Happiness Within

My own Self in the form of ladies and gentlemen,

Let us examine this evening where happiness resides, whether happiness lives in the palace or the cottage, whether happiness dwells in the charms of women or in things that gold and silver can buy. Where is the native home of happiness? Happiness has also a history of its own. These are great travelling days; steam and electricity have annihilated time and space, great travelling days these are, and everybody writes an account of his travels. Happiness also travels. Let us have something of the travels of happiness.

We start with the first glimpse of happiness that a child has in his infancy. All the happiness in this world is for the child located in the skirt of the mother, or in the bosom of the dear mother. 

A year passes and the happiness of the child changes its centre; it moves on to something else. The residence of happiness now becomes the toys, the beautiful toys, pollies and dollies. In the second state, the child does not like the mother so much as he likes his own toys. Sometimes the child quarrels with the dear, dear mother, for the sake of toys, for the sake of dollies.

A few months or years more and no more is his happiness in the pollies and dollies; it has shifted its centre again, it is no longer located in these things. In the third stage, when the child grows up to be a boy, happiness is located for him in books, especially in story books. 

The schoolboy enters the college, and in college life, his happiness is found in something else, say, in scientific books or philosophical works or the like. He reads them for sometime, but his happiness has travelled from books to the longing of seeking honours in the university; his desire is to reach the residence of his happiness, the headquarters of his joy. 

The student comes out of the university with flying colours. He gets a lucrative post and the happiness of this young man is centred in money, in riches. Now the one dream of his life is to accumulate riches, to be rich. He wants to become a big man, to amass a large fortune. When he gets some wealth after working in the office for a few years, his happiness passes on into something else. What is that? Need that be told? It is woman.

Now the young man wants to have a wife, and for the sake of a wife, he is ready to spend away his riches. The mother’s skirt no longer gives him any happiness; the toys have no charm for him; the story-books are cast aside, and they are read only on those occasions when they are expected to give him some insight into the nature of that dream of his life—the woman. He is all a sacrifice for the sake of his wife. Hard-earned riches are cast to the winds for the sake of petty whims of what is now the headquarters of his happiness. 

The young man lives for sometime with the woman, and lo! the happiness is sighted a little yonder. The pleasure he could derive from the thought of his wife in the beginning, he no longer gets now. Taking the case of an ordinary youth, an ordinary youth of India, the happiness of the youth now passes from the woman on to the coming child. Now a child becomes the dream of his life. 

In the expectation of the child, concentrates all the happiness of the youth. The child is the sixth stage in his travel of happiness, in the march of joy. The youth is then blessed with a child. His joy knows no bounds; he is full of spirits, he springs up to his feet; he is elated; he is, as it were, raised above the earth many feet; he does not walk, he swims in the air, so to speak. His soul is full of happiness when he gets a child. The intensest happiness is when he sees the face of his child. The happiness of an ordinary man has reached its zenith. After that, the youth begins to decline in spirits, the child becomes a grown-up boy and the charm is lost.

Let us now examine whether happiness really dwells in objects like these—the mother’s skirt, dollies and pollies, books, riches, woman, child, or any object and anything of this world at all. Before proceeding further, let us liken the travelling happiness to the travelling Sun-light. Sunshine also travels from place to place. It is at one time shining over India, and at another time on Europe. It travels on. When shades of the evening fall, see how rapidly the Sunshine shifts away from place to place. 

There is a beautiful story about a woman in India. She lost her needle in her house. She was too poor to afford a light in her house, so she went out of the house and was searching it in the streets. A gentleman inquired from her what she was doing. She said that she was searching for her needle? The gentleman asked, "Where did you lose the needle?" She said, "In the house." He said, "How unreasonable it is to search in the street a thing which was lost in the house!" She said that she could not afford a light in the house and there was a lantern in the street. She could not hunt in the house, she had to do something, so she must hunt in the street.

