How to Live Happily Without Suffering

Do you want to live happy and end suffering?  First, let’s look at what it means to live happy. Think of all the things you have done for the “pursuit” of happiness.  Pursuit meaning, it’s not there right now or not there to the level you really want.  You want more and more thinking that this will resolve the problem.  After some time, the same things which you thought would help you live happy has brought much misery in your life.  Looking at all the things you did to bring happiness, did they work? If the answer is no, your pursuit has been misguided.

How to live life happily without suffering?  It’s this suffering, or fear of suffering, which has been a significant motivator for your actions.  Too many people hope that some accumulation will help them end suffering.  Temporarily, these external items or stimuli may distance you from your suffering.  But once these things are gone, you feel more lonely than ever.  Has this happened to you?  In order to end suffering and live happy, you must first know what is the root cause of suffering and address that.  Here is a video where Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev explains who we can end suffering in a conversation at Duke Medical School.

The Money Pit

Money is a device that started as a solution beyond the barter system. It was not complicated. It was just a means of exchange; a tool to make life more comfortable. If money is in your pocket, life is more comfortable. But the moment it enters your head, it becomes a perversion. You get identified by it. It becomes who you are. Once you get identified by it, you can never have enough.

There are many wealthy people who become miserable with just a little
fluctuation in their net worth. But money is merely a means to an end. Like everything else, money has been created for our well-being. We forget this when we become deeply identified by it.

Instead of just having money to use, we become someone — or something — because of it. Then we begin to compare ourselves to other people instead of enjoying what we have. This becomes a kind of a sickness, where making money is then turned against your own well-being.  (Sadhguru. The Price of Happiness. Huffington Post.  June 13, 2011).

End Suffering and Live Happy Within

‘If my boss is yelling at me, how can I be blissful?  If my wife is not co-operating with me, how can I be blissful?  If my bank balance is zero, how can I become blissful?’  These are all life situations, and maybe things have gone out of control and turned unpleasant for you.  It does not matter how carefully you walk through this life, invariably you will step into some unpleasantness and difficulties.

So how is it possible to de-link the outside factors and be at peace?  If you look at your own life’s experience, whenever happiness happened to you, it didn’t matter what the stimulus was.  Maybe, you watched the sunrise and you became very joyful; maybe you heard some music and you became very joyful; maybe you achieved some success and you were joyful.  Remember that whenever you happened to be joyful, it always bubbled up from within you.  It never rained upon you from somewhere else.

That shows that the source of your happiness is within you, but the stimulus is outside.  Therefore, the choice has to be yours: whether to keep the stimulus outside or you want to import it into you.  The source of happiness is within you but the switch is in somebody else’s hands.  They can turn it on or turn it off.  Anybody can make you happy, anybody can make you unhappy.  Similarly, any situation can hijack your happiness at any moment. (Sadhguru. Happiness is Within. Hindustan Times.  Sep 20, 2010).

How to live happily without suffering?  To live happy, you must realize that the source of happiness is within you.  If the source is within you, do you want the keys or do you want them in some other hands?  To end suffering, it’s important to keep the keys to your own happiness with you and out of external control.