Looking at our lives..at the majority of us at least, its so funny not to miss the little fears and frustrations, anguishes and pains, our own little concepts of this life we live, our joys, pleasures, sorrows, inhibitions...all of these things. A little thing is made a big issue. We tend to complicate things a lot, and often blow them out of proportions. When in pain, we seek sympathy than support; when in joy, we forget everyone and become very selfish. Yes, we do say we are simply humans and these things are but instinctual to us. But is that really so? I mean, lets ponder over this bit a little more. Do we actually try changing ourselves for the better unless circumstances force us to? Do we accept our incapacities and incapabilities instead of hiding them? Why do we always tend to hide behind this mask of what we are not whenver forced by a situation to fall and accept defeat?

Life should be a pursuit of perfection, not of happiness; because perfect happiness comes only with perfect knowledge, the knowledge of self, of reality, of life...and perfect knowledge comes only when we manage to perfect ourself. Only when we become successful in taming the wild and drunken monkey of our mind do we ever encounter pure happiness. One should be able to distinguish between happiness and pleasures. That which lasts only for a short period of time is pleasure...its like the drops of water in an ocean which evaporate to fall from the heavens as rain only to vanish again but still giving joy to the innocent life for a while. Happiness, however, is eternal, like that vast ocean...ever so fathomless, ever so mysterious, ever so pure!

Most of our lives are spent hankering and craving for happiness. Even a little joy of a moment makes us feel we are happy when we are no more than pleased! We tend to believe that the road to happiness is contention of soul and that in order to be happy, we need to look beyond our very self. Staring happiness in its eyes though, we realize that this is wrong. Happiness arises only when we are at peace with ourself and to be at peace in such a way, we first need to confront our darker side. Shying away from this other half only makes things worse. Letting go of our inhibitions and accepting what we really and truly are, we become the divine force which sustains life. Becoming this force, we find peace and knowledge. With this comes the virtue of happiness. We first need to conquer our frail and timid half which on exposing itself looks very scary at first sight, but later we realize that it is just what we think it is and not what it really is!

The only way to attain eternal bliss and happiness is thus, to first become at peace with ourself. 'The Middle Way' teaches us how to attain this equilibrium. Excess of anything is wrong. Just as joy is followed by sorrow and sorrow by joy, we need to work our way through this minefield of opposites to reach the end, which we then understand is just the beginning. Instead of obstructing the flow of life, we should learn to flow with it. Life is not just a haphazard arrangement of incidents, it is an intricately designed facade which has a very deep and implicit meaning, only waiting to be unveiled.