I am an artist rather than a writer, so the picture above is my contribution to this site. One frequent theme in the writings of Sri Chinmoy (author of The Jewels of Happiness) is that we can have joy and happiness if we feel we are children running from flower to flower in a beautiful garden and then imagine that we have this garden inside our heart. For example, in answer to someone asking about beginning to meditate, Sri Chinmoy gave the following advice:
A beginner has to feel that he is a child, no matter how old he is in earthly age. A child’s mind is not developed. When he is twelve or thirteen his mind starts functioning on an intellectual level, but before that he is all heart. Whatever he sees, he feels is his own. He identifies spontaneously. This is what the heart does. When you feel that you are a child, immediately feel that you are standing in a flower garden. This flower garden is your heart. A child can play in a garden for hours. He will go from this flower to that flower, but he will not leave the garden, because he will get joy from the beauty and fragrance of each flower. Inside you is the garden, and you can stay within it for as long as you want. ((Sri Chinmoy, Mind-Confusion And Heart-Illumination Part 2, Agni Press, 1974))
One of the things that makes me feel happy is smelling the fragrance of a beautiful flower like an old-fashioned rose. To me the things in Nature are the most beautiful, and the fragrances of flowers – roses, daphne, jasmine, gardenias – are the most exquisite scents that exist on Earth, and all are God-made. My name, Nabhoniya, means “Directly from Heaven’s Beauty and Fragrance…” so I suppose it is not surprising how much joy the heavenly fragrance of a beautiful flower can give me!