INNER HAPPINESS

Before getting in to inner happiness let us get in to the term ego. Contrary to popular assumption ego is not a fixed one. It varies from time to time and situation to situation. For ex. one will not talk nicely and friendly with his subordinates and we call it power distance. but when things have to be done same person will talk nicely and without any power distance with the same person. there are numerous examples to show the changing nature of ego. Ego comes when you identify yourself with a particular nature which makes you entangled with that particular role with all your mind . sometimes you identify yourself as boss some times as father sometimes as husband and so on. when that happens you believe you are happy but at the end of the situation you invariably left with a feeling that something,  what you wanted out of that situation is not fulfilled. Though you are not able to identify that missing something. This is the feeling which drives people to set the next goal again and again which leads them to more entanglement towards the role which in turn results in more and more dissatisfaction.

Different roles are present and you are expected to don those roles seamlessly all the time.We can call the roles as layers also.

Do you remember , no matter how good children are in their studies parents want more and more. No matter how good you are your boss wants more and more. No matter how considerate you are your wife feels some thing more could have been done. the list is endless. when such feeling is there how can there be happiness. One might get momentary satisfaction when the goals are met but the moment the goals are met you fix up another goal and go towards it. This is not a fault on your side. because this is the nature of Ego.

Now comes the question of inner happiness. Though there is no unit in measuring the inner happiness the question is not how much inner happiness you get. because this is unvarying. A kind of fixed quantity. You can experience that when you don't identify yourself with the role you take up and don't get entangled with the situation. Sounds impossible to do? actually you do that very often but without awareness. One small example is when you buy an ice-cream to your kid. when the kid enjoys his ice-cream, if you notice you have not set any goal to yourself. You don't decide or expect how much ice-cream your kid eats, how much he enjoys the taste etc etc. so even though you are fully involved in the situation and does what is required by you ( buying the ice-cream etc.) you have not entangled in to the situation and the happiness you experience at those moments are fundamentally different in nature. Hope I bring out the difference.

In the movie example you have mentioned, Sujatha has a goal of feeding her family she entangles herself so deeply in to the role of bread winner for the family that when situation arises for another mouth to feed, it gives her anger rather than the intellect to plan for the additional mouth to feed. It means that by assuming the role of bread winner and identifying herself totally in that role she acquire herself a type of ego ( Ego need not always be associated with authoritarianism) the satisfaction of achieving her goal of feeding the family gets shattered when additional member joins the family and this satisfaction is what many people assume as inner happiness and say that inner happiness is an unsustainable  issue.

To conclude,

Inner happiness is not the same as satisfaction of achieving a goal(what ever the goal it may be). 

There are two ways of achieving the Inner happiness.

1. Detach yourself from everything. ( we call the people who does this kind of practice as Sanyasi) and when they achieve their inner happiness totally we call that he has gone in to samathi.

2. Be a so called normal person with 100% involvement in what ever you do in life ( could be as simple as breathing or as complicated as handling people as head of organisation) but do not identify yourself with the role you are assuming . Always have an awareness that you are not the role you are acting. with this kind of attitude you will always appreciate yourself not about the role you assumed but about the effectiveness with which you are doing the role. When this happens the satisfaction becomes constant and thus transforms itself to happiness. This happiness is what we term as inner happiness.Typical example is an ideal doctor. He may not have fancy degrees, he may not be as rich as his peers. But he will be a happy man and many times the people interacting with him feel the happiness though they may not be able to identify what it is. people then name him as "kai rasi doctor". Actually what he does is he acts the role of doctor with full involvement with out entangling himself into the role itself and derives his satisfaction from the effectiveness with which he acted the role and thus experience his inner happiness.

I trust I expressed my perceptions correctly.