Meditating Into Happiness is the seventh novel in The Happy Raj Saga Series by Nihal S. Dissanayake. This book will be serialized in the MeditatingIntoHappiness Blog from today.
Previous books in The Happy Raj Saga Series are available on Amazon in print and Kindle versions.
Meditating Into Happiness is not a handbook on meditation. It tries to focus your attention to the practices associated with the theories of meditation.
PREFACE TO HAPPY RAJ SAGA SERIES
MEDITATING INTO HAPPINESS is the seventh novel in the Happy Raj Saga Series. After an exhaustive survey, enigmatic billionaire Professor Happiraja decides to invest his billion-dollar legacy in a beautiful island, and baptizes it as the Happy Raj. His noble and lofty objective was to increase the stock of happiness in the Planet Earth. Happy Raj Saga is his story.
Happy Raj Saga Series flows through seven different novels and has a common theme: happiness through meditation. The first novel in the Saga series, The Happy Raj was placed First Place in the Open Manuscript Competition organized by the Department of Cultural Affairs, Government of Sri Lanka, in 2010.
Professor Happiraja builds the Happy Raj Meditation Center in the island of the Happy Raj to be his launch pad, and designs Sotapatti Meditation Program [SMP] as his vehicle, to help his meditators to cross the Oceans of Samsara expeditiously.
The entire Saga revolves around a small group of interesting characters, common to all the seven novels. Their interactions are intricately carved and woven together to make the Saga an unforgettable reading experience, illuminated with Buddhist philosophy and religious values.
The author, with his multi-faceted trainings and experiences in several countries, in a spectrum of fields and services, is trying to focus your attention to meditation, to enhance you into higher echelons of happiness.
The Happy Raj Saga runs on two parallel rails: The emotion-filled drama of the family of Weda Ralahamy, an Ayurvedic physician, moves up, down, and sideways, motored by his beauty-queen daughter Nangi, and her adopted sister Akki, who gets into the yellow robes at the Paradise. It is packed with heart-melting pathos and nerve-wracking poignancy created by iguanas, migratory birds, squirrels, and non-human forces such as ghosts and divine beings. Even dreams play an important role. Mid-ocean boat accidents, mysterious deaths, attempted suicides, the rape of an unconscious beauty queen, terrorist attacks, tsunami waves, and tornados add more sugar, spices, and vinegar to your plate.
On the other rail, the spiritual bandwagon of Professor Happiraja and his group of holy men and women moves slowly and steadily, where philosophy-packed strategic operations such as Operation Nirvana, are formulated, planned and launched, to push the meditators closer to Nirvana.
Professor Happiraja’s success as a Stream Winner contributes to act as an anabolic steroid to the meditators in the Happy Raj. They get together to study the strategic plans of Happiraja which had been able to push him into the Arya Marga. His plans become a guiding beacon for all the meditating community in the world.
The following are the seven novels in the Happy Raj Saga Series.
The Happy Raj [Happy Raj Saga One]
The Happy Raj is an award-winning novel. It is a religious and a philosophical novel about Happiness Through Meditation. It uses Buddhist philosophy to analyze human behavior.
The Happy Raj is about billionaire Prof. Happiraja and his project to create his dream Kingdom Of Happiness in the beautiful island of the Happy Raj. Billionaire Prof. Happiraja retires prematurely and moves into The Happy Raj along with its former owner, Dada, destituted by the tsunami wave on the Boxing Day. Dada is invited to be his guest for life and becomes the first target for his happiness operations.
His objective was to create an environment for stress and mind refinement exercises. The project gets derailed when one of his supervisors, Deva dies mysteriously and his partner, hermaphrodite Cicci jumps into the burning funeral pyre. Appearance of a ghost in his old cottage, sends 72-year old Dada into the Medical Center with a heart problem. When Dada leaves for home, his house had been refurbished to prevent him falling sick again. Playing with the powerful notebook computer gifted by Professor Happiraja when he left the Medical Center, Dada, a designs engineer, plans to bounce back into active life. When Rev. Aloka arrives to cleanse the island of the ghosts, Dada gets interested in meditation.
