TRIPLE STREAM
PURSUIT OF
HAPPINESS
I. V. Chalapati Rao
‘Pursuit of happiness is a constitutional right. But it will not be very meaningful if the pursuers of happiness do not know the nature of their quarry’ - Aldous Huxley.
It is a universally admitted truth that the end of human life is happiness. But happiness is the least under-stood and most misunderstood word. On observation and experience we find that happiness does not depend upon personal attachment, money, environment, intellectual attainments, property and other material possessions. Will Durant, world renowned philosopher and historian, wrote how he looked for happiness in knowledge and got disillusioned. He then sought happiness in travel, and found weariness and then in wealth and found discord and worry. He tried writing and got fatigued. Ultimately he discovered that every normal function of life holds some delight, provided one possesses proper attitude to life. Wise men are happy with trifles but nothing pleases the fools!
About material wealth, Shakespeare wrote:
“If thou ar’t rich, thou ar’t poor
For like an ass whose back with ingots bows
Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey
And Death unloads thee!” - ‘Measure for Measure’
In another Shakespeare’s play King Richard says:
“I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage
My gay apparel for an alms-man’s gown
My figured goblets for a dish of wood
My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff,
And my large kingdom for a little grave’.
About the futility of knowledge, intellect and erudition GOETHE, the great German, philosopher said:
‘Alas, I have explored Philosophy and Law
And Medicine, and over deep Divinity
have pored
Studying with ardent and laborious zeal
And here I am at last a fool
With useless learning curst
No wiser than at first!’
KHALEEL ZIBRAN said: “your children are not your children; They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself”. Adi Sankara said: “There is no mother or father, There are no relatives and friends. The only reality is you. Therefore be careful and awake to reality”.
Thus all great men and acknowledged authorities have asserted in no uncertain terms, that things like money and power and the instruments through which transitory pleasure is produced - body, mind and intellect, are not the true sources of happiness.
Happiness is man’s natural state. It is within us, in our consciousness. No physical action or change of environment can produce real happiness. Right thought has its basis in positivism. Like a sleepless watchman we have to guard our mind against infiltration of negative feelings. For every negative we should find a positive. Happy people devote their thought and time to the well-being and happiness of other people. As Emerson said “If you pour perfume on other people, a few drops will sprinkle upon you”.
Happiness is not something that comes by accident or chance. Nor is it a gift of the gods. It is some thing that we have to build for ourselves. We should acquire the capacity to enjoy what we have, instead of brooding over the spilt milk or pining for what we do not have. The more we enjoy what we have however little, the happier we are. Happy people fall in love with the life they are living. They have specialised the art of living and its know-how. They develop interest in other people around them and expand their relationships by doing service whenever opportunity arises. As Bernard Shaw said: “The great elixir of life is to be thoroughly worn out before being discarded on the scrap heap”.
An integrated personality is the secret of happiness. Personality development takes place when we are sociable and service minded, doing more and more things with and for other people. When a man is sick and goes for treatment, what needs to be examined is his personality condition but not his lungs, heart and digestion. Goethe said: “He who is plenteously provided from within, needs but little from without”. Plato said “If the head and the heart are to be well, you must begin by caring the soul! Sir Thomas Browne Echart and all physicians and philosophers of East and West have said the same thing. Confucius, the Chinese philosopher also said that health is the result of the reconcilement of the body and the spirit. Even Shakespeare expressed exactly the same idea in ‘Macbeth’ when Lady Macbeth asks the physician: “Physician, cans’t thou not minister to a mind diseased and pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow and raze out the written troubles of the mind...”
What the patient requires is not a medicine man but a doctor of the soul who can fix his inner disorders. The doctors can find nothing wrong with him organically. Even diagnostic tests like C.T. Scan and M.R.I. can detect nothing abnormal! Many people suffer from hypochondria and imagine that they are afflicted with all kinds of ailments. They bore the visitor presenting a sad face and reel of an endless catalogue of problems. Self-pity is the worst of pathological conditions. What their soul requires is stimulus and re-education of its responses to the dilemmas and challenges of life. Herein lies the role of religion and philosophy. The soul of the modern man should be occasionally diverted from the petty events of the news papery everydayness of life and fed with the vitamins and proteins of the ancient scriptures. Meditation supplements medication. Prayers reinforce the potency of the pills!
