The Illusion of Attachment: Finding True Joy Beyond Happiness

A man came by the river banks after taking a bath in the river. Suddenly, he cried out loud, and hearing it, a crowd gathered around. “What has happened?” they asked. The man said, “My stick has been washed away in the river.” At once, another man interrupted and said, “But when you came here, you did not have a stick in your hand. How, then, could it be washed away?” The man replied, “Brother, it is true that I did not come with a stick. But a stick was floating in the river toward me. I caught hold of it, and for a moment it was in my hand. The very next moment it slipped away and went away.”

How simple it is to be happy—and even simpler to be unhappy. Happiness arises by claiming what is not truly ours, and human suffering follows when it is lost. In this narrow confinement, life remains captive. Man is not only a prisoner of the material world; he is also a prisoner of his conceptual world. He clings not only to physical objects, but also to ideas, deepening his spiritual attachment.

The world is like a flowing stream in which there is neither pleasure nor pain. Happiness and sorrow are not in the stream itself; they are caught by the intellect and the hyperactive mind. What is considered happiness often turns into misery, and what is seen as misery sometimes leads to happiness. In this way, life moves like a grain caught between two grinding stones. The person remains in the middle, yet never truly experiences the beauty of being in the middle, the essence of true awareness.

Happiness and sorrow are merely passing sensations. True spiritual joy is beyond both. Joy is flow; happiness and sorrow are the clutches of the ego. To flow in the Atma Ganga is to become the Ganga Sagar itself. Then one is swept away in boundless bliss and spiritual awakening—without grasping, without resistance, without desire. From the Diary of Suvvidhi