On the day of the inauguration of his project Kingdom of Happiness, two of top Happy Raj executives wear the yellow robes to follow the Sotapatti Meditation Program designed by Professor Happiraja to be his vehicle to help the meditators to traverse the oceans of Samsara. Dada gets ordained and appointed as the Trustee of the Temple of Happiness.
A tsunami wave batters the island immediately after its inauguration, destroying almost all the buildings. Professor Happiraja gets all the buildings repaired with improved facilities to withstand the force of another tsunami wave.
Paradise Is For Ladies [Happy Raj Saga Two]
In Paradise Is For Ladies, two nurses, Nangi and Akki, travel to the Happy Raj for the ordination ceremony of their brother who was a top-level executive in the island. And also to participate in the inauguration of the Kingdom of Happiness. When they meet Professor Happiraja, they exhort him to open their male-only Happy Raj Meditation Center to women, to enable them to join the Sotapatti Meditation Program, to go in search of Nirvana.
Set in the family estate of Weda Ralahamy, the drama moves into the Happy Raj where Nangi gives birth to a boy in the small guest house, because she refuses to be admitted to a hospital for her delivery. When Nangi and Akki return to Happy Raj for the first anniversary celebrations, the Paradise, a ten-acre complex for women, in a beautiful environment had been developed by Happiraja. He had organized a seminar on meditation for women, in the Paradise to celebrate its opening. The first seminar was a success because the Director of the Paradise, Sumeda Silmaniyo, arrives at the Paradise with a group of silmathas from her Retreat to attend the seminar. After the celebrations, while the yoginis were returning with Sumeda Silmaniyo, accompanied by Akki, their boat gets involved in a mid-sea accident making all of them sick.
Akki’s reputation rises high when she manages the post-accident environment by sending old Silmaniyo to a hospital. After getting a psychologist to talk to the sick yoginis, Akki brings them back to the Paradise to join the Sotapatti Meditation Program. When the sick Sumeda Silmaniyo returns to the Paradise, Akki decides to be her personal nurse. Later she agrees to don the yellow robes on her advice.
Ammi, the adopted mother of Akki, loses her balance once again when Akki decides to get into the yellow robes. Her bleeding heart enters a reconciliation mode when they explain to her of an imminent promotion, if Akki, or her son Akura who had already joined the Happy Raj Meditation Center to go in search of Nirvana, become Stream Winners.
When Sumeda Silmaniyo dies in hospital, they decide send her body to the University where she was teaching, in accordance with her Last Will. Akki decides to write a book on meditation to honor her great teacher.
From Guest House To Paradise [Happy Raj Saga Three]
From Guest House To Paradise is about Akki, a Guadeloupian nurse, adopted by Nangi’s parents as a daughter. Akki’s interest in Buddhism grew when she meets with Nangi while they were working in a ship as nurses, where Akki was her Matron. After Nangi had met with an accident in her toilet, she seeks the help of her Matron to get an internet connection to study meditation during her sick leave. Later when Akki got interested in meditation, Nangi becomes her teacher. Akki learns the advanced practices in the noble art at the Retreat, and plans to wear the yellow robes at the Paradise. After taking her precepts, Akki Maniyo enters the foyer to meet the invitees to enable them to pay their offerings to the holy person. Suddenly Nangi’s son, who was sitting on the lap of her mother, breaks loose from all his fetters, rushes on his fours to occupy the lap of his playmate, wearing a yellow uniform. Akki Maniyo sits with stone silence, ignoring him completely, to the surprise of all.
The astute planner starts her journey towards Nirvana, very much earlier, even before she had met Sumeda Silmaniyo who had advised her to increase her levels of sarda, with a pilgrimage to the holy cities in Sri Lanka. Akki obtains several videos of the Buddhist religious sites in India, Nepal, and Thailand. They had been very effective.
