BLISS THE FREEDOM OVER HAPPINESS 

                                                                                Suraksha Giri

           There are myriad deceptions of happiness and yet we pursue each mirage as real. We make desperate attempts to secure it through relationships, wealth, status, goodness, power etc. We indulge in religion, philanthropy, and loftier pursuits that attract the praise and appreciation of the community and social circle. Whether material aspiration, social recognition, or personal status, the pursuit of happiness is an act of self deception which is endorsed by our own personal daily experience during our waking, dream and deep sleep states.   

           Time is a recorder of change. It tracks our personal history as past present and future, baby, childhood, youth, old age, dying. Time is the traveller; it travels through me so I leave my youth behind, old age stares ahead! Time records all my changes, my physical body has its time table, the creation has its time table, and my thoughts have a time table. Rivers which once gushed and flowed are dry beds of smooth pebbles and islands of water reeds. Tender shoots and flowers appear on the mango tree, form fruit, ripen and fall all in a course of five months. Nature does not resist time, arrest it, manage or subvert it. I the individual, treat time as my friend at times when situations are propitious, a dastardly foe at times and when situations turn uncomfortable I say time is not right. 

             Live in the present is advocated. But present is only our perception as time glides on from past to future, leaving present in its wake. Live in the Presence is what is required, the Witness of the transitions of change, Itself Unchanging, All Pervasive, Immortal. To a grieving Sugriva over the death of his brother Valli, Sri Rama consoling him remarks, ' the essence of the world is the Time- Spirit. The Time-Spirit neither oversteps its limits nor declines in any way. It makes no special friends with anyone and no one can order it away from its course. Dharma, artha, kama everything is subject to the Time-Spirit Kala.’

               Time is our first lesson on the impermanence of our lives, it's also the best example of the timeless for how else can time coast along so blithely unless it runs on tracks laid on a foundation that is changeless? It's memorizing to see time flow but a closer look and we can experience the support that holds up the headlong rush. When I am with the frenetic pace it is exciting but ephemeral and I fluctuate between anticipation and disappointment. When I align myself to the motionless timeless Witness, there is peace, and an overwhelming sense of joy that arises knowing IT cannot be snatched away. 
               Apart from time which is universal experience we also have another unique phenomena day in and day out for the entirety of our life during waking, dream and deep sleep. When I am awake the perceptible world is real and tangible but during dream it rolls away. The material objects do not find a place in my dream world, it is filled with images from the thought world. Flying horses, speaking trees, ancestors long passed on, emotions buried deep within layers of memory spring out with a ferocity that is fearsome and chilling. We wake up with a start quaking in terror chased by a dream monster or a lumbering grisly bear. I fall asleep and this time move into a deeper realm, a place where there is no thought, sensation, knowledge or action. I am lying inert dead to the world my mind withdrawn into the recess of the thousand petal lotus of my heart. 
               How do I know that I the waker, I the dreamer, and I the deep sleeper are all one and the same? Is it because of my body that is available in all three states? My body is a sheath, it has no ability to experience or respond. So the body is not the link factor. 
                Is it the mind which is a giant storehouse? This is a possibility but alas the mind is not available in deep sleep and so it cannot report on the experience at that time. 
                So there is an unseen Witness who has noted my waking experiences, my dream projections and deep sleep rest, who has observed my experiences which allows me to say on waking up, ' I slept like a log.'
                The Witness, the Presence is my own Self that pervades the creation, connects me with every name and form as a string holds a tightly beaded strand of pearls, invisible yet undeniable. The Witness of Time, Witness of my day and nights, is the Presence, which is undiminished by time, unchanged in situations and the nature of Bliss. 
               Peace and Joy that I yearn is already mine yet the ignoramus that I am, I try to create yet another reality from the mirages that I chase. Surely this will lead to no Bliss but unhappiness. I now have another purpose, that is to avoid being unhappy. Not being unhappy is not happiness but I helplessly compromise building up the myth about happiness which I pass off when not being unhappy and over time and practice this story has been perpetuated.
               How do I obtain the Bliss that is unending? Only by knowing that I am the Bliss, the Self , The Eternal Presence, with conviction born of the strength of the Knowledge, by surrender arising out of melting with the Totality the Oneness and by offering my actions to Eshwara the one name for all names and forms. By renouncing the result of my actions I work without personal motive, through surrender I learn to accept everything is His and I a mere instrument; the ego is used as yet another instrument and not the master. And unwavering knowledge anchors me to the Self and with the confidence of unwavering Bliss and Joy, Freedom is mine.