Is it a Sin to be Happy?

By Ramesh Bijlani

There is no dearth of dead serious, eager and earnest spiritual seekers who sincerely believe that everything that feels good is sinful. On the other hand, it is difficult to find a spiritual master without a smile on her face. Children, nearer God than most adults, are a bundle of joy. The key to this paradox lies in the source of happiness. There are things we can eat, wear, see, touch or smell that give us a type of happiness, which we may call pleasure. There is another type of happiness that is not sold in markets, the one that comes from being loved, from success, praise, name and fame. This type of happiness is erratic, unpredictable, and vulnerable to vicissitudes of life. While these two types of happiness depend upon getting something, there is another kind of happiness that’s neither fleeting nor fragile and that comes from giving. It may come from giving an object, physical support or care, all expressions of love. This happiness comes from responding to an inner call when faced with choices. Life is neither full of fortune that makes us happy, nor of misfortune designed to make us unhappy. Life is a chain of events and circumstances, each of which offers us choices. Choices are an opportunity, because making the right choice leads to spiritual growth. The guidance for making the right use of every opportunity is available from a voice that comes from the depths of our being. Acting on that voice gives us lasting inner peace rather than happiness. Inner peace brings the type of happiness for which the word happiness is inadequate – it is called joy, delight or bliss. Responding to the inner call that brings joy needs the type of courage that Buddha showed when he left his family and kingdom in search of truth. Responding to the inner call needs the type of ‘foolishness’ that the award-winning chef Narayanan Krishnan showed when he gave up a lucrative career in five-star hotels and refused a job in Switzerland to feed the homeless in Madurai. Responding to the inner call needs the capacity to swim against the current that the IIM-Calcutta graduate Puja Mishra showed when she chucked placements to live and work in a remote village to educate children. Responding to the inner call brings joy, but that is not why you respond to it. You respond to it because to you that seems the only right thing to do. When you decide to respond to the inner call, you also get what it takes to do so because the call emanates from your divine essence. The Divine is all-knowing and all-powerful. Hence, the call also has extreme clarity, and brings with it the courage required to stand up to the whole world, if necessary. As the Mother has said, “Give up all personal seeking for comfort, satisfaction, enjoyment or happiness. Be only a burning fire for progress, take whatever comes to you as a help for progress and make at once the progress required”. The ‘progress’ referred to here is spiritual progress. With spiritual progress as the purpose of life, treating whatever comes to us in life as a vehicle for progress accomplishes the purpose and the bonus is joy, its by-product. Genuine happiness comes not from being pursued, but from making the pursuit of something higher than happiness the purpose of your life.

Renunciation As Supreme Enjoyment

Greek thinker Diogenes gave up everything. Like Mahavira, he lived naked. All he kept was a begging bowl, for begging and drinking water. One day, he saw a villager drinking water by cupping his hands, so he immediately threw away his begging bowl. The villager asked him, “What have you done?” He replied, “I never knew that one could drink water by cupping one’s hands – now why should I be deprived of such a joy? The begging bowl is only a dead thing, and when I fill it with water I feel nothing from it. When I fill my hands with water, they feel the connection with water, its coolness, its life-giving energy. My love also enters the water through my hands, and it becomes alive. So I will be drinking that too.” The first time Diogenes cupped his hands and drank water from them, he started dancing! He said, “What a fool I was to use a dead vessel to drink water from, because it made the water dead, too. The energy from my hands, the heat, could not pass through to the water. And this was also insulting to the water.” Our senses have become numb like his bowl. Whatever we receive through them becomes dead. Food on the plate looks beautiful; the minute it enters your mouth it becomes ordinary. Music becomes mundane when it enters your ears. Flowers lose their beauty when seen through your eyes. We make everything ordinary – whereas everything in the world is extraordinary. The flower you see on a tree has never blossomed before. It is absolutely new. It is impossible to find another flower like it on this earth. It has never existed before, and it will never exist again in the future. Our eyes turn the existence of a unique flower into something mundane when we say, “It’s okay – we’ve seen thousands of roses like this before.” Because of the thousands you have seen, your eyes have become blind and you cannot see what is there, present, in front of you. What have those thousands of flowers got to do with this one? Emerson has written that upon seeing a rose it came to his mind that the flower has no idea of the existence of thousands of other flowers – neither of the flowers still to come, nor of those which have gone before. This rose is present, here and now, offering itself to the divine. It is joyful because it does not compare itself with any other. But when he sees it, the thousands of others which he has seen get in the way. His vision is blurred, and the unique experience of this flower goes to waste. He doesn’t perceive its beauty; the strings of his heart are not moved, nor are his senses stirred. We live in a unique world. The divine is manifested here in so many ways all around us. But we’ve made a grave of our senses. We are only passing through life – nothing touches us. We ask, “Where is bliss, where is godliness?” – and it is present all around us! Inside, outside, there is nothing other than godliness. By abusing our senses, we kill the one who could experience it. Renunciation is the science of supreme enjoyment. Only someone who knows how to let go is able to experience. Let go of the meaningless so that you can realise the meaningful; let go of sensations so that you can perceive the subtle. Voice Of Silence,

