Seeking Happiness: Try to Get What We Want or Practice Giving Up Desires?

A talk by the Warden of Shanti Sadan leading into a meditation session.

As enquirers into the highest human potentialities, we may feel that we are being presented with a choice: whether, in the pursuit of happiness, it is best to whole-heartedly try to get what we want, or to practise giving up desires, which seems to be the example set by some of the great teachers of humanity. Let us consider this question from the non-dual perspective.

The first thing to be clear about is that happiness is the goal. We are meant to be happy. To be a really happy person is a great, and perhaps quite rare, human achievement. Our pursuit of happiness is sometimes inhibited by fear of failure. But there are good reasons why we can and should be truly ambitious when it comes to happiness. And in this the outcome is very much in our own hands.