Let's close our eyes.
I was having a conversation about happiness with someone earlier in the week.
And they asked me a question,
How do you cultivate happiness?
And what came up for me spontaneously was the response that happiness is a full-time job,
More than a full-time job.
Not to get happiness,
But to discover it.
Discover not like a treasure hunt,
Where you go and find things outside.
We've all been doing this for decades,
Trying to find happiness in people,
Situations and things.
This discovery is more like a recognition.
But you need to look in the right place,
In the right way,
Again and again,
Until the habits of unhappiness are eroded.
Think about how much time we invested in learning the tricks of our trade,
Right from school to college,
Maybe master's or some other degree,
In addition to our undergrad.
It is years of exploration to become eligible to have this job,
To work in a big company,
To be able to work on our craft.
This is something even more fundamental than studying for a profession.
At least the curriculum,
The syllabus,
The textbooks,
The lectures,
Homework,
Assignments are all given to you by someone else.
You just have to follow it,
Make the right choices,
Which the system takes care of it.
And eventually,
After four or five years,
You will get a degree and become quote-unquote eligible to work.
But this exploration of happiness,
Exploration and recognition of peace,
There's no syllabus,
There's no curriculum for it.
I mean,
There's a lot of material out there,
Don't get me wrong.
But eventually,
It's like learning how to play the guitar.
Let's say 50 people,
50 kids go to a guitar school,
And the teacher teaches all of them in the same way at the same time,
At the end of maybe a year or two years.
Do you think everyone is at the same level of playing the guitar?
Probably not.
Definitely not.
No matter how much standardization you have,
What gets learned,
What gets practiced,
It is dependent on so many other factors that it becomes a function of interest,
Of effort,
Sprinkled with grace.
Same is true about exploring for our happiness,
For our peace,
For clarity.
There's no manual on how to live well.
That's why it becomes more than a full-time job.
Not only do you have to explore,
You have to explore sometimes in demanding conditions,
Amidst relationships,
Arguments,
Disagreements,
Fear.
I've been very lucky to find extraordinary teachers along the way to help me,
And also help me recognize that it's possible.
If someone can do it,
I can do it.
And once I've been enough beaten up by unhappiness,
That's when I made the choice of not doing this part-time,
But going in full-time.
Another thing that is necessary while we are searching for something is to find friends,
Books,
Whatever help we can to make our search efficient.
For some of us,
We might be young in our life,
So we might have a lot of time.
But for others,
We've already lived enough life in unhappiness that we need to be extra efficient with our efforts.
And again,
I want to emphasize,
I'm not talking about happiness which is conditional,
Happiness which is personal,
You know,
My happiness,
Your happiness.
I'm talking about a consensus of happiness,
A consensus of peace that we are all inherently looking for.
And not for a fleeting moment,
But a long-lasting experience of peace.
That is what I call happiness and the exploration for it.
So we need to be very efficient.
And by efficient,
I mean,
We will have to make some choices that may not be right,
But quickly learn from it to course correct and find what works for us,
What takes us in the direction of happiness.
Not as a mirage,
An object in the future,
But starts yielding results today.
Like this session,
I'm not promising you happiness at the end of session,
Neither am I promising you at the beginning for that matter.
But hopefully,
You're having an experience of calm,
Peace,
Just by some of the words and the truth behind them,
Underneath them.
So finding the right resources makes our search very efficient.
The next step that might be relevant is feeding the right food.
And by food,
I mean physical as well as mental food.
As I mentioned,
This is a full-time job on top of our other full-time job.
You probably need a lot more energy to undertake this exploration.
And unfortunately,
There is no going back.
The moment you taste happiness,
Peace,
You can't go back to not exploring it.
The only way out is through.
So you all are stuck.
And I mean it sincerely.
I'm not trying to scare you or even mock you.
I mean it.
As long as we don't know about what's out there in the world,
There's a better way to live.
We are okay in our small little well.
But once we see something,
Once we know something,
It's very,
It's impossible to unsee it,
To forget it.
So we need a lot of energy to do this exploration,
To sustain this exploration.
And it's not in the service of some future carrot,
But it's a very instantaneous feedback loop.
You will start tasting the fruits of your efforts right away.
The promise is fulfilled right away.
So feeding the right food to the body will give us the energy to explore this,
To learn more about where to find this.
And by where,
I mean inside,
To navigate our traumas,
Our upbringing,
Our choices,
Our beliefs,
Our feelings,
Our ideas,
Our concepts,
Questioning them,
Finding the truth behind them.
You need a lot of energy.
You need the right food for it.
And in the process,
You also need to be worried of what food you are feeding your mind.
What we watch,
Who we hang out with,
What we speak,
What we consume,
What we read.
All these influence our mind.
Although it's impossible to unknow and unsee what we have seen,
We can bury it.
We can put something,
Put a veneer of unhealthy food,
Unhealthy impressions on our mind.
For example,
And again,
This is just my opinion.
If I watch a lot of violence,
Whether it's in movies,
In sports,
Or I expose myself to a lot of violence,
My mind will be influenced more by violence.
And it would be very hard,
Very difficult to explore happiness,
To explore truth where violence is so cheaply available.
Exploration of peace is an act of courage.
To the food really matters.
Our environment really matters.
The company that we keep really matters.
Like over the last two years after COVID,
Whatever retreats I've gone on for my meditations,
I've made such deep friendships that even when we text each other,
Zoom each other,
When we meet again,
Run into each other,
Although we might not talk about happiness,
Peace,
Truth directly,
Sometimes we do.
But there's a lot of depth,
There's a lot of peace,
There's a lot of calm that is being exchanged in mundane topics like food,
Work,
Life.
But somehow the discussions of truth do find their way into the conversation.
And that is the nourishment that keeps the friendship going.
And all this takes a lot of courage.
To pick the right friends,
To let go of the wrong friends,
Takes a lot of courage.
That's why I said it's more than a full-time job.
It takes a lot of courage to carve out the time to sit down,
Listen to someone,
Make sense of it,
Sit with it,
Chew on it,
Accept what we find inside of us that may not be pleasant.
But as I said,
This is an instantaneous feedback loop.
The more you jettison,
The happier you get.
Instantaneous feedback.
Even when things get very uncomfortable because of something that surfaces inside of us,
It might be very painful at times.
But as you work your way through it,
As it dissolves,
You will get more courage.
Courage begets courage.
So this gathering that we have is a safe place,
A safe haven for us to meet,
To discuss this,
To feel nourished.
It's like a pocket of safety.
We go recharge and then go our way.
We can build our pockets of safety within our day,
Within our community.
This is what showed up for me when I was asked,
How do you cultivate happiness,
Facilitate this exploration?
And even me sharing this with you is an act of cultivation.
Thank you.