Wahe Guru Ki Fateh

By: Kulbir Kaur Baisakh was the day of sacrifice; it was also one of rebirth. For this was the day, more than three centuries ago, when the Tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, asked Sikhs at Anandpur, as to who was prepared to sacrifice his life for the Guru. Five persons offered themselves who he called the Panj Piyaras, the five beloved ones, and baptised them as Khalsa or ‘pure’. He administered amrit or nectar to them from a simple bowl before consuming some himself. The Khalsa and Guru became one; there was no more duality. The Khalsa were instructed that the divine was forever present in their midst. Bhai Gurdas observed, “As one Sikh is sufficient to announce his identity, two of them make up the holy congregation, and among five of them, God is present”. The Khalsa, the chosen ones, the pure ones, were to represent the philosophy of ‘Ek Onkar’ -- One Word, One World, as expressed by Guru Gobind Singh in his writings. In ‘Akal Ustat’ and ‘Jap Sahib’ he praises ‘the timeless One’ who is “just, merciful, all-powerful, omniscient and all-loving”. The Akal or Creator, is formless, invisible, immeasurably great, king of kings, God of gods, Moon of moons, Sun of suns. His mystery is impenetrable. His glory is indefinable”. The Khalsa is enjoined to imbibe attributes of the Almighty who is light, love, goodness, truth and energy. The Akal is ever-calm, without anxiety, without desire, like the sky above the earth...vast and deep -- the highest ideal. The Akal is accessible to the soul through a life of devotion and prayer. The Khalsa, according to Guru Gobind Singh, is ‘the one who meditates day and night on the ever- shining light and does not give place in his heart to anyone except the One’. The Creator is without distinctions; so is the Khalsa. The Almighty is the only One, the only truth. “I bow to him as One ; I bow to him as One” says the Guru. Reciting, “Jale Hari, thali Hari... bane Hari...Tuhi..Tuhi… only You.. only You…” the Sikh reaches the highest state of ecstasy, of realisation which no words, no translation can express. With this stage, there remains no distinction, no separate identity between Creator and Creation. Both are merged and complete. Guru Gobind Singh often refers to the Almighty as ‘Sarabloh’ or ‘all-iron’, symbolised in weapons of war -- and why not? When God vanquishes evil, he helps those who take a courageous stand against tyrants. The martial Lord is invoked as Bhagauti or sword by Guru Gobind Singh. ‘I bow to the sword, spotless, fearless and unbreakable; I bow to the sword which destroys evil’. Bhagauti which represents Creator and word; it also means that a bhakta or devotee has divine significance, for the Khalsa performs the dual role of preserving good and overcoming all that is bad.The saint-soldier Guru says, “Hail, hail to the Creator , the Saviour, my cherisher, hail to thee, O sword !”. Unsurprisingly, the Khalsa starts Ardas, the daily prayer, with an invocation to the sword, ‘Pritham Bhagauti simar ke Guru Nanak layi dhiyai’ -- “Having first remembered the sword, meditate on Guru Nanak.” The Khalsa is akal ki fauj-- God's own army created to fulfill the divinely ordained mission of Gurus --‘Dharam chalavan, sant ubaran, dust sabhan ko mul uparan’ -- to uphold dharma, protect the saintly and uproot the wicked. ‘Wahe Guruji ka Khalsa; Wahe Guruji ki Fateh’ -- ‘Hail the Khalsa who belongs to the Lord; Hail the Lord to whom belongs victory’. Today is Baisakhi

Significance Of Pranava Mantra

The significance of Pranava mantra is evident from the fact that it is considered one of the faces of Lord Shanmukha. According to Kachiappa Sivachariar, Lord Siva is seated on the Pranava mantra. It is the foundation of the Vedas, explained Panasai Aruna, in a discourse. It is said that if a person dies in Kasi, Goddess Parvati puts the dead person on Her lap, and gently strokes the body, while Siva recites ‘Aum Nama Sivaya,' and the soul departs for Kailasa, His abode. “Aum” is a mantra that will help us cross the ocean of ‘samsara.' So important is the Pranava mantra that when Lord Brahma says he does not know its meaning, Lord Shanmukha imprisons him. Lord Brahma says he has the knowledge of the Vedas, but is unable to explain the meaning of the Pranava mantra. Kachiappa Sivachariar says that if Lord Brahma, the Creator, himself did not know the meaning, how can one believe anyone who claims he has understood the meaning of the mantra? It is not given to everyone to understand its meaning. Only those with gnana understand the mantra. After imprisoning Lord Brahma, Lord Shanmukha takes on the task of creation. Siva pacifies Shanmukha and points out that Brahma cannot be kept in prison for long and he should be released. Lord Siva asks Brahma what his sojourn in prison was like. Brahma says he saw the prison as a place for performing penance. Siva then puts Shanmukha on His lap and asks Him the meaning of Pranava. Shanmukha says He will convey it to Siva secretly. The whole universe is created from “Aum.” Souls are born on this earth, because God wants to release them from bondage. When we take a birth, depending upon the kind of life we lead in this birth, we take further births. And so on the cycle goes, until we become God realised and liberated. So it is to “Aum” that souls owe their liberation. After the deluge, when God again decides to create, “Aum” is heard. Thus everything has its origin in “Aum.”