Happiness sans gratification

The month of May gone by was wonderful for me to say the least. Unlike most May's of my life that I have spent getting baked in the sweltering Delhi heat, this one was spent in the middle of mountains in a tiny village in Himachal Pradesh.

I was left with enough time and energy to think about life, more so because I was getting acquainted with Buddhist philosophy, meeting great people, learning meditation. First time in my life I was able to understand the real meaning of happiness. Until then for me happiness was merely gratification. Either material or sense but for me the supposed state of happiness was achieved only by gratification. The experience of true happiness of or rather just glimpses of it made it clear that how shallow happiness though gratification is.

I buy a pair of shows, I am happy and as soon as I have worn them for the first time the happiness vanishes!

Whereas the state of happiness is so easier to achieve and so much more blissful. I can close my eyes, concentrate on my breath and I am happy! I am now able to be more happy in adversity than earlier I would be in tranquility.

I love this line from Dan Gilbert's TED talk "..our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience."

And I am not having second thoughts about my choice :)