What is the nature of happiness? Does it come into our lives in cycles, as the astrologers would like us to believe — when we have an abundance of financial comfort, good health and great relationships? Is it when things just seem to fall into place in our lives with effortless ease as we experience sometimes in our lives? Or is it something else?
Says actor Tisca Chopra, who practises Buddhism, “From what I now understand about life there are good phases and then there are bad phases. During a bad phase it’s easy to pick up bad habits like complacency and inertia, which slyly creep up on one’s life. But now I’m alert to bad phases in my life and use them to strive all the harder. For example when I don’t have any particular work on hand as an actor I use that time to get up early in the mornings, exercise, do my prayers and meet up with friends and family. That way I can turn the winters in my life into springtime.”
The actor credits Buddhism having to no longer bob up and down on every crest or trough in life. “I’m trying to be as non-reactive to external forms of happiness which are, after all, very unpredictable. Instead I try and base my happiness on inner-driven thought and action. I keep making the effort to fulfil my goals regardless of the ‘weather’ outside and I find that the journey of life itself become a source of happiness. That way I can live life fully, at every moment of my life.”
Businesswoman Zeba Kohli agrees wholeheartedly with the concept of ‘living in the moment’. “I believe that your happiness depends on the state of your mind,” she says. “One had to live in complete awareness of the moment, on a moment-to-moment basis. With calmness of the mind, there is complete awareness of the moment.”
Zeba has a mantra for living in the moment as well. “I call it the principle of the three Ps — prayer, pranayama and positivity,” says Zeba adding that she cannot stress enough on how powerful this three-step mantra is in calming the mind and allowing it to achieve happiness. “It gives me the capability to go through any situation or day in life. I can achieve peace and happiness with the three Ps.” And as a conclusion she adds, “You’ve got to live in the now. Don’t wait for your cycle of good luck to arrive, you’ve got to become happy in the moment, in the here and now.”
Arti Surendranath, who has been suffering a leg ailment for the last several months, agrees that one’s mind is the most powerful tool in the accomplishment of happiness. “The most important thing is to be a positive person,” Arti says adding she is learning to find happiness in the moment — in her children and in realising the depth of life. “I never knew the kinds of problems people went through until I had this problem and now I’m learning to empathise with their troubles,” she says. “I believed that right where you are is your heaven or hell depending on your state of mind and the person you’re striving to be.”
She says that it’s all about whether you see the glass of your life as half empty or half full, depending upon your perspective. “Yet the most essential ingredients — hope and faith that things will get better, also lie in your mind. With resurgent hope and faith, no matter how bad things are, half the battle is already won.”
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