This is exactly the way with the people. You have the Heaven within you; and yet you are searching pleasures in the objects in the streets, searching that thing outside, outside in the objects of the senses. How strange!

Conclusion

Realize the Heaven within you, and all at once all the desires are fulfilled, all the misery and suffering is put an end to.

Lo! the trees of the wood are my next of kin.

And the rocks alive with what beats in me.

The clay is my flesh, and the fox my skin.

I am fierce with the gadfly and sweet with the bee.

The flower is naught but the bloom of my love.

And the waters run down in the tune I dream.

The Sun is my flower, up hung above.

I cannot die, though forever death

Weave back and fro in the warp of me.

I was never born, yet my births of breath

Are as many as waves on the sleepless sea. Oh, Heaven is within you, seek Happiness not in the objects of sense; realize that Happiness is within yourself.

Om! Om!! Om!!! 

Swami Rama Tirtha 

True Happiness: Swami Krishnananda

The word "sadhana" in Sanskrit means "an effort exercised towards the achievement of a purpose." In this sense, every effort is some kind of sadhana, because it leads to the achievement of some intended goal.

Here in the context of what is known as spiritual sadhana, what is it that we are aiming at? This question has to be put, each by oneself, to one's own satisfaction. What do you want, finally? This clarity should precede the bestowing of thought on any other type of accessory in sadhana. If the goal is not clear, any means adopted to the goal will fall flat, like a huge structure raised on a weak foundation. Let each one of you put a question to your own self, "What am I seeking in the end?"

There were great sadhakas in ancient times, great masters who sought the nature of the Ultimate Reality of life. One of them is the well-known Narada Maharshi. He was a master of every kind of learning available in the world. He went and prostrated himself before a great master known as Sanatkumara, the first-born of Brahma the Creator. The great master asked him, "How is it that you have come? What do you require?"

"Master, I have no peace of mind."

"Let me hear what you know already. After hearing from you an answer to this query, I shall tell you what I can."

Narada opened his book of knowledge and narrated a list of the sciences and the arts in which he was proficient. "Master, I know every science and every art in the world: metaphysics, theory of knowledge, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, psycho-analysis, aesthetics, ethics, sociology, political science, culture, religion, philosophy. There is nothing that I do not know, but I have no peace of mind. I do not know myself."

The great master replied, "All this that you have learned is a bundle of words, with no content inside. You have smeared your personality with a veneer of apparent knowledge, but you are quite different from that which you have gathered on your personality. The shirt is not the person and, therefore, your learning is not what you are."

Well said, therefore, is the answer of Master Sanatkumara to Narada: "Your learning is a brilliant radiance before you, as it were, but this radiance is muddled and is contaminated by the very process of its passing through the thick cloud of ignorance, of which you are yourself made."

Imagine for a moment: who are the happy and completely satisfied people in this world? Go on a world tour; go to every country, meet all people and ask, "Are you happy?" The answer you receive from these people is worth knowing. Sorrow gnaws into the vitals of human nature, and it is whitewashed by a smear of egoistic assertion of adequacy of oneself. As we cannot live like puny nothings in this world, we put forth great effort to parade in the eyes of people, and before our eyes also, that we are not what we are. Even if you have fallen down, you will say that your nose is not hurt.

That you cannot find a single satisfied individual in the world is a matter for deep consideration. What is wrong with us? How can we live by knowing that everything that we do and think and speak is wrong? We require the grace of a power beyond us to liberate us.

We did not push ourselves into this world with our efforts; we were pushed by somebody else. Similarly, we will be pushed out of this world without our wanting it. If our coming and going is not in our hands, what else is? The beginning is not in our hands; the end also is not in our hands; how do we arrogantly conclude that the middle of our life is in our hands? That is equally beyond our control.

The entire life is superintended over by something which we are not capable of knowing by the apparatus of knowledge available to us. This is briefly the introduction to the liberating discourse that Maharshi Sanatkumara gave to Narada.

