‘What is this life if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare.No time to stand beneath the boughsAnd stare as long as sheep or cows.No time to see, when woods we pass,Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.No time to see, in broad daylight,Streams full of stars, like skies at night.No time to turn at Beauty's glance,And watch her feet, how they can dance.No time to wait till her mouth canEnrich that smile her eyes began.A poor life this if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare’.
In penning these lines , William Henry Davies was suggesting that real joy and happiness is not a milestone to be achieved at the end of the road , an accolade won at the end of a long struggle , or the adornment of a laurel after vanquishing someone. This poem was in my school syllabi – but it has stayed with me – in memory , if not in practise - but reading this lovely offering rekindled thoughts of a time when one could just be , and ‘just that being’ was a moment of sheer joy , or Ananada , as Pawan describes it in his eminently readable novella of 119 pages which can be read in one sitting . At the end of which , it makes one reflect on the rat race we indulge in, most unconsciously , without realising that only a rat can win this race !
Why race , when you can step back and discover that happiness – the pursuit of which has been endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly – can be discovered through a process of introspection , by asking the right questions , and looking into one’s own inner space. In January this year, when Pawan gave me this manuscript to read , and write a blurb for, I thought that this is yet another powerful discourse on the lines of Living Hanuman , a brilliant book , but with an academic orientation , full of cross references and bibliographic details . So it was with some trepidation that I took a printout – but once I started reading it, the conversations drew me in. He talks about the ordinary, the here and now , the arrangement of furniture , the perfect cup of coffee, the walk in the woods – and all this gives us a deep insight into Sukha ( happiness )
Let me share the background and the story .
Happytual starts with the teenaged Priel, who is visiting India from the US attempting to write a a paper for her psychology major – the pursuit of happiness. Confused as she was , with so many different ‘technical definitions’ of happiness – from academics Martin Seligman to Dr Christpher Peterson to Lynda Field and savants like Dalai and mahatma Gandhi , she asks her Pawan phoopha(uncle) ( the narrator) rather casually ‘ so , what is happiness’ to which he asks her ‘when was the last time you felt happy’. And thus began a chain of conversations that continued over the Covid lockdown when Priel, Pawan, his better half Sadhna , and a visiting health professional from Germany, the Turkish origin twenty-nine-year-old Bilge were confined to a flat in the picturesque campus of the Swami Rama Himalayan Hospital at Jolly Grant , next to the Dehradun airport about half an hour’s drive from the spiritual city of Rishikesh.
Pawan starts by telling her that ‘happiness is not inherent in an external object , a person or a situation. It is not something out there. It is within each of us , even if it is triggered by an external factor’. Second , happiness follows the law of diminishing returns -much like the fizz in a soda bottle . Ironically, it was contentment – the opposite of pursuit – which held the key to happiness . And finally , while happiness was directly proportional to possession , one cannot desire to possess everything , because desire is inversely proportional to happiness ! When this leaves Priel ‘confused, frustrated and unhappy’, Pawan tried to explain the etymology of Sukha : Su – which stands for good, beneficial, harmonious , fragrant and beautiful – and Kham – which refers to the bridge that connects the outer and the inner space. He then narrates to her the story of King Janaka’s conversation with Ashtavakra – the sage with eight deformities -who explains the four stages of Being – in the waking, dreaming, deep sleep and that of eternal consciousness – the fourth stage of Being.
But the question is : how does one get there ? Pawan now explains the inner space through the fivefold elaboration of Square, Circle, Lotus, Triangles and and Point . The Square is the body with four gates of entry :hunger , the basic urge of survival, sleep which encompasses all activities that provide rest and leisure , sex which propels procreation and fear which is propelled by the instinct for survival. Then there are the three concentric Circles – the Ida, Pingala and Sushumna Nadis – which represent the flow of breath through the right and left nostril and the subtle middle stream of energy that cannot be felt physically. The twenty-four Lotus petals include : Ahimsa, Satya ,Asteya ,Brahmcharya ,Aparigraha,Shaucha,Santosha, Tapas,Svadhyaya, Ishvara- pranidhana, Asana , Pranayama , Pratyahara,Dharana, Dhyana , Chitta -prasadana, Maitri, Karuna, Mudita, Upeksa , Kshanti , Kshama, Seva and Shreyas. He then describes the Triangles – the first layer of effort and grace, the second of knowledge and wisdom, followed by womb and nurture , the penultimate one of emptiness and fulness and the final triangle of pure grace which also has the Point , or the Bindu in which shraddha(trust) and vishvasa (faith) are subtly fused.
But Kshama is easier said than done , for we are all self-righteous. Pawan now explains this in greater depth to help clear the cobwebs in the mind of Bilge, whose frosty relationship with her highly judgemental father causes her deep distress . This is where Pawan gently suggests that while we cannot change the person in question , the only option one can exercise is that of forgiveness !
And finally, there is Death , the only reality which became even more pronounced in the times of Covid. How does one cope with it. He tells the distraught Sadhna, Priel and Bilge that while ‘death is the only reality, this is an unpleasant topic which we tend to avoid’ : much like the ostrich burying its hand in the sand so to not see the inevitable. ‘ We presume that we will grow old and die . But death can engulf us any moment .Hence we have to make a choice : either we live in the denial of death , or we accept the reality of death and prepare for it so that it becomes a conscious transition’.
We are almost at the end of the discourse , but it ends not with death , but ‘zently’ the nasal tone ,with which their young Yoga teacher asks them to ‘breathe zently, inhale zently and exhale zently’ thereby taking the concept of Dhyana to the Japanese mediation technique of zen. Priel breaks out into a song :
The time to be happy is now,
the place to be happy is here,
the way to be happy is
to make others happy,
and make a little heaven
right here!
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