Life- A journey fromWholeness to Wholeness

Om Puurnnam-Adah Puurnnam-Idam Puurnnaat-Purnnam-Udacyate

Puurnnashya Puurnnam-Aadaaya Puurnnam-Eva-Avashissyate ||

Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||

”You are the fullness. There is fullness, here is fullness. From the fullness, the fullness is born. Remove the fullness from the fullness and the fullness alone remains.”

 

This shloka from Ishovasya Upanishad is all there is to be said, if at all something has to be said. Every other word spoken is a poor translation of this.

This speaks about the core of our being which is Poornam, Whole.We are born out of completeness, live in completeness and merge in completeness.

But why is this not in the experience of the most number of people. Why do we have to chase our happiness? Why do we depend so much on external objects and situations for happiness? Is happiness actually experience dependent? What is this happiness?

Since most of the population are in a race to achieve this happiness, let us not brush off the reality that happiness is our basic need. This seeking for happiness is coherent to mans inner nature. The means and method could be different. The object of happiness could be a candy, a toy, a job, an adventure or even a mystical experience. The drawback of this experience driven happiness or pleasure is that it is ephemeral  and keeps us  wanting for more .If we retrospect, we will find that this chasing for pleasure started only around 3 or 4 years of age. That is when we imbibed a sense of separate entity, an individual. Before that what was the nature of our happiness? Was it really goal oriented?

In this scenario, the preeminent focus should be on the nature of this happiness on which  each and every act of ours is dependent. A diamond seems to give someone happiness because of several ideas that are associated with it like it is rare, everyone cannot afford it and many more.it is already clear that an object or a situation inherently does not have anything that gives happiness. It only the idea we have about it that gives happiness. All the ideas that we have is an influence from our external environment. What does an idea do to us? It creates a sense of lack in us and sets us on a journey to attain something. It convinces us that the happiness we are looking for is in the attainment of a goal.

The happiness that it promises is actually a sense of fulfillment or completeness at the core of every ambition or desire, there is a deep yearning to have a sense of completeness, the Poornatha.The wait for a toy, excitement about a trip, the longing to get married to an ideal partner, the desire to buy a new car, all this has this hidden urge to be complete. Incompleteness is at the core of many emotions like insecurity, jealousy etc.

 

So essentially, happiness is completeness.

A travel or spending some time close to nature sometimes rejuvenates us to a great extend. If we closely look at the reasons for it , we see that when we are in a new place, our mind runs out of ideas because of the unfamiliarity. A beautiful scenery or an adventure ride or a deep meditative experience gives a huge blow to the calculative mind. It is hilarious to see that the second or third trip to the same place may not make us feel the same pleasure as this time the bench mark is already set .

There is nothing wrong with enjoying what world has to offer. It is there to be experienced. The problem is not with the desire, it is with the belief that the object of desire will give you some completeness. If it is enjoyed from a space of wholeness, each little experience can be more and more deepening into our true self. If it is enjoyed from a sense of lack, it would be any other fleeting experience forcing us to cling onto more and more desires, which ultimately creates an illusion that we are incomplete.

Loneliness sprouts from incompleteness and aloneness from fullness. A person who is lonely is painstakingly looking to fulfill himself with outer objects and situations while a person who is Alone is happy without an exceeding dependency on the outer situations.

Rumi says " You are not a drop in the ocean ,you are the entire ocean in a drop" .At the core of our being, surpassing all likes and dislikes, behaviors and conditioning, beyond the persona, we are whole and complete.

Happiness is wholeness. Wholeness is peace.