kriyayogamalaysia

Empowering Belief 4 – Deeper Joys are more Fulfilling

From our e-book “Filling our Life with Celebration

A child is dancing and singing beautifully in front of an audience of more than 300 people. Within that audience, a lady is in tears and is filled with a joy that is bursting out from her. She is the mother of the child.

While the other people were getting sense-pleasures from the performance, the mother was getting an emotional joy that goes deeper than sense pleasures. Sense pleasures merely distract us from our thoughts and problems but emotional joys are deeper and more lasting. It stays with us until the end of our life.

The elders will advise the young ones that when selecting their other half, they should look at inner beauty instead of the surface. External beauty is short-lived but inner beauty persists. This does not mean that the ones with just inner beauty are not beautiful. Their features are simple but they have a light that shines from within that brings out their beauty and this light stays with them to their old age. They are eternally beautiful.

On the other hand, our senses are fickle. They get bored easily. What we see as beautiful this year will not be the same as what we saw as beautiful last year. But when we see our other half’s inner beauty, it will never fade. That is what love is about. We should not confuse love with passion.

Volunteers who help others are definitely not after sense-pleasures. They work hard at their jobs all week and instead of resting in the weekends, they pull themselves out of bed early in the morning to help others. They are seeking emotional joy. The occasional look of gratitude and tears in the eyes of the people they helped bring tears of joy into their own eyes. This is more valuable that the additional hours of sleep they get in the weekends. The Tzu Chi Organisation which is run by volunteers, frequently organises recycling events throughout the world to finance their charitable efforts such as providing free medical care and food to the needy. When I send my recyclables to the centres, I am sometimes lucky to get a glimpse of a few volunteers who radiate the light and joy that I talked about. They certainly are beautiful.