Happytual: The Non-Pursuit of Happiness by Pawan Kumar Mishra (Book Review: 3*/5) !!!

  

6^th Book of 2024

 

There are times when you need a spiritual book to make you understand the basics of life to balance and manage your emotions. As I was facing some issue due to certain unwanted aspects happening in my professional life and I sensed that I am not able to manage my mind, I thought of picking up a short book which is semi-spiritual without going much into minute details. This made me chose the book named “Happytual” written by Pawan Kumar Mishra. The book also comes with a tagline that says “The non-pursuit of happiness”. It is published in around 120 pages by Rupa Publications.

 

As the title of the book suggests, the prime focus of the author while writing the book is to narrate it to his readers about how to be happy in a spiritual context without doing much about it but just analyzing yourself. Author’s intent is very evident right from the first instance when he dives into the topic that he wants us to understand the benefit of going within and finding peace somewhere there rather than trying too many things to achieve it from external sources.

 

Author has chosen the very same narration methodology of conversational tone where a younger character is asking questions about life to an elder mentor and he is answering and guiding the character with the insights that can change the course of their life by just tweaking the way they look at things. Author has used very easy language while writing the same which ensures that readers of any age group shall be able to go through it easily. Author has blended the ancient wisdom with the modern context by giving some new examples to explain the theories and explaining the old concepts in a new tone.

 

The concept of Fourth which is almost a reference to soul is nicely explained which makes it easy to understand where do we need to hit within to fix things in our life. The main USP of the book is the chapter named “The Lotus Flower” where author discusses about 24 petals of the flower by naming each one of them on an area that needs to be managed to lead a happy life. Later on, the way author comes to the conclusion of how happiness shouldn’t be a pursuit helps us understand how we can achieve it without actually chasing it.

 

Author also touches upon yoga and meditation and teaches few deep breathing techniques which shall turn out to be essential for beginners in this area who haven’t tried anything before. Along with such insights, the way author has also tried taking through the arc of each of the characters involved in this keeps you interested in the book.

 

Talking about the drawbacks or shortcomings, after reading almost 900 books, I must say that I couldn’t find anything unique in the book. Definitely, author has tried to speak the same thing in a new way but it doesn’t teach you anything new. This shall be a fine book for beginners but if you have already gone through a spiritual kind of a self-help book, this one might not sound new or unique to you. Hence, I rate this book an average 3 stars out of 5.

PURCHASE THE BOOK HERE

 

Thanks!

 

WRITING BUDDHA