We humans do have some sense. If we are normal, healthy individuals, we don’t do anything unless we believe that it will benefit us positively in the end and bring us happiness. But usually we are unconscious of this fact.

When we try to become a millionaire, we’re doing it not for the money itself, but because we feel all that money will be able to give us a happy lifestyle. Even if someone sacrifices their own personal happiness for the cause of their country or some noble cause, they’re doing it only because they feel that by this sacrifice they’ll be able to achieve a deeper kind of happiness, or give happiness to others. It seems we are just built with a want and need for happiness.

J.S. Mill put it this way: “It’s impossible to desire anything except in proportion to its pleasantness. Human nature can desire nothing which is not either a part or a means of happiness. This is proof that happiness is the only thing desirable. People’s ideas of how to be happy can have more or less wisdom though.”

To say that happiness is the only natural purpose of human life and that everything else is just a means to that end, makes more sense of happiness than our common sense usually cares to notice. That’s why it seems so appealing. It makes common sense more sensical.

It’s no real surprise that all through the history of Western philosophy most of the great minds have made more or less the same observation that happiness should occupy the central position in human life. I like this fact. It immediately brings a kind of humility to philosophy. It says, “As a result of our, the great philosophers, expert philosophical cogitation, we’ve decided happiness is the most important thing.” Happiness is a very simple principle. You don’t need to be a philosopher to understand, value and pursue it. For me, to say happiness is the most important thing is to capture a snapshot of human nature and the nature of human consciousness that seems quite insightful.

For a quick survey of famous Western philosophers who gave happiness an especially central place in the scheme of things, we could start with Epicurus, who lived around 400 BC. His foundational principle of “pleasure” wasn’t pleasure in the sense of material or physical desire. It was what wisdom would achieve, and it involved avoiding the lesser pleasures because they actually stood in the way of the higher enjoyments. For him, this was the highest thing for which an individual can aspire.

Some other milestones in Western thought on happiness:

• Pyrrho, an ancient Greek teacher, regarded the value of knowledge with scepticism, and taught that happiness is to be found as an inner state, a feeling.
• Diogenes, 400 BC, rejected the complications of social life and thought happiness and freedom could be won through mastery of the self.
• The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius had some fairly definite ideas about the nature of happiness, saying that “to live in happiness depends on very few things” and “the happiness of life depends on the quality of our thoughts.”
• Augustine, Christian saint, great writer and one of the fathers of the Church, expressed it like this: “Who wishes anything for any other reason than that he may become happy?” He felt it was wiser and more benefitting a man “to be obscure in the house of Felicity, than to be eminent without her in their own places.”
• In the words of the French philosopher Montaigne, “All the opinions of the world agree on this – that pleasure is our goal – though they choose different means to it. Otherwise they would be thrown out right away. Who could listen to a man who would set up our pain and discomfort as his goal?”
• Happiness was central to the thinking of Thomas Jefferson, founding father of the USA. This is probably made most famous by the prominent mention of human happiness in his Declaration of Independence. He sings the praises of “America, where the equal rights and the happiness of every individual are acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.”
• Leo Tolstoy said, “Happiness is the soul of every child.”
• To use philosopher of religion William James’s phrase, I think happiness would rank pretty high in a list of “all the great single-word answers to the world’s riddle.”
• A recent introduction to philosophy says something that is relevant to the present topic. “Valuing material goods more than life itself is a very serious self-defeating ethical error.”

So the idea of happiness as the most important thing in life has been around in the West, in the greatest minds, since the beginning of recorded history. Something that almost everyone agrees on is that happiness should go together with wisdom. Wisdom teaches that happiness depends more on our inner attitude than our outer material prosperity.

Meditation is one very effective way to adjust the focus in our everyday life, so that our happiness does not depend so much on material objects and the outer situation. In the words of Sri Chinmoy, my meditation teacher, “True inner joy is self-created. It does not depend on outer circumstances.” We don’t escape from the ordinary life in order to focus on our own inner happiness, but rather we accept life as it is with a view to transforming it.

