“Life is as it is, despite our protests.” Sharon Salzberg
Are you happy? The word “happiness” is derived from a root word that means “by chance” or “an occurrence”. This implies that happiness is a surprise, an unexpected pleasure, a fleeting feeling. Our culture encourages us to be happy; experiencing negative emotions is frequently seen as a personal deficit, a kind of mental quirk that needs to be fixed. Westerners see happiness as a permanent state that, with the right attitude, can be attained and held on to. But, as its root word implies, happiness is transient—it fades just as quickly as it appears. The irony is that the more we pursue happiness, the more miserable we become.
The second Niyama, Santosha, teaches us that true satisfaction comes from contentment, which is experienced as a deep sense of calm that grows with an attitude of acceptance. It differs from the fleeting sense of pleasure that is sparked when we reach a goal, hit a target, or get what we want. Unlike the highs that are associated with pleasure, contentment has a solid feel to it, a sense of stability that offers refuge from the chaos and unpredictability of life. Santosha runs counter to the striving that is part of our success-driven culture. From a very early age we are encouraged to focus on actions that prepare us for the future; consequently, many of us spend a great deal of our lives getting ready for the next thing. Santosha reminds us that we can never find long lasting satisfaction when we seek external rewards. Contentment is found through an openness to our internal world, which we experience only in the moment.
Contentment blossoms in the presence of gratitude. Santosha requires a special kind of gratitude, one that goes beyond simply counting our blessings and being thankful. It is a gratitude that arises from a deep sense of appreciation for what we have received, not what we have, but what is offered in the present moment. The gratitude of Santosha is somewhat fragile—it only blooms in the present when our attention turns away from our fantasies about the future and our narratives of the past. When we operate from a calm center, we cultivate a sense of wonder and curiosity, sometimes even awe, at what emerges in the moment. The greatest gifts we receive come when we are simply noticing. I am reminded of a kayak trip my family took one afternoon in Maine. We were in the final stretch of a long, hard paddle so all of us were focused on getting to shore. We noticed a large group of harbor seals swimming close to our kayaks, which isn’t unusual in Maine, but these seals turned and headed for our kayaks. We all stopped paddling and sat in silence, each of us totally absorbed in watching them swim alongside our kayaks, floating on their backs, staring at us as we stared at them. I don’t remember much about that trip except for that brief moment. Many years have passed since that kayak trip, but I am forever grateful for their visit.
Some mistakenly believe that controlling feelings is a requirement of Santosha. How can we create a calm center when our emotions are bubbling around inside of us? But herein lies the paradox of Santosha: the more requirements we place on it, the more it will elude us. We imagine contentment to be a serene state, one in which we are free of the pull of emotions that can easily get us spun up and create all sorts of drama. But the paradox of Santosha teaches us that the more illusions we have about what contentment should look like, the more discontented we become.
The human mind has given us an extraordinary advantage in its ability to plan, make tools, communicate, and problem solve. Look around your surroundings and you’ll most likely see a wide array of items that exist due to the incredible capacity of the human mind. Our extensive cognitive capacities enable us to shape our environment so that we can get what we need to live comfortably. But we mistakenly believe that, since these cognitive abilities are effective in shaping our material world, they must be equally capable at controlling our internal world as well. The truth is they do not. The world of our subjective thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories, and urges works differently from that of the external environment. Santosha tells us that we struggle when we try to apply cognitive processes such as analyzing, problem solving, and planning in an effort to control our thoughts and emotions, essentially trying to “fix” our internal world. The truth is we have much less control over our internal processes than we would like to believe.
I have heard it said that contentment is like holding a butterfly—it must be held with a light touch, otherwise it will be crushed. Santosha tells us that each moment arrives complete—there is nothing else it should or will be. That means whether we are angry, happy, sad, excited, or bored, we must greet and accept all the thoughts, emotions, and sensations that arise in the moment. Some mystics regard all emotions as our teachers that arrive to instruct us about life. Can we relax into the moment and allow it to unfold without trying to change it? What would you learn if you paid attention to the lessons of your emotions?
Freedom and happiness get tangled up in our consumer culture. Advertising is pervasive and intrusive, making it hard to know if we are selecting a product or if the product is selecting us. And the subtle message of many marketing campaigns is that the product will give us some measure of freedom which will then increase our happiness quotient, or vice versa. But true satisfaction—contentment—comes when we pursue goals that resonate with what we value. Santosha does not require us to eliminate all earthly desires. It reminds us that true satisfaction comes when we reduce our wants, focusing only on those things which bring meaning to our lives.
The writer Arthur C. Brooks proposes that contentment can be measured with a “satisfaction equation”, in which satisfaction equals what we have divided by what we want. Using this equation, our brains naturally focus on the numerator, the “haves”. But true freedom comes when we turn our attention to the denominator, our “wants”. You don’t always have control over what you have, but you can control what you want. Brooks suggests that, rather than cleaning out our closets and garages, getting rid of our “haves”, we may find more lasting satisfaction by digging through our desires, examining our wants to see if they reflect what we value. What would happen to your satisfaction quotient if you applied this equation to your life?
Santosha does not call for a life of austerity. Rather, it guides us to exercise our freedom of choice wisely, selecting only those goals that will make our lives richer. It reminds us that the things we value in life come with a whole range of feelings, both good and bad. To be content, to find that deep lasting sense of satisfaction, we need to accept whatever arises in the moment to receive what life has to offer us, keeping an open hand with a light touch. The practice of Santosha reminds us that it is frequently our most important “wants” that create the greatest turmoil in life, but choosing to stay centered and calm, we will receive the many gifts they offer in our lives. What might you receive if you opened yourself to the moment?
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