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True happiness is such a
rare commodity that the whole of the world is
continuously seeking it and failing to find it. All
the people, who we consider to be the best in their
fields, are seeking it too and failing to acquire it.
The most brilliant of the scientists, the most gifted
of artists, the most talented of poets and authors,
the wealthiest businessmen, the most powerful rulers,
the greatest achievers in any field - all of them have
been striving for it all their lives and failed to
have it. Why is happiness such an elusive thing? Is it
that it cannot simply be achieved? Or is it that it is
not where all of us have been looking for it?
If you pause to give it
a thought it is very easy to see that somehow we have
all been missing the point. It is either that we have
all been looking for happiness at the wrong places or
that it is simply not possible to achieve happiness.
The answer is not very easy. But it is obvious that if
the whole of the humanity has been trying to find
something throughout the history and failing to
acquire it then something must be very wrong about the
concept we have of happiness.
Let us try to delve a
bit deeper. What is it that we consider happiness?
This is how I see it:
Happiness is what you feel when what you want to
happen happens.
And if this definition
of happiness is correct then we can conclude that
unhappiness is what we feel when what we want to
happen does not happen.
These definitions look
obvious enough but for the most of the people they are
not. At least not so clearly defined in their minds.
It would therefore be better if we stop to ponder over
these definitions.
How can we achieve
happiness?
We must realize that for
most of the problems, the solutions are often simple
and obvious enough if one understands the problem
clearly. Even more surprising is the fact that the
solutions mostly lie in the problem itself. It is true
in the case of happiness too.
Let us consider the
above definition carefully. The main keyword in the
definition is "want". The whole trouble starts
when we want something. Every moment of our lives we
keep on wanting something or the other. If we could
make a list of all the things we want in our lives
since childhood to death, including trivial as well as
very important, all the paper in the world perhaps
would not be enough for this purpose. Only a small
percentage of all our wishes is fulfilled in spite of
all our endeavours. The percentage of wishes, which
remain unfulfilled, keeps on growing with time. As a
result, as we grow older, we become more and more
unhappy. We grow tired of life. The blessings, which
our lives and the whole existence keep showering upon
us, gradually lose their charm. The frustration, of
failing to fulfill most of our wishes, sets in. We
start feeling weighed down. The feeling that the whole
life is somehow conspiring to keep us unhappy grows.
Life becomes full of miseries. We keep stumbling from
one failure to another.
The solution, then is
very obvious. We must explore the possibility of a
life of no desires or minimum desires. Desire is a
seed which grows fruits of unhappiness. Actually
the trouble is that we demand too much. We keep on
demanding incessantly. It seems that we do nothing
else but keep producing desires and then keep
struggling to fulfill them. The only solution to this
problem is to break out of this cycle of desires and
struggles. If one does not desire anything, he has no
chance of getting unhappy due to failure in fulfilling
his desire.
One may argue that a
life of no desires will be bereft of pleasures. That
it will become colourless and dull. But this premise
is not true.
Firstly, we must realize
that the world does not and cannot function as per our
whims and fancies. We are too insignificant in the
scheme of the existence. We can have control only over
our desires and not on the factors necessary to
fulfill them. During winter, we may desire that the
sun shines a bit more in the sky but sun has no
obligation to behave as per our desires. We may desire
that every other human being around us acts in
such a way that his acts do not hurt us at all and
only make us happy, but the other person has his own
desires and compulsions and he will act accordingly.
We may desire that whenever we ask for something we
get it, but the person or the force who has the power
to grant our wishes may not wish to do so or may not
be able to do so because of his or its own
compulsions. Are we ourselves always willing or able
to fulfill the demands of others around us? If not,
then how can we hope that our demands must always be
fulfilled. In fact if we pause to consider it
carefully then it will become obvious that there
always is more probability of our desires not getting
fulfilled. Then why keep desiring constantly and
exposing ourselves to unhappiness?
Secondly, it is a
blunder on our part that we consider happiness and
pleasure to be the same. They are not same. Pleasure
is there all around us for the taking. Since we have
become obsessed with our desires we have ceased to
notice sources of pleasure and as a consequence fail
to grab it when it is available. Pleasure is the
essence which we extract from things we have. We may
desire to visit the most beautiful sea beach in the
world. When we are finally able to make it to that
beach we feel happy. This happiness is the consequence
of the fulfillment of our desire. But when we look at
the waves rushing towards us, at the golden sand
spread over a large area, the wind on our faces, the
riot of colours in the sky while sun is setting or
rising, the feel of sea water on our skin, what we
feel is pleasure. To derive pleasure it is not at all
necessary to desire. When we pass along the green
fields while traveling, we do feel pleasure looking at
them though we had not specifically "desired" to see
them. When we look at anything beautiful we feel
pleasure. Pleasure is always around us without our
asking for it. It is not a consequence of our
ambitions and endeavors. It is simply waiting all
around for us to pause and pay attention. It is only
that we are always so obsessed with our desires and
wishes and the struggle to fulfill them that we have
forgotten how to pleasure ourselves. Almost all of the
time we live inside our minds, either making plans to
fulfill our present desires or ruing the desires
which could not be fulfilled and in this process
miss out all the pleasures lying all around us.
Thirdly, We do derive
pleasure when our desires are fulfilled but for every
desire fulfilled there are numerous others that remain
unfulfilled. We have to consider carefully whether we
are not paying too high a price, in terms of all the
frustrations we experience as a result of failures,
for a few fulfilled desires. If the answer is yes,
then the conclusion is obvious.
Actually, happiness and
unhappiness are two sides of the same coin. They are
part of the same package. If one asks for one he
leaves himself susceptible to the other. The desire for
happiness is like asking only for the light and not
for darkness. But there is not much difference between
light and darkness. It is matter of degree only. We
choose and therefore get disappointed. What we should
do is only look for the pleasures all around us.
Whatever comes our way we should try to extract all
the pleasure possible from it.
If we delve still
deeper, we will realize that it is not really
happiness which we should seek. We should try to avoid
unhappiness. When we achieve something, the payoff is
not as great as the pain we suffer if we fail to
achieve it. It is this pain of failure, pain of
frustrated desires which is of greater significance to
us. It is actually like good health. One can only
define health as an absence of diseases. In order to
have good health we strive to avoid diseases. You
cannot purchase or achieve good health directly. You
have to take steps which keep your body free of
diseases. Then only the organs of body keep
functioning properly and you experience good health.
Similarly, when one destroys the root cause of
unhappiness the problems are over. And the root cause
of all our unhappiness is DESIRE.
If one can stop
desiring, if one can take life as it comes, Then only
one can be free of unhappiness.
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