If we have spiritual happiness, that is, happiness that is not dependent on our outer life, then there’s no need to retreat from the world. Our outer circumstances don’t control our happiness if the source of our happiness is elsewhere. Even if we meet with adversity, or circumstances that don’t meet our hopes or expectations, our happiness can’t be affected for long. We can always return to it, or it always comes back to us.

In my job as a freelance journalist, I recently interviewed a composer who had spent some time in Japan. He told me what struck him most was the Japanese reverence for mundane and ordinary things. For instance, when he would order bread in a bakery the salesperson would go out of his way to gift-wrap the bread as if it were a birthday present. He was confused and deemed the meticulousness a sheer waste of time, until he witnessed a tea ceremony and realized it was a way of life. He discovered that the secret to the Japanese soul, and consequently the secret to their happiness, is their ability to see sacredness in the little things.

The little things. In the West we tend to take them for granted. They are of minor importance, sometimes even downright intimidating. “The devil is in the details,” we say. It is the big things that matter. We long for an empire, a masterpiece, a legacy. Living large is the yardstick of success. Big things also predominate our religious beliefs. We feel that Truth and God live in high, unattainable heavens, far beyond the scope of our day-to-day lives. But the Japanese have discovered God in the small things.

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God…there lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” Hopkins realized that the key to happiness lies in the little things, the “dearest freshness” underpinning all life in the Universe. Seeing that divine freshness is an art that stems from a clear consciousness. This art is sometimes called “mindfulness.” When we are mindful, we live fully in the present moment, the eternal Now. We move out of the clouded firmament of our mind with its restless thoughts and enter into the lush garden of our heart. It is when we are in the heart that we see and feel the inherent beauty of life. There we discover the “dearest freshness” in countless little things: the song of a bird, the colour of a leaf, the smile of a child. Little things are the winks of an ever-benign Universe.

In order to live in the heart, meditation is helpful. Meditation teaches us how to silence our thoughts. When the mind is calm and tranquil, the heart automatically comes to the fore and opens itself like a flower. It takes time and a little discipline to learn how to meditate, but the benefits are beyond measure.

For when we live in the heart, life is always full of joy. You feel the happiness of a seven-year-old, where every day is full of surprises, newness and joy. A child’s world is composed of hundreds of little things, and he sees meaning in all of them. Perhaps that is why the child is so happy.

My spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy was the happiest person I have ever known. He was also the most meticulous person I’ve ever known when it came to the small things. Although he had thousands of students, he always made you feel through some small act of kindness that he saw you and loved you.

My outer relationship to my teacher was mainly confined to running, since I was one of the faster runners in our meditation centre and Sri Chinmoy took interest. Once during a Christmas retreat in Bulgaria, he filmed the finishers of the weekly two-mile race in which his students participated. In the evening he showed his video to us on a big screen. I happened to win that race, but Sri Chinmoy only started filming just after I had finished. It meant that everybody was in the video except for me, which made me a little sad. After all, I had won it!

But the moment the video ended, Sri Chinmoy called out from his chair, “I am so, so sorry I missed Abhinabha! He was too fast for me.” I immediately felt consoled, but it didn’t end there. Although it was not his habit, Sri Chinmoy also filmed the next race, and this time made sure he captured me. Again he showed his video to us in the evening and started applauding when I came in first. That little act of kindness and concern made me so happy, because it made me feel truly loved.

When I think of little things, I think of these small acts of kindness. Whenever I happened to miss one of our weekly meditation sessions, one of my friends would always leave some prasad (blessed food) in my room from that meditation. It was an unspoken act of kindness that always put a smile on my face. When I was younger I used to write letters to my best friend, who lived on the other side of the country. Every time one of his letters came, I was in the seventh heaven of delight. Nowadays we just send an e-mail, but it’s not the same as the simple magic of a handwritten message.

It is rightly said that he that will not stoop for a pin will never be worth a pound. So if you are looking for happiness, start with the little things. Go for a walk outside and appreciate nature’s beauty. Write a letter to a friend you haven’t seen for a while. Tidy up your room or house and enjoy that pure feeling of a clean living space. Like the Japanese, honour the details. And while doing so, try be fully present in the moment. When we take the small things seriously, we hone our good qualities and build up our character. Then when the big things wheel around, we’ll be ready to face them with courage and dignity.