It requires great courage to embark upon the path of self-discovery, because you will be faced with having to question things which you and perhaps everyone around you have accepted as undeniable truth. The search for true happiness brings into question something that many of us hold to be a fact – the idea that sensually pleasurable experiences are the same as happiness. This is not true. Sensual Pleasure does not equal Happiness. They are two different things. It is very refreshing to hear someone like Russell Brand (who totally gets it) speak to this point – https://youtu.be/TgVKpS3RH_I?t=45
So what is the Yoga perspective (spiritual perspective)
- I am a spiritual being temporarily residing within a material body.
- Fulfilling the desires of my senses and mind does not fulfill “me”.
- Sensual pleasure (like sensual pain) has a beginning, and must therefore also have an end. I cannot enjoy any material experience without limit or forever. It all ends.
- Sensual enjoyment (a material experience) does not “touch” me – the spiritual being.
- Being spiritual by nature I need spiritual “food” or “nutrition”.
When I live in harmony with my true nature, then I will experience happiness.
Before giving up this present body, if one is able to tolerate the urges of the material senses and check the force of desire and anger, he is well situated and is happy in this world. Bhagavad-gītā 5.23
A person who is not disturbed by the incessant flow of desires—that enter like rivers into the ocean, which is ever being filled but is always still—can alone achieve peace, and not the man who strives to satisfy such desires. – Bhagavad-gītā 2.70
One whose happiness is within, who is active and rejoices within, and whose aim is inward is actually the perfect mystic. He is liberated in the Supreme, and ultimately he attains the Supreme. Bhagavad-gītā 5.24
