ChinMudra

Where does happiness come from?. Does it come from objects, people, relations, realization of dreams, peace of mind or even spiritual endeavor ?. let us try to find it out?. All through life we pursue happiness either directly or indirectly. Any effort or karma is directed towards that only. The samsarin's life is full of artha, kama,dharma pursuit . We are told by experienced old people that all of your pursuit is futile . One day you will discover that these things never will give you any more than what you have currently. Any pursuit of this sort has three basic problems

1) Dukha misritham or mixed with sadness
You have always seen this. Along comes some good news, but there is catch. In order to obtain something you will have to forego something. Along with some success some failure also comes. Along with some good salary comes you will have to separate from your family and so on. All goodness is mixed with hidden sadness. When you get money , health declines and so on.
2) Apoornathvam or lack of completeness
All good results are always not fully satisfactory for us. I get a promotion , but i always wish i got a salary hike also. So my position is better  in society however the financial position stays bad. I get some inherited land , but that cannot be used for constructing a house , unless i invest in it . I get a house, but i have to pay loans and so on.
3) Bandhatvam or lack of freedom
The moment i get used to good things , my freedom also seems to be tied with it. Once i get used to these toys of life i seemed to be addicted to it. I cannot find ways of being free and happy at the same time.

Why can't happiness be free from all these defects ?. Vedanta tells us it is not possible to obtain happiness as you expect from any of these things however hard you try. A failure is guaranteed.
That is the whole idea of spirituality. To turn away from wordly pursuits since it doesn't meet the requirements. The idea of vairagyam or dispassion is the recognition of this imperfection in samsara. Once you understand this, you stop complaining about life situations and turn away from them all.

Now you might ask "since there is no happiness in things should i just live sadly hereafter ?"
The answer is no. Only thing is try to understand the source of happiness. Where does this happiness come from ?. How can we reach for it ?. How can i keep it forever . This should be the pursuit.

Note one important thing. Whatever gives us happiness we try to keep it with ourselves. Whatever we don't like we would let it go. Nothing unusual . Common sense. What is that you never let go whatever be the provocation ?. The short answer is YOU. So the source of happiness is YOU. It is something that you can never let go also !!!. So when you searched for wordly things, you were actually searching for YOU .

When i pursue a career in life or long for money to give me security , how can i say that i was searching for me?. The answer is subtle. The answer is to see what happens when you get something you want. When you get something you want , you come in contact with YOU for the first time. There is a forgetfulness about YOU when you search for things in life , which briefly is over when you get what you want. When the search is over , you touch your infinitude. Your search is over because you are now limitless and not wanting anything at least temporarily.That is why you feel happy on obtaining things in life. However you never looked at why you were happy . You assumed that money or property gave you the happiness.

The body and mind being upadhis hide the real you  as we saw in the last post. This is why you are always seeking outside. Since you are never in touch with yourselves , you are a longing person, a samsari a seeker ..Pursuing your desires is nothing but a seeking of yourself in the outside world which is why you fail.

So what is the solution?. Turn away from all pursuits and embrace the reality that is you. In yoga there is a beautiful mudra. It is called the chin mudra. The thumb signifies the source of happiness a source of infinitude and the forefinger the jiva . In chin mudra, the thumb touches the forefinger. As the forefinger turns away from all the other three fingers it embraces the reality. The three fingers other than the forefinger symbolizes the three states of the body  namely the gross, subtle and the casual or the wake, dream and sleep. Moving away from material pursuits and embracing the source of happiness which is always with you and for which you have to do zero effort is the only simple idea in spiritual life.
   
AcAryendraM kara-kalita-cin-mudram-Ananda-rUpaM

as told in the Dakshina moorthi sthothram . The guru is always at peace without requiring anything or anybody. If people are around him he is peaceful. When they leave also he is the same. There are no requirements as he in his atma swarupa always .

One of the differences in spiritual life is that there are no requirements. By definition you are always the source of happiness and it is not pursuing anything that you get happiness, but in abandoning the pursuit that you come in touch with infinitude. Even spiritual seeking is an aberration.Spiritual knowledge also is insufficient to touch the infinitude as it just creates waves in our mind.  As they say in Zen, it is not in letting go but not in grasping anything that it can be realized.

Upadhis

Because they are not mutually contradictory action can not eliminate ignorance. Only knowledge destroys ignorance just as darkness is dispelled by light. 
                                                                                                Atma Bodha" Sankaracharya 

We have been discussing a lot about Atma and anatma. Atma is the real subject while the anatma is any object other than the subject. We have tried to establish that the ego is not a subject at all or only anatma. It is nothing but an imaginary construct. So we had said there is no doer or experiencer  in reality. It is good to understand why this happens. The real self is hidden by a superposition of anatma.
We can understand this as follows. If something is hidden by something else then there are two effects of this process. The hidden thing is never experienced . Secondly whatever is hiding it becomes or transfers some attributes to the hidden thing. The body-mind hides the atma and thereby making it unknown. Secondly the mind or a vritti in it becomes or assumes the place of the atma or the subject.Whatever hides something else and creates a false sense of the hidden thing is called a upadhi. The body and mind through their sensory perceptions and thought processes create the upadhi on the atma. In short because of this covering effect, the upadhis seems to us like the real self or atma.
How can we understand a upadhi?. There are three things that should happen.
1) The upadhi hides the real thing
2) The upadhi assumes the identity of the real thing by transferring its attributes.
3) The upadhi is always a false superposition.

Let us understand this with an example. If we take a crystal which is white and keep it near a flower which is red, we can see a red hinge on the crystal. Now we can say the flower is an upadhi as it transfers its attributes namely color to the crystal which is colorless. This superposition is false as the crystal is not actually red. If we remove the flower the crystal always remains white. So the white color or purity of the crystal is hidden by the flower. The transfer of color is false as it is only a temporary superposition.
If we sit on a dirty floor , the mud can get into your dress. The dirtiness of the floor has been transferred to your dress. However this transfer is real . As you have to clean your dress to remove the color. So karma is required to remove the dirt. Thus it doesn't satisfy the third aspect of upadhi. So dirt is not an upadhi, while the flower is a upadhi because the color is not actually transferred it is only a visual effect.
So the power of upadhi is to veil the reality and impose upon it a false reality. This is called adhyasa. The illusion created out of adhyasa are called avarana shakti and vikshepa shakti.
In common day parlance we can see this in many levels. The gross body's attributes are superimposed on the subject. Thus i would say "I am fat" or "I am thin". The body's attributes are now superimposed on the pure subject.We now know that the pure subject is neither fat nor thin and it has no attributes at all. The same applies to the statement "I am worried" or " I am happy". The state of the mind is transferred to the subject.
If you look at the dream state and deep sleep state , again the same superposition works. In the dream the dream subject replaces our atman and we feel miserable or happy based on that . On waking we feel that this was a false superposition. Similarly the deep sleep state of bliss is also a false superposition on the atma.
So the upadhis here are body and mind which silently superimpose the attributes and creates the false impression on the subject. The idea of spiritual life is to see this adhyasa and turn away from it just like removing the flower and seeing the purity of the crystal. As we saw in the case of the crystal, the superposition is only an illusion not a real one when compared to the to  the case of the dirt on the dress. The antidote to this false superposition in right knowledge and not any sadhana or effort. Sadhana or karma are all preparation to this knowledge. As Sankaracharya tells us in "Atma Bodha", the only means of liberation is atma jyana and there exists no other solution.