Here is a definition of happiness as found on the web:
Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources.
And here is what Yogi Bhajan, the great Kundalini yoga teacher, has to say about happiness:
“You should make yourself so happy, that by looking at you, other people become happy.”
But how do you make yourself happy? Happiness comes from an internal source and not an external one. If we really get that, we will stop thinking that someone or something outside of ourselves will make us happy. Yoga teaches us that by looking within, promoting one’s health and well-being, cultivating a peaceful internal feeling in which there is a lack of conflict or stress or worry, happiness can be felt and found.
I came across this yoga related article on happiness:
Most people have experienced moments of joy or delight at one time or another in their lives. So you know what happiness feels like, that feeling when the whole body radiates with joyous energy and you feel like embracing everyone and everything.
In those precious moments, you are in touch with something more real than your ordinary external self.
The ego is temporarily suspended, and your consciousness and energy rise. You have an overwhelming feeling of happiness, total blissfulness, which has the divine quality of love. The opportunity to experience these feelings on a regular basis are available by choice and perspective. No one else but yourself can do this for you.
When you center yourself and you are totally present, you can get in touch with the larger reality that is your internal self in which you are immersed. Then your energy starts to flow more freely, and you feel that deep sense of security, intuiting the true identity that is you untouched by any conflict or pain.
To be present in the body is a skill that can be learned through yoga, for yoga means “to unite”. To be presently happy rather than seek to become happy is an open option for anyone. We can either chose to lose ourselves in fear, anger, despair and other negative states, or we can chose to feel the total bliss that lies beyond them.
Happiness is your birthright, so claim it, be one of the people who decides to become all he/she can be, enjoys everyday, makes the most out of life and lives it.
Note: I like the above quote, but found it full of grammatical errors and had to edit it. I hope that is allowed when quoting someone! The above quote reflects my philosophy on happiness so well that I wish I had written it myself.
Is there simply another way to look at this idea of happiness? Here is happiness as defined by a photo sent to me by Ursula! Looking at this photo makes me smile! Now, these are some happy folks:
Marilyn and Ursula pretend to dig their teeth into one of the edible gigantic shaggy manes we found on our mushroom hunting expedition in the Umbrian Appenine Mountains in Italy while at Mario’s cooking school.
Happiness, for me, is the joy or bliss I experience in the midst of freedom. It’s very difficult to feel happy and not free. They are inextricable. But happiness is fleeting. We cannot feel it all the time or we’d never be able to distinguish it from other feelings. Happiness is like a blue sky in the midst of days of gloom and rain. If it’s sunny every day, then we hardly notice it anymore. My mother and I debated happiness once. She was afflicted with the old fashioned American idea of happiness while I believe happiness is a fleeting sensation amidst many passing sensations. We finally concluded together that “satisfaction” was a more reasonable goal and a more consistent, even permanent, sensation to be achieved.
Rick