Create Happiness Now

This month, DAAJI recommends three happiness habits. He also shares wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita, and from modern writers, to inspire us with confidence and help us on our way toward lasting happiness.

- By DAAJI

Santiago the shepherd boy is the main character in Paulo Coelho's bestseller, The Alchemist. Santiago has a recurring dream of treasure, and when a gypsy fortune teller interprets this dream for him, he sets out for Egypt to find the treasure. On the way, he is robbed, does petty jobs, befriends an Englishman, loves an Arab girl, fails in love, finds a master, and finally reaches the pyramids and starts digging. That's when Santiago realizes that the treasure he was seeking all along was not in Egypt, but back home in the ruined village church where he first had the dream.

Santiago's story strikes a chord in our hearts. Often, in the pursuit of our goals, we jump through hoops and lunge at mirages. Sometimes, along the way, we realize that what we truly seek is in fact within us.

I had my Santiago moment in the summer of April 1981. Babuji, my guru, visited Ahmedabad for a few days. Hundreds of people from nearby towns and villages joined Babuji in meditation, and on the last day of his visit he shared a parting message, a couplet written in Urdu:

Raahein talab mein aise

bekhabar ho gaye,

manzil pe aake manzil ko

dhoondhete hain.”

“We are so preoccupied with the

journey that,

even after reaching the

destination, unaware,

we continue searching for it.

In those simple lines, Babuji reminded us that what we seek is already within us. Those words were so reassuring, and I was in such bliss, that if it had been my last day I would have gone dancing all the way up.