I'm now here to speak about happiness
and the factors that are said to lead to it.
I know, presumptuous.
Now, what's very interesting about these factors
is that all of us, kind of, know about it.
After all, they've been around for ages.
And in this permanence, in this immutability of the factors,
lies the paradox of happiness.
All of us want happiness,
all of us kind of know where happiness exists,
and yet so few of us are genuinely happy.
Yes, so few,
because those gleeful photographs
on Instagram and Facebook, notwithstanding. (Laughter)
So, with this in mind,
I intend my talk today to be about three main themes.
One, we are reiterating the well-known paths of happiness;
two, pinpointing the inbuilt impediments in these paths;
and three, suggesting certain ways to counter these impediments.
So, what are the well-known paths of happiness?
Broadly speaking, there are three of them.
But before I get into the details of each,
a word on their universal character and validity,
that how the same three paths
seem to be suggested by philosophy, religion, and empirical evidence.
Let's take philosophy first.
Let's first take the first rate in Western and Eastern philosophy.
Let's take Spinoza and let's take the Bhagavad Gita.
Now interestingly,
the three paths suggested by Spinoza --
the path of feminine virtues, masculine virtues,
virtues of the informed mind --
happen to be practically identical with the paths suggested by the Gita:
the paths of Gyana yoga, Karma yoga, and Bhakti yoga.
After philosophy, when we come to religion,
it's again very remarkable to note
that most religions tend to have a trinity.
And that the three aspects of the trinity,
they happen to be in perfect correspondence
to the three paths of happiness suggested by the best in philosophy.
How they correspond -- I'll gradually come to that.
By trinity, of course, what I mean is Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh of Hinduism;
the son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit of Christianity;
Mohammed, Allah, and Al-Haqq of Islam;
Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya of Buddhism.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Clint Eastwood. (Laughter)
OK, that was to see whether you're still with me.
Finally we come to empirical evidence.
Now, according to this,
humanity can be broadly classified into three personality types.
Yes, the three personality types
correspond to the three paths of happiness.
Now the three types are endomorphic, mesomorphic and ectomorphic.
Endomorphic: these guys are soft and chubby.
They're fond of luxury, food, social company.
The mesomorphic: they are large-boned and muscular.
They're active, combative, lustful for power.
And ectomorphic, they're small-boned and slender.
They're cerebral, sensitive, introverted.
And all of us are a combination of all three.
Most of us are a combination of all three in varying degrees,
which also explains why one man's happiness
is so different than that of another.
So now coming to the first path of happiness: Bhakti yoga,
the path of the Incarnation, the path of the soft and chubby endomorph.
So, the path of you can say, love and devotion.
Love, primarily, because what incarnation is primarily asking us to do
is to lead a life of love, a life devoid of sin.
The connection between love and sin?
Sins are absence of love.
They're forms of hatred, greed, pride, anger, envy;
hatred all.
Hatred is not compatible with happiness.
So with sins gone, hatred gone.
Hatred gone, love comes in.
And once love comes in -- well, you're happy.
Think about it. I mean, as cheesy as this might sound,
your happiest days are ones when everyone seems nice,
when you're running low on hatred.
The demanding wife seems justified,
the cab driver seems amiable,
the obnoxious boss seems to have a point,
and the receptionist seems positively, positively endearing.
Which brings me to first love.
Now when...
you might have been in love, I believe,
if you remember first love,
you remember the wonderful feeling of bliss that went with first love.
The feeling of perpetually being on cloud nine.
Or could it be that Providence
has deliberately embedded this program of first love in all of us
to acquaint us with the power of love?
If love for one can lead to this kind of happiness,
imagine what kind of happiness could be yielded by a love for all.
The question is that what prevents us from walking this path of love?
What prevents us from loving all?
A tempting and politically incorrect answer.
We don't love all people because most people are bums.
They don't deserve to be loved.
Now how do we get past this impediment?
With the simple realization that be the best or worst of us,
we actually don't have much control over the way we are.
We don't have much contribution to the way we are.
