is to lead a life of moderation; and to not be attached to anything living or non-living...you will never be unhappy.
Whatever I remember and understand from various text on this subject matter - When a person reaches that stage of detachment, he/she won't feel that 'regular' sense of happiness/unhappiness. Definition of happiness in spirituality is different and many. But instead of going in those details (which I don't even know or understand so much), I would prefer to simply link emotions to expectations. Overcome expectations and possibly one may overcome emotions eventually.

But then the normal life is a different ball game. We live by expectations. We live by emotions. We relate to each other. And then we live in moments. So everything is momentary. If this is true then accordingly our happiness/unhappiness/other emotions are momentary. They won't/can't be permanent. Now how far that moment stretch, would depend upon the emotional fluidity of mind.

Regards,
Peeyush

Smriti said...

Hi Peeyush, welcome to my blog and thanks for the praise!

I really like the way you've put your opinion. I think it's these emotions and expectations that make our life so complicated.

Ab said...

even i think nobody has a right to dictate yr happiness.
you know, a lot of us are sentimental beings... so we hate ourselves for making someone else feel bad, even if we didn intend it. so we go on more into misery.

being unaffected by other people around you, is possible, and its not difficult. i havent reached there. but i know a friend who claims to have.. but experiences take u there i think! like, wen u see th love u show not reciprocated, you start realizing you'r giving too much of importance to people who dont see you as important!
but on th whole, i think we've got a wonderfull world, and that we can be happy of our own accord... but someone else shouldn be allowed to dictate it! as in, ppl shouldn be able to afflict u with their miserableness!
omg, do i make a wee bit of sense?

Anonymous said...

Pleasure is all mine :)

Smriti said...

Hi Ab, welcome to my blog :). Yes, one should neither let others dictate your happiness nor blame others for your unhappiness.

Rock said...

The answer lies in your first paragraph itself. You are going to lead a partial or completely spiritual life at some point of your life, may be in this birth or next birth, if you believe in reincarnation. After reading your spiritual posts, I presume, the ultimate 'moksha' from your view point is, unison of soul with God. If that's the case, start detaching yourself one by one from worldy pleasures and you would gradually stop complaining about happiness or unhappiness.If you are in a conundrum, that means you still are a long way away from imbibing the Teachings of Gita.

Smriti said...

@Rock, thanks for presenting your opinion. All my posts that have the prefix "Teachings from Gita" are english translations of what I read in the Gita. So it would be wrong for a mortal like me to claim that they're my view point. This post is not from Gita. It's a statement that I read somewhere and made me wonder whether if it was true or not. You are right that if one detaches himself from the world then there would be no question of happiness or unhappiness. However, my question is whether the quoted statement applies to all us normal human beings?

Anonymous said...

I posted a comment in the weekend but somehow did not appear here. I'm trying it again.Yeah, as most of your spiritual posts are Teachings from Gita, I took it for granted that the current post is from Gita as well. May be I bit more than a retard that I couldn't fathom the question well.So, watz your view point on 'Moksha'? You intend to read Gita, and lead a normal life? If you can throw some light on reincarnation sometime, that would be great.

/Rock