Happiness

October 24, 2017 ·

Happiness

It is a widely held belief, if not universally, that happiness is the goal of life. The idea of happiness and its centrality to life is a product of human mind and civilisation.

The word ‘happiness’ is used to denote many subtly different things.

Happiness can be emotional or intellectual, arising from feelings or thought.

Happiness, to my mind, may be in three different ways:

One is from simple gratification of the senses. Mere eating gives a lot of happiness. Let us call this joy or pleasure.

Another is from pure state of mind. This is at first sight rather philosophical or intellectual, but it is not academic. The more we decide to be happy the more we will be. Many of the sources of unhappiness arise from non-existent situations or situations whose probability of occurrence is remote or eventualities over which we have no control. Let us say the state of mind happiness as happiness.

Spiritually, we talk of ananda and it is translated as happiness, but let us call it bliss. It is a condition or property of the soul. It is on a different plane.

To be sure, mind is involved in all the three.

Pleasure relates to expectation of sense fulfilment. It is obviously calibrated on the scale of expectation. The greater the expectation, the lesser the satisfaction. If the expectation is multidimensional and not narrowed down to a few things, the chances of deriving satisfaction are greater. People expect some sort of a trading profit. They want greater reward than warranted by effort. That happens fewer times than expected.

Is intelligence a source of happiness or unhappiness? Perhaps, neither. By the definition or division that we have by convention and unwritten consensus, happiness is an emotional state and intelligence is connected with knowledge. Knowledge may give happiness, i.e. it affects us emotionally. It may make us unhappy also because of the value we attach to certain things and the risk to such things knowledge tells us about. Worrying and brooding are not signs of intelligence and should not be confused with a genuine search for knowledge based on experience and contemplation. Sometimes, some people may be impatient when another is rather slow at the uptake and that may produce irritation, but it is due to temperament and not intelligence.

As in everything else, whether we are happy or not depends largely on us, on what we are looking for, how in tune with life we are.

24/10/2018

Happiness is a state of mind and a choice. To have tried well and failed cannot make one unhappy. Being fully in what we are doing is the key to happiness, not the outcome.

I am glued to the Indian theory that success is determined not just by our efforts alone. As we mature, we do not let our poise and equanimity be disturbed by the outcome after unreserved and honest efforts, neither success is all due to us nor is failure the result of our incompetence.

The result of our effort is not determined by some non-descript past event, but by so many factors that have a bearing on the job. If an industry fails because of some sudden policy change or new taxation, we cannot blame the industrialist. He could not have controlled it unless he was an ambani. We cannot say that he should not have started the industry or that he should have had a plan B. If we can cover all risks, the industry must be doomed to fail from day one. It is a wrong set of mind to think that we should keep quiet because other factors also have a bearing on the result. We have seen this happen, sort of, in our asking the staff to come in time. Surely, head office was an uncontrollable external factor, but to have stopped to even expect that the staff should come in time is a criminal failure. Despite the best efforts, one may fail. Instances of individual success cannot prove anything. More things fail than succeed. That should not be the barometer of happiness. To be engaged in action with a good end in view with one's body, mind and heart is the natural thing to do and we must do it in a happy frame of mind and we must continue with that happy frame whatever happens. It may not happen, then we should introspect and improve.

7/10/18

Go to yourself for happiness and salvation.
A Jagadguru said, "The whole world is my guru." He uttered a profound truth. He was self-effacing and godly. (A person can be godly, not god).
The world is the only god and the only guru. It grants us all the boons and teaches us all the lessons.