Mind Your Daily DOSE: Be Happy!

 

Mind Your Daily DOSE: Be Happy!

Sarve bhavantu sukhinah

Sarve bhavantu sukhinah. That’s how a popular swasti mantra begins. Every being is entitled to happiness. A shanti mantra invokes peace for the entire universe including the Sky, Space, Earth, Waters, Plants, Trees; for holistic peace is unrealisable if the entire creation is not in sync and peace.

If the goal of life is to attain and enjoy happiness, what goes awry to create so much misery and unhappiness in the world?

What is Happiness?

Does the fulfilment of desires result in happiness? Does happiness accrue from owning valuable assets, or consuming the best products available: living in a premium villa, being transported from place A to B in a luxury sedan driven by a liveried-chauffeur, going off for exotic vacations, having the latest iPhone, or winning a fancy girlfriend? Desire is never satisfied by enjoyment, just as fire is never quenched by pouring ghee.

Happiness is insubstantial, intangible, impossible to capture, possess, or retain. It’s not a packaged product that can be bought off-the-shelf.

Happiness is a butterfly; chase it, it’ll fly away; sit still sipping your coffee in the sun-kissed garden, it may land on your arm; grab it, it dies. But some folks have strange tastes, they love to frame dead butterflies to beautify their homes! Happiness of man matters, not that of the butterfly!

Happiness is a tiny dew on a flower petal radiating the pure joy of a glorious sunshine. Touch it, the delicate dream vanishes. Happiness is each one of the two million flowers a worker bee visits in her lifetime to collect one-twelfth spoonful of honey. Happiness is the soul of a water-drop that ascends to heaven for rebirth as rain. Happiness is the flower that blooms to greet the sun or the moon. Happiness is the wind’s song in the orchestra of trees, mountains, and rivers. Happiness is rain from heaven, a gift, a blessing for all. It gurgles like a mountain stream, the water sprays cavorting with the rainbow colours.

Happiness is all around you, provided you’re not desperately looking for it.

Happy New Year (HNY)

How do you feel about HNY and other ‘Happy’ greetings and messages, mostly monotonous ‘Forwards,’ stripped of meaning and warmth, rather like the sad tangdi after the kebab has pleased the palates at the party.

If the billions of HNY messages exchanged globally were each a cubic centimetre of helium gas, the balloon of human happiness would be soaring now in ninth heaven; but alas, the deflated balloon is lying limp on the ground, damp from the dew. Why is that so? I guess you know the answer.

How about the hundreds of HNY messages you received from your contacts including your banks, and many service providers - Amazon, Blinkit, Ola, Uber, MakeMyTrip, Urbanclap, Zomato, Zerodha, Zepto, Plumber Bhole Tiwari, and Newspaper Agent Amit? Were you happy, delighted, thrilled, euphoric, ecstatic; or just fatigued from sending polite replies to important contacts and jaded emojis to the rest?

Even the hangover of the binge parties (last evening, we returned from one such party close to midnight coz dinner was served after 10.00 PM!) must be gone now. How do you feel? As happy as ever, or as harassed and lousy as usual?

Happiness ‘set’ point

Psychologists claim that each person has a happiness ‘set’ point to which she returns after periodic peaks and troughs. Win a lottery, get a promotion, you’ll get a ‘high’; verbally whipped by Boss, lost a friend or a dear one, you’ll feel ‘low’.

This theory claims that human happiness is determined - 50% by genetics, 10% by circumstances (personal health, profession, financial status, etc.), and 40% by lifestyle. Critics dismiss the ‘set’ point theory as too deterministic, and suggest that the brain adapts and recalibrates the happiness point, when given a chance. Anyway, lifestyle choices provide a large playing field, and can significantly boost happiness.

Mind your DOSE, Be Happy!

For scientists, Happiness is a cocktail of chemicals – the bundle of miracle hormones – Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphin (DOSE) – that our body releases. If you facilitate your body to manufacture and circulate DOSE daily, you’re likely to feel happy.

For a quick primer on DOSE, an excellent link is:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/dopamine-the-pathway-to-pleasure

This piece is part of a series, and leads you to brief, informative pieces on the other hormones.

What can you do to be happy? Help your body to manufacture these essentials hormones through lifestyle choices: diet, exercise, rest, relaxation, and bonding.

•      Mindful eating and drinking. Avoid junk food, sugar-laced carbonated drinks, too much caffein or alcohol. Eat a healthy diet including mood-enhancing food. To boost each of the DOSE hormones, there are recommended foods.

•      EYM: Exercise, Yoga, and Meditation

•      Sleep: Adequate, restful sleep

•      Music, Laughter (Children laugh 200 to 300 times a day; adults only 20 or less!), Sunshine (totally free).