The difficulty is in not only knowing things outside, but also in knowing our own selves. Put a question again to yourself: What kind of person am I? In the midst of many people, you will not be able to think in this manner. Go to your room, shut your door, put down the telephone, close your eyes, and think for yourself: What kind of person am I? A revelation will emanate from yourself which is contrary to what you thought you are.

Narada is educated by Sanatkumara like a great intelligent psychologist schoolmaster. He came to the astonishing conclusion that our happiness does not lie in acquiring anything at all. It is finally in the acquisition of our own selves. The previous considerations have shown that we can own nothing in this world, not even this body, or our friends and relations. Yet, we do exist, clamouring for an ultimate solution to our perilous predicament.

Then what does Sanatkumara say as a conclusion? "Yo vai bhuma tat sukham." Here is the final Supreme Court judgement on the nature of human happiness: The Infinite is bliss; the finite is wretched. As everything is finite in this world, including our own body and personality, everything is ruled over by utter sorrow of the inadequacy of the finitude of personality. The inadequacy of the finite individuality is overcome by the infinitude that is reigning supreme within the deepest core of every finite being. There is an ocean roaring behind the drop that we appear to be on the surface of perception. That roaring ocean is the Infinite Existence.

The Infinite is not a large accumulation of particulars. One has infinite wealth, we say. This is not the sense in which we have to understand the word "Infinite." Infinite wealth is an accumulated group of finitudes, but many finites do not make the Infinite. Therefore, the richest man, the ruler of the world, is not happy. The Infinite is That, outside which nothing can exist. You can behold nothing outside That; you will behold nothing outside yourself. Nothing will be heard, nothing will be understood through the intellect as external to its own self. This is the great, glorious Infinite. Religions call this state God; philosophers call it the Absolute, Truth, the Ultimate Being. All these names are associated with this wondrous, miraculous, enrapturing, magnificent Truth that we are something more than what we project ourselves to be in our social life, in our public life, even in our private life.

A time now has come, therefore, to ransack our personality threadbare, and be honest to our own selves before we are honest to other people. To thine own Self be true. 

Swami Krishnananda

Man wants to be happy: Swami Satchitananda

If you observe carefully, throughout nature you will find one common goal in everybody and everything—even in the atom. All are searching for happiness. In the case of human beings you see hundreds of efforts of various forms. The common purpose behind all these efforts is the search for happiness.

The goal is approached by many in different ways. Some people want to be happy quickly, so they take shortcuts and get temporary happiness, but borrowed joy comes and goes. The happiness that we seem to be getting by our daily efforts is fleeting and mixed with a lot of troubles, worries, and unhappiness. Happiness cannot come without unhappiness before and after.

It’s better to say, “I am happy,” than, “I want to be happy.” The minute you say, “I want to be happy,” that very want disturbs the mind. And suppose the want is fulfilled? How many people go crazy over a small piece of paper, a stamp printed some one hundred years ago? They pay thousands of dollars to get that piece of paper. They give value to it and struggle to obtain it. If you are caught up in this, you’ll say, “I can’t be happy without the stamp.” So you pay the price. Then you say, “Ah, I got it.” It’s simple enough. First you said, “I want it.” After all the effort you say, “I got it.” Where are you now? The same place you were before you wanted it. Happy.

You were happy before you wanted the stamp. The moment you wanted it, you became unhappy. And the moment you got it, you were happy again. Where did the happiness come from? The thing by itself didn’t give you any happiness. You regained the happiness when you took the want back or when you fulfilled the cavity or depression created by the want.

When we finally tire of searching for happiness outside, we sit quietly and analyze and realize that true and lasting happiness can never come from outside. It can’t come because it simply is. You are Happiness personified. You are that Supreme Bliss. You are that Joy. You are the image of happiness. God is the one who is always happy, and you are the image of God.

Swami Satchitananda