The Great Happiness Hunt: Why We Keep Waking Up Disappointed
Have you ever noticed how refreshed and content you feel after a good night's sleep, only to find yourself chasing happiness again the moment you're fully awake? It's like happiness plays hide and seek with us – showing up uninvited in our dreams and then vanishing faster than free pizza at a college dorm. This curious phenomenon has puzzled humanity for millennia, and Hindu scriptures offer profound insights into this eternal game of happiness tag.
The Blissful Void: Understanding Deep Sleep Happiness
According to Hindu teachings, deep sleep represents one of the three fundamental states of consciousness. During this phase, we experience what the ancient texts call "sushupti" – a state where the mind temporarily ceases its endless chatter, and we glimpse something remarkably peaceful. It's like finally getting your noisy neighbors to turn off their music, except the noisy neighbor is your own mind.
In deep sleep, there's no anxiety about tomorrow's presentation, no regret about yesterday's awkward conversation, and no mental shopping list running on repeat. The ego, that demanding character who usually hogs the spotlight, takes a well-deserved intermission. What remains is pure awareness – a happiness that needs no external validation, no Instagram likes, and certainly no morning coffee to maintain itself.
The Upanishads describe this state as a temporary return to our true nature. It's not that happiness is absent in deep sleep; rather, it's the only thing present. The absence of mental noise allows us to experience the contentment that was always there, buried under layers of thoughts, worries, and endless mental calculations about whether we left the stove on.
The Waking World's Happiness Carousel
Then comes the harsh morning alarm, and suddenly we're back in the world of seeking. Waking state happiness operates on an entirely different principle – it's conditional, temporary, and exhaustingly high-maintenance. Like a needy friend who constantly requires attention, waking happiness demands external stimuli to survive.
We find joy in achieving goals, acquiring possessions, forming relationships, and experiencing pleasures. Each moment of satisfaction feels genuine and fulfilling, yet it carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. The promotion we worked so hard for becomes routine within months. The gadget we saved for loses its shine after a few weeks. Even the most delicious meal eventually ends, leaving us planning the next one.
This isn't a design flaw in human nature; it's a feature that Hindu philosophy explains through the concept of "maya" – the cosmic illusion that makes us believe happiness comes from outside ourselves. It's like being convinced that the sun rises because we opened our curtains, when in reality, the sun was shining all along.
The Fundamental Paradox
Here lies the great paradox that Hindu sages have contemplated for thousands of years: we experience effortless happiness when we're unconscious and struggle to maintain it when we're awake. It's as if consciousness comes with a built-in happiness tax that we're constantly trying to avoid paying.
The scriptures suggest that both states – deep sleep and waking life – point to the same underlying truth. In deep sleep, we accidentally stumble upon our natural state of contentment by temporarily abandoning the pursuit of happiness. In waking life, we exhaust ourselves chasing the very thing we effortlessly possessed just hours before.
This creates what could be called the "happiness hamster wheel" – an endless cycle where we wake up, lose our natural contentment, spend the day trying to recapture it through external means, fail to find lasting satisfaction, go to sleep, briefly rediscover it, and repeat the process ad infinitum.
The Three States and the Fourth
Hindu philosophy identifies three states of consciousness: waking (jagrat), dreaming (swapna), and deep sleep (sushupti). But here's where it gets interesting – these traditions also speak of a fourth state called "turiya," which is not really a state at all but the unchanging awareness that witnesses all three states.
This fourth "state" is like the movie screen that remains unaffected whether a comedy, tragedy, or horror film is playing. The screen doesn't become funny, sad, or scary; it simply provides the backdrop for all experiences. Similarly, our true nature remains constant and inherently blissful, regardless of whether we're awake and struggling or asleep and peaceful.
The Problem with Happiness Seeking
The fundamental problem isn't that we seek happiness – it's that we seek it in the wrong place. Hindu teachings compare this to a person who has lost their keys under a streetlight and searches there not because that's where they dropped them, but because that's where the light is brightest.
We look for happiness in achievements, relationships, possessions, and experiences because these are the "well-lit" areas of our awareness. Meanwhile, the happiness we seek is like those keys – it's actually in the darkness of our unconscious knowledge, waiting to be discovered not through seeking but through stopping the search.
The great irony is that the harder we chase happiness, the more it eludes us. It's like trying to catch your own shadow – the faster you run, the faster it moves away. This doesn't mean we should become passive or stop engaging with life, but rather that we should understand the difference between enjoying experiences and depending on them for our wellbeing.
The Solution: Recognizing What Never Changes
Hindu scriptures offer a radical solution: instead of trying to extend waking happiness or recreate sleep happiness, recognize the awareness that remains constant through all states. This awareness is what the Vedanta calls "sat-chit-ananda" – existence, consciousness, and bliss combined.
The practice involves learning to identify with this unchanging awareness rather than with the temporary experiences that come and go. It's like learning to be the sky instead of the clouds – clouds come and go, bringing storms and sunshine, but the sky remains eternally unaffected.
This doesn't mean becoming emotionless or indifferent to life's ups and downs. Rather, it means finding a stable foundation of contentment that doesn't depend on external circumstances. From this foundation, we can fully engage with life's experiences without being at their mercy.
Modern Life Applications
In our contemporary world, this ancient wisdom offers practical guidance. Instead of constantly trying to optimize our happiness through productivity hacks, lifestyle changes, or retail therapy, we can learn to access the contentment that's already available.
This might mean taking regular breaks from mental activity through meditation, spending time in nature, or simply allowing ourselves moments of purposeless existence. It's about recognizing that sometimes the most productive thing we can do is absolutely nothing – just like we do in deep sleep.
The goal isn't to sleep through life but to bring the effortless contentment of deep sleep into our waking hours. This creates a life where happiness isn't something we're always chasing but something we're always already experiencing, regardless of external circumstances.
The Eternal Teaching
The comparison between sleep happiness and waking happiness reveals a timeless truth: the happiness we seek is not something we need to acquire but something we need to stop covering up. Like the sun that shines even when hidden by clouds, our essential nature remains blissful even when obscured by mental activity.
This understanding transforms our relationship with both states. Sleep becomes not an escape from life but a reminder of our true nature. Waking life becomes not a struggle to find happiness but an opportunity to recognize the happiness that was never really lost – only temporarily forgotten in the excitement of being awake.
The ancient sages weren't asking us to choose between sleep and waking life, but to find what remains constant in both – the awareness that needs no external validation to be complete, content, and eternally at peace.