Neither sorrow, nor happiness is real

A philosophy professor came up with an interesting question for his students at the time of final exams. The class was already seated and ready to go when the professor picked up his chair, plopped it on top of his desk and wrote on the board:

"Using everything we have learned this semester, prove that this chair does not exist." A panic wave transcended  across the hall. Fingers flew, erasers erased, notebooks were filled in furious fashion. Some students wrote over ten pages in an hour attempting to refute the existence of the chair. One member of the class however, was calm and quiet. He closed his eyes for a moment and delved inside to calm his mind in the source of intelligence. He wrote a line and within minutes, handed over his paper to the professor and walked out while smiling.

Weeks later when the grades were posted, the rest of the group wondered how he could have gotten an "A" when he had barely written anything at all. On insistence of the class-mates, the professor revealed his answer-sheet, which contained the answer: "What chair?"

Similarly, the seekers who realize that sorrow is only the result of ignorance have the same answer, "what sorrow?" . On further realization of truth, they realize the llusionary and dream-like nature of the world, and then they answer, "Which world?"

Worldly happiness and sorrow do not exist in reality and have no solid foundation. These transient emotions only exist at the level of your mind and its stream of thoughts. During favorable circumstances, it is within your capacity to become happy or not. If you support the happy stream of thoughts, then only you become happy. If you choose to remain equanimous, unaffected by the outer circumstances, you have the ability to do that. Without your own consent, without your support, outer circumstances cannot affect you.


Same is true for unfavorable circumstance as well. During difficult times, the seekers of inner happiness remain unaffected by remaining witness of the circumstances, by showing his gratitude to the almighty for all the circumstances in life and by accepting challenges as means of elevation. But this happens only with practice and its easy to practise this with happy stream of thoughts.

Happiness and sadness is all about your thought process, which you can control easily after becoming master of your mind by knowing your true Self- the eternal-conscious-blissful Self. In your worldly conduct also, you only see what you wish to see. If you enter into a classroom while looking for a specific student, many other things and people will go unnoticed.

The mystics of the east insist that just like your dreams, this seemingly real world doesn’t really exist. In fact, the Quantum physicist also agrees with this doctrine. If you come to know the reality of this illusionary world, you will know that happiness and sorrow are only transient emotions. Only thing that exist is your conscious Self, which notice the events of life and with support of which, the happy and unhappy stream of thoughts survives. Knowing that true Self, will make you free of all the happiness and unhappiness and will establish you in your own inner bliss.  Anyone who has considered this world as reality, could not achieve long lasting happiness. Only the mystics who came to realize the truth of this world through  introspection were able to gain a state of eternal joy.