•      Social Bonding: Not the time you spend on social media, nor the number of followers you have on Facebook or Instagram. Have a few good friends. Engage in group activities.

•      Practice Positive Psychology – Maintain a Gratitude Journal; Charity is beneficial for the giver, too! Handling adversity with fortitude and resilience.

Gita Wisdom for Happiness

Bhagavad-Gita, Sri Krishna’s sermon to Arjuna, enunciates the duties according to dharma, and provides guidance for right thought and right action for attaining salvation; but it also gives many tips for sensible living.

At Kurukshetra, the battle-formations are ready, and the great Dharmayuddha, the war to uphold dharma, is about to begin. But, Arjuna, the peerless warrior and leader of the Pandava army, is not ready; he is sad, depressed, confused, and dis-oriented, torn with doubts about the right path of action. To fight and kill brothers, relatives, and revered elders, or to give up arms and get killed? He asks: If we kill our adversaries, and win the war, would we enjoy the kingdom with our hands stained in blood?

O Krishna, my limbs tremble, mouth is dry, body shivers, Gandiva is unsteady and slipping down, skin is on fire, legs wobble, mind is confused and dis-oriented; everything appears inauspicious to me. I’ve decided not to fight, says Arjuna, and falls silent. Arjuna’s symptoms make a text-book case of a sudden, crippling anxiety-attack!

Sri Krishna’s sermon would resolve Arjuna’s doubts, dissipate his confusion and anxiety, and pull him out of depression. He’d be made ready for war, a metaphor for engaging with the challenges of life.

Of Krishna’s detailed counsel, several provide secular guidance for sensible living. Here are a few examples from Chapter 2:

सुखदुःखे समे कृत्वा लाभालाभौ जयाजयौ ।

ततो युद्धाय युज्यस्व नैवं पापमवाप्स्यसि ॥ २-३८॥

Yuddha may be understood as a metaphor for the formidable challenges of life.

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।

मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥ २-४७॥

An individual’s best efforts cannot guarantee the desired outcome. Too many variables are at play, several of which are beyond the control of the individual.

योगस्थः कुरु कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा धनञ्जय ।

सिद्ध्यसिद्ध्योः समो भूत्वा समत्वं योग उच्यते ॥ २-४८॥

In an uncertain world, maintaining equanimity and equipose is essential.

दुःखेष्वनुद्विग्नमनाः सुखेषु विगतस्पृहः ।

वीतरागभयक्रोधः स्थितधीर्मुनिरुच्यते ॥ २-५६॥

Do not be distressed by unhappiness, nor be overwhelmed with happiness. Balance is All!

यः सर्वत्रानभिस्नेहस्तत्तत्प्राप्य शुभाशुभम् ।

नाभिनन्दति न द्वेष्टि तस्य प्रज्ञा प्रतिष्ठिता ॥ २-५७॥

Neither exult over a good turn of events, nor grieve for momentary setback.

Postscript

Comments by an esteemed reader

“You have written a comprehensive piece on happiness, one of the most abstract and undefinable feelings. The prescriptions listed in your blog to feel happy are too much to carry out. That is the precise reason why people live their lives and experience happiness and sorrow as they come and rarely follow the regime outlined here.

Happiness like sweetness is a very personal experience, impossible to share. Gurus and scriptures say that fulfilment of desire is not true happiness for new desires would soon crop up. But the truth as we live daily is that desire and its fulfilment, fully or even partially, are the two triggers that propel us to continue living. All that we call progress and has ameliorated our lives has come out of this pursuit; doesn’t matter if it gave the pursuers any happiness.”

My response:

I broadly agree with my esteemed reader, and my response pertains only to his observation: ‘The prescriptions listed in your blog to feel happy are too much to carry out.’

But why are these suggestions for a healthy lifestyle ‘too much’? Why do we take our body for granted, take liberties with it, and mindlessly abuse it? Why do we dump into it food that we know very well as harmful; why do we deprive it of adequate sleep when we know ‘sleep-debt’ is never recovered; why do we sit for hours in front of the idiot box and skip even minimum exercise?

I am reminded of Shiva’s gentle reminder to Parvati, who was performing extraordinarily harsh ascetic austerity, that our first and foremost obligation is to the body - our only instrument for fulfilment of all worldly duties and responsibilities.

Even for believers in rebirth, there is only one life and one body for certain, and the rest are in the domain of faith and speculation. That’s why, every human has a fundamental duty to sustain and nourish her body.

शरीरमाद्यं खलु धर्मसाधनम् (Kumarasambhavam, Canto 5, Verse-33; Kalidasa)

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