18th Book of 2023
Reading spiritual books help me understand a new perspective every time, hence, in the quest to get back into having some new spiritual knowledge, I picked up the book named “Happiness is Success”. This book is written by AiR/Ravi in around 176-pages and published by Rupa Publications. I read the Kindle version of it. Sincerely speaking, the book can be read within one or two sittings but as author has nicely divided it into small chapters, if you are a new reader, it would be great if you go through 4-5 chapters in one sitting which will help you understand the topics and perspectives well. Right from the first go, author’s intention is clear about making the readers understand about the difference between Success and Happiness.
Ravi, the author, gets an early success in life and like everyone, even he believed that he’ll feel complete happiness after it. With time, he understood that achieving success doesn’t mean that it can provide you ultimate happiness. Gradually, he became spiritual and understood that happiness is something we should be chasing every moment rather than running behind money and materialistic aspects of life and imagining to be successful after getting the same. There are few chapters which helps you understand the concept well. The quotes in the beginning of every chapter are inspiring and makes you grasp deep logics within few words itself. Similarly, there are some beautiful poems which will directly touch your heart. I wished to note down each of them separately to refer to them whenever I feel down.
Ravi discusses about different types of fear that a human being has about losing success. He tells how most of us are scared about this which doesn’t let us live peacefully. Similarly, author discusses about the importance of knowing about our happiness triggers. He also goes into details helping us know how we can know about the activities or experiences which helps us understand what our happiness triggers are.
In the latter part of the book, Ravi talks about meditation and how it can change the whole way of realizing about the reality of our being. The emphasis is given on how we are human being and not human doing. Just being ourselves can bring tremendous difference to our mental health. Author gets deep down and explains how we are not the body, mind or ego that we believe we are. He talks about how we aren’t any of these but something beyond this- a spirit/energy/soul. Just knowing this fact can change our perspective.
He gets into the details of Karma and how one can settle this account to not get rebirth and get rid of this materialistic human life. There’s another chapter which captured my interest. It speaks of rainbow love and explains how every colour of rainbow signifies different kind of love and we should be aware of it and realize this in every relationship we have. Ravi, then, talks about the main source of all these colours and what does that original form of love means.
Overall, this is a good book for any beginner who has not gone through other deep dialogues on the concept of spirituality and happiness. Talking about the drawbacks, I feel that the book just keeps on speaking the same thing repeatedly. After a time, you get bored of the same concept written in different ways. There is nothing new after the first 10 pages. You will get frustrated reading the two words “Success” and “Happiness” in almost every second sentence. I think author should have spoken about different concepts talking about this aspect. Also, the way author talks about success, it seems it is a negative thing to have. Author should have been little matured while writing about it as many youths can get a wrong impression that they don’t need to build career at all or have aspiring goals to reach heights in their life. These are the main concerns because of which I felt the book is less inspiring and impactful. Hence, I will go with an average 3 stars out of 5.
Thanks!
WRITING BUDDHA
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