Akki Maniyo makes use of her work with the Happy Raj Radio to increase the effectiveness of her plans. When Dada Hamuduruwo died, she was meditating on the death as a part of life. However, the death of her teacher Sumeda Silmaniyo jolted her composure. With tears in her eyes, wailing Akki Maniyo agrees with others not to attend their teacher’s funeral or the Dana at the Retreat, by risking another boat ride. Instead, she plans a book on meditation to honor her teacher.
Akki Maniyo makes a supreme effort to get closer to Nirvana by studying the cannons of Buddhism. She prepares a daily plan of action, with time slots for all her activities including meditation, meetings, and the radio. Akki Maniyo tells her family not to allow Prince, her beloved playmate to hear her name, or show her to him. Everything had one objective: moving towards Nirvana expeditiously.
Operation Nirvana [Happy Raj Saga Four]
Operation Nirvana is a strategic plan formulated and implemented with religious zeal by Professor Happiraja. His noble and lofty objective was to help his meditators to expedite their march towards Nirvana, within the next seven years.
The genesis of the plan was when Professor Happiraja notices the difficulties experienced by the 73-year old Dada Hamuduruwo to keep pace with others in his meditational work. Happiraja joins hands with Ayurvedic physician Weda Ralahamy, to prepare a strategic plan to help the old monk, to expedite his march in search of Nirvana.
After studying the mental activities and processes explained in the Buddhist Cannons, Happiraja initiates a series of activities to gain the insights required to expedite the march of meditators towards Nirvana. Sharing available knowledge among yogis, designing multi-media exhibitions, brainwashing, hypnotherapy, making videos, and discussions with experienced monks are some of the activities included in their toolbox.
After individual discussions with several intellectuals including, psychologists, psychiatrists, meditators, and erudite Buddhist monks, Happiraja proceeds with his strategic plans to help meditators to shorten their march towards Nirvana.
At first, Professor Happiraja’s target for his unique strategic operations was Dada Hamuduruwo. Later he acquires another unit operated exclusively for women and housed them in the Paradise. Subsequently, he included them also into his plan.
Dada Hamuduruwo dies before the plan is completed and his body is preserved in a glass casket in the elegant three-storied Dada Mausoleum, to help the yogis in their contemplations of anitya. When Sumeda Silmaniyo, Head of the Paradise dies as a result of an accident, they got her body sent to the university where she was teaching. There was uncertainty as to whether she had entered the Arya Marga or not, before her death.
Professor Happiraja delegates most of his official functions, and develops his strategic plan with dedication. That new approach makes him a Stream Winner [Sotapanna].
However, the absence of any material evidence to prove his success creates a problem in the minds of others to accept him as a Sotapanna. However, Professor Happiraja’s elevation continued to act as an anabolic steroid to all meditators going in search of Nirvana.
From Paradise To Nirvana [Happy Raj Saga Five]
From Paradise To Nirvana is about the dedicated attempts of Akki Silmaniyo and Nangi to get onto the Arya Marga, hand in hand. Unperturbed by the changes in the environment, Akki Maniyo struggles with the help of her sister and family to continue with her holy struggle. In the meantime, Nangi accepts Akki’s invitation to join her without wearing the yellow robes, while looking after her fatherless child. Nangi confirms her commitment by making a Satyakriya. Her wish was to be a Stream Winner within five years. Ammi thinks that Akki’s proposal to drag Nangi into the holy struggle had an ulterior motive.
When Nangi plans to build a temple in their ancestral property to collect merits, Akki Maniyo agrees to finance the building costs from her savings. Professor Happiraja donates all the furniture and equipment; and also a helipad. A god residing in a nearby tree makes available some bone relics of Lord Buddha to complete the temple. When the bone relics appear in her new golden casket in the new temple, Nangi was ecstatic. She believes that her Satyakriya would be a success. An old lady who had come to see the new temple offers the cost of a stupa. Reason: she has been getting free treatment from Weda Ralahamy, Nangi’s father, when she was young.
Nangi joins hands with Akki Maniyo to improve and implement the successful strategic plan of Professor Happiraja that had made him a Stream Winner. Fully committed to the course, Nangi continues with her research into the Cannons of Buddhism, and suddenly stumbles upon a section which confirms that both sisters have qualified [Chula Sotapanna] to enter into the holy path and would reach Nirvana definitely on a future date. This makes them increase their effort taking extreme care not to commit any acts that should hamper their holy pilgrimage. Akki Maniyo revs up her engines to finish the pilgrimage in five years as planned, holding the hands of her beloved sister.
