How can we be happy?

We are all searching for comfort and peace of mind, for peace, tranquility, joy and pleasure, which are words summed up in one word: “happiness.”

Happiness, the word that puzzled philosophers, thinkers, mystics, poets and artists, and it is the first goal in the life of every human being, as the rich seek it through money, and the lover seeks it in love, and great scientists search for it in innovation and achievement, and thinkers and philosophers search for it with contemplation and reflection, and a golden poet searches About her in the flying imagination, and his thought was measured in Laila’s tent, and Al-Mutanabbi saw her with Saif Al-Dawla, the one who saw her in cabarets, the other who asked for her in cocaine, and a man who threw himself into the depths of the river by suicide, searching for her in the corners of death.

All of them did not find true happiness, as Qais came out of the tent insane, and Al-Mutanabbi ended in constant anxiety and continuous departure that ended with him to his tragic fate on the bank of a river, and the two lovers who met one dreamy evening around a table on the bank of a small river and felt a state of pure Sufi love, they met Then, they went to the same place, to relive the moment that was years ago in the first meeting, and when they arrived, they found the place, the table, the river and the evening, but the moment was not there.

As for Buddhist monks, they spend long decades in journeys between mountains and caves searching for “nirvana” and then write about reaching the stage they have reached by deep meditation, where spiritual salvation and psychological peace are in dark caves, and among cold lakes in unbearable winter seasons, and they give us a summary Experiments that lasted for decades in order to reach a fleeting moment that does not last.

Once I asked a friend who keeps working for long periods of time about his goal, and he said to be happy, I said how? He said that I leave work and rest, and another was his happiness to find a job to fill his pocket and his time and rest, and the single wants to get married to rest, and the married wants to get rid and rest, and the director of the board of directors hints at a smile on the face of the cleaner in his company, and she is joking with her companion and wants to steal her facial features He is full of joy, while she sees the happiest people with his luxury cars and palaces scattered in the countryside and remote islands, and his summer trips with his private plane to magical places that the cleaner only sees in the cinema after large productive operations, before the worker is surprised by the news of the suicide of the "happy" businessman.

Hitler and Mussolini and the new versions we see of them today, all saw their happiness in absolute power, the power whose love rises in the bones, and they got the power they wanted, but Nazism and fascism were defeated after causing the greatest disaster in the history of the world, Hitler committed suicide and Mussolini was executed.

The happiness that the poet finds when completing the poem, the artist with the painting, the lover with the lover, the merchant with the billion, and the politician with the power are all temporary “happiness” after which the owner discovers that it was a fleeting moment of ecstasy on a bed of illusion

The happiness that the poet obtains upon completing the poem, the artist after completing his painting, the author after completing the book, and the lover the moment he meets his lover, which the merchant feels when the billion is completed, and the politician feels it the moment he reaches power, are all temporary “happiness” after which the owner discovers It was a fleeting moment of ecstasy that passed on a bed of illusion, followed by some pain and boredom and a search for another source of happiness, to start a new journey in search of a different poem, another woman, a new billion, or a greater position, and this situation is the biggest driver of human history, but it is not The true happiness that we were born with and within us a great desire for it, and a feeling that it is hidden for us in some place or time, or a poem, or pleasure, or power, or wealth. The mistake was made, and we took to it the path that does not lead to it, and even worse than that, we went looking for it far away, and it is within reach.The farther we go in search, the farther we go from it, just like that Andalusian shepherd who went searching for his treasure across the Sahara Desert in Africa, until he reached the pyramids, not to find the treasure, but to find a map indicating that that treasure is in the place where the shepherd who started Once again the journey back to the treasure that may have been hidden in the fact that a simple shepherd turned into a great alchemist, according to Paulo Coelho.

The discussion goes on about happiness, and the Muslim mystics tell us about the “maqam of nearness,” where happiness is eternal and complete intimacy, and it is the station that they reach after stages of spiritual journey between the levels of “renunciation, sweetening, and arrival” where the happiness of reaching the beloved and the pleasure of being close to the Beloved removes the mystic from the world of perishability. It annihilates in the world of survival, and here all the limbs of the body are silenced and the springs of happiness explode from the soul that rose above the desires and whims of the body, where the knowledge of God after that is equal to the vicissitudes of time and “he is pleased with grace as pleased with calamity” according to the phrase Rabaa Al-Adawiya, or according to the description of Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud In his saying that “happiness may be in leaving things and not obtaining them,” which is happiness that thirst can bring to a fasting person, just as water brings it at the moment of breaking the fast.

The password here is “love,” which gives meaning to everything, and without it music becomes noise, dancing madness, and worship a burden, according to Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, who built his theory of religion, morals and work on love in his striking reference “many ways lead to God, the shortest of which is the path of love.” ».

The gnostics saw happiness in faith that establishes a state of balance between opposite dualities: between rights and duties, the world and the other, the ego and the other, water and thirst, desire and chastity, the individual and society, wealth and spending, power and justice, whereby a person feels comfortable conscience and connection to a higher purpose in life. Faith gives him a positive energy that makes him more happy, patient, contented and at peace.

Happiness, then, is a feeling that emanates from inner radiance at a time when we are trying to search for it in the external world, and it is the inner radiance that generates mental or spiritual happiness, in contrast to the sensual or physical pleasure that external influences bring us, which we think of as happiness, and we search for it in the account Banking, physical encounter, or authoritarian control, which are factors that, when imbalances, lead to boundless unhappiness.

Hence the “people of the path” believe that in order to be happy, we must transfer attention from the outside to the inside, and take more care in re-arranging our inner world in the crowd of this destructive chaos in the outside world, and allowing the heart to see with the vision of the eye, because if the vision of the eye is Sensual can bring fleeting pleasure. Seeing the heart spiritual can bring longer happiness, because “seeing the eye is a vision… seeing the heart is a meeting,” as the imam of the two lovers, Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, said.

As the “vision” expands, the phrase narrows, according to Al-Nafiri, and the heart enters the stage of silence, where there is no ability to describe the heaven that the heart carries in the chest, and with it killing, imprisonment, or exile from the homelands does not harm.