Arereyy...what sort of question is this? Do we have answer for the above question? Of course, now we are living...but for what? For what we are living..? We may generalize it by telling "we are living for happiness". But, do we know what this happiness meant for us..? Let us examine where the happiness lives?
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. All the happiness is located there.
This is the first stage on the main road which happiness has to travel along,
the mother’s skirt, the mother’s bosom, say. To the infant there is nothing
in this world which brings happiness so much as the mother’s bosom. The child
hides his face behind the skirts of the mother and there he says, "Look!
Look! Find me out! Where am I?" and he laughs heartily. He laughs with all
his heart and soul. Books are meaningless to the child; treasures are useless to
him. Fruits and sweets have no taste for the child that has not yet been weaned.
The whole world of pleasure is, for the child, concentrated there.
A year passes and the happiness of the child changes its centre; it moves on
to some thing 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. This is the case with an
ordinary intelligent child; sometimes happiness is in other things, but we are
taking an ordinary case. Now the story books engross all the love and affection
of the boy. Now the toys, dollies and pollies lose their charms; story books
take their place, and he finds them beautiful and attractive. But happiness
travels on.
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. He wants to have
a child.
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; His soul is full of happiness when he gets a child. In the sixth stage, in the
moon-faced child, the happiness of the grown-up youth has reached in a way its
acme. 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. The happiness of this man will go on traveling from object to object,
sometimes located in this thing, at other times residing in that things.
Suppose if something bad happened to our loved one, then our fawning starts, we shall give away all the wealth that we have accumulated, we will give up all & we will try to restore 'that' source of happiness which we are afraid of loosing. We are willing to give up everything for the sake of the our loved one, and it is
worthwhile to sacrifice all our property, all our wealth and all our interest
for the sake of that "Source of Happiness". Everything is being sacrificed for
the loved one, but is not the Loved one itself being sacrificed for something higher, or
for something else? Wealth is given away, riches are given away, property is
given away for the loved one, but the loved one is being given away for something else., for something higher, and that something else must of necessity be sweeter than
the Loved one/Wealth/richness etc.,that something else must be the real center of happiness, must be
real source of happiness, and what is that something?
..That something is the "Self." This is the source of happiness, Not for the sake of the child is the child dear, the child is dear
for the sake of the Self. Not for the sake of the wife is wife dear; not for the
sake of the husband is husband dear; the wife is dear for the sake of the Self;
the husband is dear for the sake of the Self. This is the truth.
People say
they love things, But this cannot be; Nor for
the sake of the wealth is wealth dear, wealth is dear for the sake of the Self.
When the wife who was dear at one time, does not serve the interests of the
husband, she is divorced; when the husband who was dear at one time, does not
serve the interests of the wife, he is divorced. When wealth does not serve the
purpose, it is given up So goes the father, mothe, brother, Child etc.,
Thus we can come to the conclusion that the seat of happiness, the source of
happiness is somewhere within the Self. The home of happiness is somewhere in
the Self. If you want to realize love, If you want to realize an object, if you want to get anything, do not
hunt after the objects. Go within you. Realize this and you
will see that what you are looking from outside is already within you..you will see that all the objects of
love, all the bewitching and fascinating things are simply your own reflection
or shadow.
Seek not Happiness in the objects of sense; realize
that Happiness is within yourself.
-Rama
