Probably there is no direct correlation between happiness and accumulations. However, what surprises me is the mad race of people for the accumulations. For accumulating money, power, and tools for comfort. Probably, one of the biggest reasons is that our brain mistakes pleasures for happiness without realizing the side effects of pleasure. Just like our body feeling pleasure with the intake of glucose without realizing its side effects. A larger amount of glucose needs the body to secrete a greater amount of insulin to digest the same and a high level of insulin has its own bad effects on the body. Similarly, a high threshold of pleasure requires a person to spend more and more energy to get such pleasures which almost depletes the vital life forces, and that depletion of the life forces makes us unhappy.
It just needs a little observation to understand that we are happy so long as the breath is balanced. During any physical ailment, psychological disease, moments of sadness, anger, or dissatisfaction, our breath becomes abnormal. The moment breath becomes normal, we come back to our normal state of happiness. Thus happiness is a state when our being is at ease and therefore we are connected to the inner self. It has nothing to do with the material world. On the other hand, pleasures are just a repetition of some sensation. We feel pleased to have tasty food because the taste buds have habituated to a particular sensation and when the intake of the food stimulates those taste buds, they feel pleased. Similarly, our mind has developed a particular stimulus-response to money and the moment our eyes send the signals to the brain of the increase in the bank balance, it gets that stimulus and gets pleased. It has again nothing to do with happiness.
Pleasure is just getting a particular sensation that the brain craves because it has got used to these sensations. Such habits are formed either by repeated action or thought. For example, one may get used to power by having the same or by dreaming for the same. For example, a person may be a powerful person getting respect from all the sections of the society and therefore his brain has got used to this treatment and whenever he is deprived of the same, he feels uncomfortable. Alternatively, a person may not be enjoying such a status at the moment, but he may be dreaming of such powerful positions, looking at the other people he interacts with or reading about them. That may work as a strong motivation for him to set the targets in this world and he may feel pleasure with each milestone achieved in the process.
However, whatever the nature of pleasure, it is just a particular sensation of the body that we like. There are two fundamental truths about the world of sensations. It does not require deep study to understand these fundamental truths, rather if one is just a little aware of oneself, one will soon understand. All the sensations are temporary. A few minutes or a few hours or a few days at max. I just took the tea. There was a craving for the tea while I started writing this post and by now that sensation is gone. Every achievement and every possession produces a sensation that lasts for a short duration. However, we do not realize this fact probably because we keep running after one to the other sensation. One tea after the other, one target after the other.
The second fundamental truth about the sensations is that there are so many of these sensations inside our bodies. That is the other reason why pleasures can never make us happy. The moment we satiate one of these sensations, the other one surfaces. We get money, we want a promotion, we get a promotion, we want a home, we get a home, we want foreign travel. We keep running the desires dancing to their tunes and keep depleting the vital life forces. Just like taking more and more glucose due to our glucose addiction, the entire body keeps struggling to digest the same and in the process, we feel exhausted and lack energy. We feel as if the glucose is giving us energy and the same glucose is the reason for our fatigue. Similarly, we feel that pleasures are making us happy and in fact, the same pleasures are the biggest cause of our unhappiness.
This simple observation about ourselves frees us of the vicious cycle of pleasure and pain. We understand that pain is just the other side of the pleasure. What we actually require is not the repetition of the sensations, we are addicted to, but rather a freedom from that addiction. Happiness is not the continuous dose of drugs rather it is getting rid of the habit of drugs. The realization that happiness is getting rid of the fixation on these pleasant sensations is the first step towards living a happy life.
As we examine our inner being, the first thing we notice is our own breath. We realize that we take our breath for granted. However, it is the quality of breath that decides the happiness quotient. Breath is like water. The intake of breath feels like the pouring of rain, that moves into different parts of our body like the water being carried to different parts of the land by the rivers and then it reaches different parts of the body like the lakes and ponds that contain the water. The body and its parts may have apparent solidity like the solidity of glaciers. However, that's too just the water appearing to be solid due to the low temperature. This entire body too is made of the same energy. Similarly, the same water manifests in the form of clouds of different sizes and shapes. However, the could are too water. Similarly, we have infinite thoughts which too are just a different manifestation of the same life forces.
The moment, we observe this reality, something magical happens to us. We realize that all the desires and cravings for the sensations exist because of that solidity. The moment that solidity melts, desires disappear. Fears disappear too. The more we connect to our breath and the life forces underlying the breath, the more we connect to life, and the less becomes our dependence and craving for the sensations. That relieves the life forces of the prison of ignorance. That freedom makes us happy. We realize that we do not require accumulations and possessions to stay happy rather we just require the connection to the life forces.
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