Why do we seek happiness and what does yoga have to do with it?
We spend our time seeking objects, people, environments that will make us happy. The experience we continually seek brings us pleasure, and we think happiness comes from the outside objects.
Yet, the happiness these objects bring are only momentarily and the very same object does not bring the same happiness again and again. I love eating ice-cream and eating ice-cream makes me happy but after eating the tenth cone, I don't feel the happiness from this action anymore and in fact I want to stop. In that sense, we know that ice-cream is not the source of happiness.
If the ice-cream is not the source of my happiness, then from where did the happiness arise when I came in contact with the ice-cream? There are only two entities in contact: the ice-cream and myself. If the source of happiness is not from the ice-cream, then the source of happiness must be arising from myself.
Let's go back to the desire of eating the ice-cream. When the desire was fulfilled, I was happy. In that moment, I fulfilled a desire - a lack - and that made me happy. In that sense, the feeling of lack was stopping me from knowing my own self as the source of happiness. When the feeling of lack disappeared, happiness arise.
Yet this feeling of lack, or the desire (kama) to experience something that is outside of myself keeps coming back. It is like a never-ending hole that cannot ever be filled, no matter how many times one has tried. To look for happiness outside of myself will be a doomed pursuit, as the source of happiness was never on the outside but it dwells within me. The search outside will never culminate to a perfect peace and uninterrupted fulfilment.
So... if I know that the source of happiness is myself, why do I keep feeling a sense of lack and why am I not able to see it?
The ancient rishis (enlightened persons) discovered that even though we are the source of our own happiness, we are under a veil of ignorance that prevents us from seeing our true inner reality. Just like the clouds block out the sunlight, we are not aware of our essential nature that is full and complete, due to the ignorance that acts as a veil.
The only way to remove the ignorance is through knowledge. Not just any knowledge but using a discriminative mind that will remove the veil of ignorance, just like how an illumination can remove the darkness of a room instantaneously. This inquiry into the self, is the way of Vedanta, the way to liberate from ignorance and suffering.
Hence, to seek happiness is to none other than to know ourselves, to uncover the complete and fullness of our true nature.