The family to which we were born, the school we went to,
who sat next to us in class,
which book we read at what point in time, and all such.
Neither our DNA nor our circumstances are our doing.
So, let's cut the bums some slack.
We won't be able to cut all that slack in one go,
so let's do it in phases.
Let's remember that on that long road from hatred to love,
you have certain pit stops of resentment, apathy, tolerance, cordiality, affection.
So don't rush it, alright.
Promote your subjects one pit stop at a time,
and then experience it for yourself.
Experience how with each promotion
a packet of happiness just bursts into your being.
For added flavor, for added pleasure,
you might want to add some action to that promotion,
because in the end, real love is not an emotion, it's an act.
It's an act of the will that ultimately transforms into a spiritual experience,
and because it is an act, we can hope to get better with practice.
Which brings me to the second path: Karma Yoga.
Selfless action.
One acts but he abandons the rights with the results of that act.
The path of the active and combative mesomorph,
in the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
This is the father; father indeed,
because when you consider a kindergarten-going kid,
that kid knows that it is him who has to finish his homework,
it is him who has to tackle the school bully,
who has to deal with the teacher.
But yes, if something drastically wrong happens,
his father will be there for him.
Alright.
So Karma yoga then, if I may borrow a cliché,
is about "do your best, forget the rest."
Sounds simple and soothing
but all of us know that it's easier said than done.
Why?
Because no matter how much we do
there's always that nagging feeling that we haven't done enough.
You know, we've over the years come to abandon
that wonderful, wonderful commodity called resignation.
Too bad,
because neuroscience tells us
that while grappling with a problem, when the mind resigns to an outcome,
then the amygdala in the brain stops sending forth signals
of stress and anxiety.
And here lies the inbuilt impediment of Karma Yoga.
All of us know that we need to resign at some point.
We're never able to figure out where exactly that point lies.
I mean, how much effort is commensurate for me to say that I did my best?
Well, one way to look at that question could be to change perspective.
OK?
And when we see that "change perspective,"
I mean instead of figuring out ways
to see how much more could be done to achieve a goal,
what could be done to achieve a goal,
we try to figure out how relevant the goal is.
We disentangle ourselves from the goal, we step back from it.
We take a wider view of it and then it starts to come to us.
That how much effort is commensurate.
However, that still leaves us with a big problem.
Because when you've been in this business for sizing up your goals for long,
eventually what could happen
is that most goals could begin to seem trivial.
And a trivial goal does not instigate action.
We're up against a paradox again.
Give too much relevance to your goals and you see nervous tension;
give too little relevance and you see inactive depression.
The solution?
Well, not a clear cut one,
but I get hints of it in my morning tennis every day.
This a place where I'm running, I'm sweating, I'm strategizing.
I've even been accused of deliberately making false line calls.
In short, I'm really keen to win.
However, if I lose, that loss doesn't stay with me for more than 15 minutes.
So I guess the real trick of Karma Yoga
lies in being able to replicate that tennis match sagacity
into everyday endeavor.
And that brings me finally to the final path that is Gyana Yoga,
the path of the sensitive and introverted ectomorph.
The path of the Holy Spirit,
that all transcending and yet all pervading divine reality --
Nirgun, Nirvishesh, Nirakar, Akarta.
Without quality, without attribute, without form, non-agent.
In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad,
when the boy's father is finished telling about the divine reality to him
he in the end adds,
"And that, Svetaketu, art thou."
"Tat twam asi."
Not just Svetaketu, but all of us are this divine reality.
It is this divine reality that is the core of our existence.
Vedanta says so.
Eckhart and Thomas Aquinas say so.
The Muslim Sufi Al-Ghazali says so.
Buddhism says so. Tao and Zen say so.
Also, quantum physics says so.
What is quantum entanglement or the collapsing of wave functions?
It is the divine reality
where the observer, the observed, and the observation blend into one.
What is the phenomenon where they successfully separate
a subatomic particle from its magnetic moment?
Is it not a reality of which quality is not an attribute?
