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.