A smile is merely a symptom of the human condition called happiness. Animals are affected by that condition more often though the symptoms are not so obvious.

We convince ourselves that happiness is an effect; that there has to be cause for it. That makes happiness so dependent on the external environment and makes us a puppet. Happiness without a cause is sui generis, in a class of its own. If we learn the art of being happy without a reason, then we can be happy even when there is a reason to be unhappy.

When water is being filled in a pot, the sound we hear is a function of the pot, not of the water. Same water makes different sounds in different pots. Each of us, described in Sanskrit as Ghata, meaning pot, responds in a unique way to the stimuli from the surrounding environment. Do not be surprised when the response of another appears entirely different from yours. The pot has created the illusion of a wall, of mine and other. Once you become aware of that illusion, otherness melts and the universe becomes a unified verse again, with apparently diverse responses becoming part of the same symphony.

Like everything else, we know the futility of money only when we have more than enough of it.

Whatever time mother goes to heaven, it is always too soon. Fortunately, she is forever.

Pleasure and pain are on the same side of the coin of human experience. The opposite is indifference or numbness.