To realize our oneness with this divine reality
is the ultimate goal of every human life.
But why aren't we able to do so?
Because as Al Pacino says in "Scent of a Woman,"
"It's too damn hard."
(Laughter)
Hoo-ah!
Actually, it's hard because it's all uncharted territory.
And what further cripples us in this uncharted territory
is the fact that we are totally ignorant of our limitations.
We will not believe that there is a limit to our levels of understanding,
that we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees,
and that the two percent jump in DNA
should not result in an infinite jump in brain capacity.
So just as a chimpanzee will never understand quantum theory,
there are certain things which even when explained to us
we will not understand.
Similarly, we will not believe
that there could be stimuli and sense perceptors
other than the ones we know.
We will not believe that language and reason
are prime tools of understanding,
have some inherent and inbuilt limitations.
Wittgenstein in his "Tractatus"
and Immanuel Kant in his "Critique of Pure Reason"
made some really valid expositions about these limitations.
Which is not to say that knowledge and reason
have no role whatsoever in Gyan yoga.
They do. It's just that by themselves, they are insufficient,
they're not enough.
It's like if you're a painter,
then a good book
containing some great critiques on painting could be of great help to you.
But the book itself will not get you there.
At some point, you need to get your hands dirty,
you need to pick up paint and brush.
So, how do you pick up paint and brush?
And how do you get your hands dirty in Gyan yoga?
Simple. Mindfulness and meditation.
I won't go into the technique details,
but I'll say what happens with your brain and mind when you start to meditate.
Your brain starts to alter itself on a permanent basis.
It's called neuroplasticity.
Feel-good chemicals are secreted, neural networks get rewired
in a fashion that helps to keep you stress-free.
Cortical thickness increases,
which assists in problem-solving, planning and emotional regulation.
Cell density decreases,
but in areas that are responsible for stress.
In short, feel good after meditation isn't just psychological.
Alright.
And which brings me to the point that...
But anyway, just leave aside the neuroscience.
Let's come to the fact of what is happening in terms of real experience.
Well, in real experience, when you're being mindful
you're learning to respond rather than react.
When you're meditating
you're learning to increase control over your attention.
You're thus making yourself less and less vulnerable
to any stray stimuli that might aggravate you.
With the stray stimuli and the uncontrolled reactions
out of the way,
the dust begins to settle, the mind becomes clearer.
You can thus view yourself, know yourself, at far greater clarity.
Your prejudices, your preferences, your desires, your aversions.
You can clearly see their machinations, their manipulations.
Far more important than all this,
when you're mindful,
you begin to enjoy this whole show as a spectator or witness.
You know, the actor -- I, me, myself, gradually starts to lose relevance.
And when you start to view the world
with a little less of self-reference,
things automatically begin to seem a bit more calm, a bit more pleasant.
Well, that was about happiness and the paradox.
If you allow me just one more minute
I'll let you know all the clichés related to happiness.
The clichés -- those phrases which we hear so often
that they cease to have any meaning for us whatsoever.
Now when we consider a cliché, we view it as a point, that red point,
on the circle of our understanding.
When we take a side view
we realize that what we thought to be a circle is, in fact, a spiral.
OK?
Then it's further revealed to us -- this is getting technical --,
it's further revealed to us
that the cliché which from our top view appears to be fixed,
actually has the potential to exist at higher and higher planes of profundity.
For example, the simple words, the simple cliché:
"Do your best, forget the rest"
is true for both a school-going child and the great philosopher Spinoza.
But the insight that each derives from these words is hugely different.
So all I'm trying to say
is that when it comes to clichés related to happiness and spirituality,
they tend to have more than one layer of meanings.
So, the thought that I want to leave you with is:
Let's not be shy of revisiting our clichés.
Let's not be shy of trying to unlock them
using any combination of techniques from the three paths.
And yes, while using the three paths,
let's not forget, let's always keep in mind
the basic principle that lies at their core.
The principle that before we seek happiness,
let's make ourselves more conducive to receiving it.
Thank you.
(Applause)