TRUE HAPPINESS
B. SRINIVASA RAO
That men should seek
to be happy is both natural and logical. Yet when we survey the course of
mankind, we are struck by the observation of Voltaire–“Man is born free, but
everywhere is seen in chains.” The cause is not far to seek. Man’s first
instinct is self-preservation. This entails search after food, raiment, and
shelter. To stabilise his amenities he seeks society, and in return for the
pleasures he expects, binds himself voluntarily to serve it. By efflux of time,
however, the joys he expects bear a poor proportion to the obligations society
entails social, political and religious.
As men seriously
ponder over his ratio, they come to, different conclusions. Some believe that
the chains above referred to are not in fact handicaps, but bonds of love,
designed to ensure happiness. Others hold they are fetters in truth and have
smothered our joy and corroded our soul. To decide who is correct depends on
what we mean by happiness.
Obviously it cannot be
gratification of the senses. Equally it does not consist in intellectual
pursuits. It should comprehend every urge of man, and set him at rest vis-a-vis
the world. Finally in attempting to gain the whole world, he should not lose
his soul. In other words, true happiness connotes permanence of joy and
harmony of relations.
Herbert Spencer
defined life as a continual adjustment of internal relations to external
relations. Such an adjustment should not be temporary in character, or selfish
in outlook. It proceeds out of the “discovery of our soul in the surrounding
world, and surrendering to its spontaneity,” to use the language of Tagore,
“with the innocence of children who gather pebbles and scatter them again.”
Both in the eastern
and western system of thought, a course of mental and moral discipline has been
insisted on, to facilitate such an outlook and ensure such an achievement. It
therefore behoves on us to examine its rationale.
Western philosophy
starts with Socrates who exhorted every Athenian to “know thyself’. Plato,
succeeding him, developed the idea, and enjoined on men to search after “The
good, the true, and the beautiful” His disciple Aristotle simplified and
systematised the same-which till the last century held the field, on the
continent of Europe.
The discoveries of
Freud, Adler and Jung in the province of psychoanalysis, the collation of
“varieties of religious experience” by Prof. James, and the monumental
treatises of the French philosopher Bergson, have struck a new note, and have
enlarged the scope of human psychology, and focussed attention on the
‘subconscious’, and the role of intuition in understanding reality.
Religious-minded
people like St. Francis of Assissi, have purified western thought and life;
alike by their example and precept they have demonstrated the feasibility of
the Ten Commandments, as well as the Sermon on the Mount. True happiness and
spiritual life were, in their
opinion, convertible terms.
But the discoveries of
modern science, the evolution of natural sciences, the emergence of Darwin and
Karl Marx, the increasing conflict between the Papacy and the State, the
gradual deterioration of the Clergy, and the inevitable unrest among the laity
have stood in the way of bridging the differences, and it looked as though they
were relegated to the first
rung in their ladder. Europe was faced with a wave of atavism, for some time, and in sheer despair
the shrewder among them have been looking to the East for light and solace.
Indian thought starts
with the assumption that the function of philosophy is to destroy human misery
and promote perennial happiness. It is based on the Gita, the Upanishads and
the Brahma Sutras, compendiously known as
Prasthanatrayam, The Gita is a complete code of Ethics and
enjoins on every member of our society,
performance of the duties pertaining to his station in life. The Upanishads
reflect deep psychological experiences of our forefathers, and their conclusions bear the imprint of
abiding joy. The Sutras
constitute a logical collation and correlation thereof; and their path and
substance is “to know God, know man first, and to know man rely on the
Scriptures.”
To fall back on the
Scriptures, a course of elaborate mental and moral discipline has been
prescribed, which, though ostensibly adequate in the days of our Rishis, cannot honestly be
said to be either feasible or advisable at the present day to all and sundry,
in its entirely, at any rate.
The world has
completely changed since the collation above referred to. Nations with different
cultures have infiltrated into our land. Nor
is this to be regretted. Our Scriptures have always distinguished between
the essential and the non-essential. The latter may present a diversity but the
former always discloses unity, of life, light, and love. The shrinkage of
space, and the concomitant shifting of our
frontiers to the ends of the earth, furnished the best opportunity of fulfilling
the injunction of the Gita “to see Him in every one and every one in Him,” and
thereby demonstrate the unity of man.
Alone among the
nations of the world who suspect each other’s bonafides, we set about
seeking our real happiness in
the love and service of our fellowmen,
and the observations of the Chinese philosopher, Chang Tzu, regarding the man
of perfect virtue are to the point:
“In repose has no
thought, in action no anxiety. Within the four seas when all profit, that is
his pleasure. When all share, that is his repose. Men cling to him as children
who have lost their mothers. They rally round him as wayfarers who have missed
their road. He has wealth, and to spare, but knows not whence it comes. He has
food and drink, more than sufficient, but knows not who provides it. Such is
the man of perfect virtue.”
Such is also the truly
happy man for, by all accounts,
true happiness and perfect virtue are the obverse and reverse of the same coin.
Such a one is at rest as much with himself as with the world. The silent joy of his soul synchronises with the
clamorous rapture of the multitude. In the innermost depths of his being he sees
that formless One which continually expresses himself as many. Our Upanishads declare, he alone who
has realised that his heart-cavity is in fact the abode of God realises eternal
happiness none else.