From Sin Ship To Happy Raj [Happy Raj Saga Six]
From Sin Ship To Happy Raj is a novel about happiness and suffering. The castles of happiness built by Beauty Queen Agni [Nangi] in her Kingdom of Happiness, crumble when she is abducted, drugged and detained in a mid-ocean ship, for an anti-terrorist group.
When Agni realizes that her castles of happiness are crumbling, she sees the necessity to re-engineer her life with new strategies by harnessing her mind power, the only asset she could muster to regain her lost life.
The appearance of a ghost in her cabin on the day that Agni was deflowered while she was unconscious, brings her Matron to her cabin for an inspection. Agni gives her an anti-ghost formula, the success of which makes them friends. Agni requests her Matron to give her a connection to the internet to study meditation while on sick leave. Her Matron joins with her to practice meditation and their dinners on the deck become academic sessions where Agni teaches meditation to her Matron. When the Ship Project is disbanded her Matron, an orphan, decides to join Agni to go with her and is adopted as a daughter by her family.
Set in a mid-ocean ship, all theatrics are confined to that ship. Agni, the main character is virtually managed by her Matron. There are two other characters that appear only once in her life, but leave indelible marks on the life of Agni. One deflowers virgin Agni when she was unconscious, and the other dies on her bed leaving a baby behind him.
The novel is in the first person and uses simple language to explain the problems of the young beauty queen in detention. The main conflicts in the story are between constraints and ravenous indulgence. Agni’s knowledge of Buddhist philosophy helps her to resolve all problems to enhance her levels of happiness.
Meditating Into Happiness [Happy Raj Saga Seven]
Meditating Into Happiness is the seventh novel in the Happy Raj Saga series. It is about an attempt by Professor Happiraja to muster the help of his former colleagues to help him develop and improve his three exhibitions, specially designed to move his yogis towards Nirvana, expeditiously. After his lecture about meditation to his former colleagues at the State Polytechnique, Professor Happiraja invites them to participate in his free ten-day Program at the Happy Raj Meditation Center. They accept his invitation and plan to move in two batches. The first batch of lady academics invades the Happy Raj and was lodged in the Paradise. On their arrival they were given a laptop computer each participant, loaded with all the seminar materials, background reading suttas and a copy of their exhibitions: Corridors of Happiness Exhibition which explains the concept of suffering as enunciated by Lord Buddha and the Sakkaya Ditti Exhibition, which has the objective of solving the most important problem of those planning to the Arya Marga. Professor Happiraja’s invitations had been taken very seriously by his colleagues and had worked overtime in attending to the homework entrusted to them.
A tsunami warning had made the male academics to be sent to their branch, Retreat in the hill capital in Sri Lanka. The Happy Raj staff flies to participate in the seminar.
The academics had made a positive contribution towards the success of the seminars by making useful suggestions to improve the potency of the two exhibitions. Some of the academics had expressed of their desire to join the Happy Raj to meditate in search of Nirvana. The other contributions included their suggestion to expand their activities to a wider international market and to use the Radio Happy Raj to form an association of those who are willing to look into meditation as a path in moving towards Nirvana.
Meditating Into Happiness is a new type of educational novel, using new technologies where the knowledge is imparted by discussions based on sharing personal experiences. Professor Happiraja who had moved into Arya Marga with his Strategic Plan, had participated in their deliberations to improve his operations.
Copyright © 2014 Nihal S.Dissanayake
All rights reserved.
ISBN 10: 1503127796
ISBN-13: 978-1503127791
Previous books in The Happy Raj Saga Series are available on Amazon in print and Kindle versions.
Meditating Into Happiness is the seventh novel in The Happy Raj Saga Series by Nihal S. Dissanayake. This book will be serialized in the MeditatingIntoHappiness Blog from today.
Meditating into Happiness 