(Mind20)-Are you really happy?

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Who does not want to be happy? All our actions and endeavors are directed towards that end. We all want to be happy. 

But what is happiness? Have you ever pondered over it seriously?

A new born child is most happy if it sleeps pressed to its mother’s body, feeling her body warmth, listening to the music emanating from her heart, and occasionally sucking her breasts. It becomes terribly unhappy if it is disturbed from that state.

But as the child grows, it wants to look around. It wants to see, touch and taste different things. Listen to voices of others around. It finds happiness in toys and human company. Just the mother alone does not make it happy anymore.

As the child reaches adolescent age, it enjoys the company of opposite sex. It shows interest in learning newer and newer things. The colorful world around keeps it fascinated.

Then comes a stage when money, power, name and fame become the source of happiness.

A few evolve to a stage where all these ‘physical’ pleasures don’t fully satisfy them. They become scientists or philosophers. They try to derive happiness in intellectual pursuits.

But if you closely observe, happiness always remains elusive. Some goal that appears to be attainable but never attained. There will be a phase, when you feel that ‘Yes, I have found it’ but after that phase, you will once again restart your wild chase towards a goal that is never reached!

Why does it happen?

Ancient Indians gave three reasons why we cannot be happy for long. These reasons are

1. Happiness derived from material things is short lived since anything material does not last forever. Nor your ability to enjoy is unbounded. However tasty the food is, you can’t go on eating since sooner or later you will feel full and can eat no longer.

2. You will never be fully satisfied with material happiness. You get satiated for a moment, but after sometime, the craving would erupt once again. Not only that, you would start expecting the next one to be more enjoyable than the previous one. You enter an endless race after pleasures.

3. You will get limited to your existence as a physical body. You will never be able to evolve further.

So what?, you may ask. Keep enjoying as long as you live on. That seems to be the stand taken by most of us.

At least for Hindus and others belonging to eastern religions, who have a firm faith in rebirth after death, there is a hope that you can continue your enjoyment saga in the next birth 😉, sort of ‘continued in the next episode…’!

But what about Jews, Christians and Muslims? Unfortunately, they have to wait till the end of the world or the final day of judgement. There is no guarantee that they will get enjoyment even after such a long wait 😉

Even after enjoying endlessly, there is no guarantee that one gets satiated fully. And dissatisfaction leads to misery.

Ancient Buddhists in India found a smart solution. They said “Make sure that you don’t exist at all”. No existence – no craving, no dissatisfaction, no misery … and no happiness as well 😉

But their Vedic counterparts are more clever. They want to keep both options open – material enjoyment as well as total freedom from craving and dissatisfaction. You decide what you want. You can even enjoy for some time, before you decide to switch the gear and get out of all the mess.


I like this latter approach. Afterall, what is this body for, if all that we want is a freedom from its tangles? Buddhist approach appears counter intuitive to me. No matter why we got into this body, the body got to have a purpose? Well, Buddhists don’t accept the concept of ‘we’ who are suffering. Then what was that all about? Let us just forget about that line of thinking.

On the other hand, I am not prepared to wait for eons for the final judgement day, just be told that I am not qualified for any further enjoyment! I would rather keep taking birth after birth, hoping to get fully satiated, and then think of shrugging off the entire mess.


Jokes apart, I feel that we need to have an approach that is more prudent, one that can show perceivable results in the near term and not some promises of unseen future. Each religion has its own views and we don’t know which one is right. Not all of them can be right at the same time. Can they?

In the next episode I will discuss a more practical approach taken by ancient Indians that seems to be the way to go.

 

A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King 2019