As HAROLD SHERMAN said in his book ‘Your Key to Happiness’, “Whether you realise it or not you are directly or indirectly responsible for every thing that happens to you”. In ignorance people blame ‘fate’, ‘destiny’, ‘government’ and ‘other people’. No one would call a good surgeon ‘cruel and heartless’ for causing pain with a scalpel. Life is a surgeon. It wounds sometimes without administering anaesthetic. Life teaches the lesson of the supremacy of the soul and its hold over the body and the mind. The pain caused to the body can be transmuted into wisdom which by an alchemic process produces happiness.
Money is necessary but money becomes a source of misery if it is not used wisely. Likewise power is not bad in itself. But care has to be taken that power does not corrupt and is not unjustly exercised. Research in sixty countries showed that additional income does not contribute to the well-being of the people. A research organisation in London called DEMOS conducted a survey in 54 countries on the relation between a person’s income and his happiness. To the surprise of every one, the results showed that the people of developing countries like Bangladesh, Azerbaijan and Nigeria are happier than the people of Britain! Prof. Robert Worcester said: “They are earning more but they are not satisfied with environmental condition, family circumstances and human relations”. They are feeling loneliness! In cities people live in crowded loneliness. Their bodies jostle but their souls experience solitude! D.H. LAWRENCE says in his ‘APOCLYPSE’: “When men complain of loneliness they have lost their cosmos”.
People try to extract happiness which is spiritual, from material conditions! Getting and forgetting is materialism. Giving and forgiving is spirituality. Even OSCAR WILDE who was out and out a materialist said: “Ordinary riches can be stolen. Real riches can’t. In the treasure house of your soul there are infinitely precious things that may not be taken from you”.
These things give joy which Christ said ‘No man taketh from you’.
Happiness is here and now, not in distant lands. If you are not happy today, you will not be happy in the future.
As poet EDWIN MARKHAM wrote:
“There is a destiny that makes us brothers
None goes his way alone
All that we send into the lives of others
Comes
back into our own”
HAROLD SHERMAN says: “People should love life and pour their resources prodigally into the task of living. Then by an inherent law of nature, life pays them back in their own coin. As, they have given, so they have received”. Life does not let you down.
Our own scriptures do not preach asceticism. Nor do they advise us to run away from life. ISA’ Upanishad says that man should live for hundred years performing good deeds. They have recommended ‘CHATURVIDHA PURUSHARDHAS - Dharma (Righteousness), Ardha (wealth), Kama (Blameless desires) and Moksha (self realisation). They placed emphasis upon righteousness. All others should be pursued with righteous means. That is the secret of true happiness.
Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi said: “Bliss is not some thing to be got. On the other hand you are bliss. What has interposed between the bliss and the non-bliss is the ego. Seek its source and find that you are bliss”. (‘Talks with Ramana Maharshi’ Talk No. 126 (1994 edition)). Of course bliss is the acme of happiness. Some cultures preach enjoyment. Some cultures preach renunciation. What distinguishes the Vedik culture as sung by the RIGVEDIK HYMNS and as propounded by Sri Krishna in BHAGAVADGITA is the pleasing synthesis of enjoyment and renunciation. We find pleasure in enjoying the good things of life but the pleasure does not last if we are attached to them. The Upanishad declares: “Thus and thus alone by the method of ENJOYMENT - Non - ATTACHMENT - RENUNCIATION, you disentangle yourself from the coils of Karma”. This is explained and clarified by Sri Krishna in the Gita by saying that we should look upon the worldly life as false, insubstantial and impermanent and yet face its challenges and enjoy what it offers without being, attached to them. Krishna describes this idea as ‘secret’ because he knew that less intelligent persons, will find it to be ambiguous and even self-contradictory. But this is real YOGA. It is the secret of true happiness.