TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
The three keys to joy of life
Swami Gnantej
Change Size
Swami Gnantej. JP/Aruna Harjani
'Everyone is in search of happiness, starting from our childhoods. Music, mantra and meditation are all you need to be happy.'
Those are the words of spiritual guru Swami Gnantej, who recently conducted a workshop in Jakarta on how to achieve a peaceful kind of happiness.
Gnantej was invited by the Art of Living Indonesia to raise funds for children's education in Klender, East Jakarta. Indian spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar established the Art of Living Foundation in 1981. The organization has a presence in 152 countries, reaching out to 370 million people worldwide.
An engineer by profession, Gnantej got his calling ' to be under the tutelage of Shankar, when he was working in one of the most reputed software firms in India.
During the workshop, he revealed how people continuously looked for objects to make them happy ' but once they attained the desired object, they started looking for yet another to make them happy.
'When we search for happiness outside ourselves, we will never find it because true happiness can be found only within,' he says.
'People work hard to accumulate material goods, but these are the very things that will give them either short-lived happiness or turn into the cause of their misery.'
Gnantej noted there are three dimensions people have to be aware of ' the first is the body, which people become aware of when they suffer aches and pains; and the second is breath, which people are aware of only when they pant.
'The third is the mind, which we remain unaware of if we do not live in the moment,' he says.
For the body to be healthy and strong, people have to exercise while mental health is gained through relaxation.
He said it was normal for people to worry and create stress in their minds about what might happen in a given situation, but they could choose to change this.
As a human being, he said it was important for people to have some idea about how the mind works.
He said the mind's flow of thoughts can be classified into five aspects ' pramana, where the mind is occupied in the activity of judging and analyzing; viparyaya, when it cannot perceive the moment correctly; vkalpa, where the mind goes into a fantasy; buddhi, when its holding on to past memories; and sleep mode.
'If the mind is in any of the above modes, it will not be able to perceive completely,' he says.
But the three ' music, mantra and meditation ' could help bring people's mind back to the moment, he says.
'In music, singing, especially in a group, and with a smile, is an expression of inner happiness and this helps us release pent-up emotions,' he explained.
He then asked participants to recall how happy they were singing in school as children and how as adults they forgot about the joys of singing.
Chanting mantras, he added, could spare the mind of negative and worrisome thoughts and also eased tension.
'The secret of the mantra is not how one says or pronounces the words. It is the feeling of intense devotion with which you chant that matters. Mantras are words used to show gratitude and humility. So speak good words all the time.'
The last factor of happiness 'meditation ' is food for the soul, he said. 'If there is dirt on your clothes you wash them; similarly, if there is stress on the mind, you cleanse it with meditation,' he says.
