SELF - KNOWLEDGE
IN OBJECT, YOU WILL NEVER GET JOY
The business of life is the business of happiness.
Because we feel limited with respect to happiness,
everyone every minute is fully engaged trying to attain greater happiness.
When I take a job, fall in love, read a book, eat a meal, go to the dentist, pray or meditate,
I expect the activity and/or its results to make me feel better than I do at the moment.
No matter how good I feel I can always imagine a state of greater happiness.
If I’m feeling miserable, my actions will be calculated to remove or lessen the misery,
When a better state is inconceivable,
I refrain from activities that might compromise it.
An investigation of the world’s tropical beaches reveals countless people,
flat on their backs, content as clams, not moving a muscle.
Everything we do is for the sake of happiness. Some accumulate money,
not necessarily for itself, but for the happiness it supposedly brings.
Others seek happiness in life-threatening sports which produce a "high," an aliveness beyond the "normal" state.
We ingest chemicals, pills, drink, and drugs to change our state of mind for the better.
Belief in God is never intended to make one miserable.
Nobody gets married to suffer.
At first glance activities seem to produce happiness.
I jog, garden, meditate, or ski and feel happy.
But if happiness were in an activity the activity should produce happiness for anyone performing it. Giving away millions makes philanthropists happy.
Letting go of a dime is anathema to a miser.
A granny who knits for fun will not take pleasure in bungee jumping.
Can happiness be achieved getting and possessing certain objects?
A man divorces his wife because she seems the cause of his misery but before
the ink is dry on the divorce decree she finds herself in the arms of another - who sees her as his darling bundle of joy.
A steak makes a carnivore happy, a vegetarian unhappy.
In spite of this fact, we work overtime to get happiness through objects and activities.
Some try to attain happiness through the mind.
Poets, writers, artists, and intellectuals find happiness playing with thoughts and ideas,
feelings and emotions.
Professionals subject their minds to years of discipline with the conviction that intense and sustained happiness can be found in knowledge.
A tiny minority, "spiritual" questers,
try to find happiness by disciplining themselves in prayer, meditation,
chanting, breathing, or "processing" to achieve altered or "high" states of consciousness.
The psychological world believes happiness can be attained by removing psychological barriers: disturbing experiences and memories, self-limiting concepts, and unforgiving thoughts lodged in the subconscious mind.
A Text from RamCharitManas by Saint Tulsidas
"Yahin tana kar phala bishaya ne bhaayi." (Manasa 7:44:1).
“Sensuous enjoyment, brethren is not the be-all and end-all of human existence;” (Manasa 7:44:1).
It is not to become immersed in enjoyment of pleasures - happiness-unhappiness
producing materials are the situations we are faced with,
whereas the happiness and sorrow we face within is out of our foolishness.
To get rid of this foolishness, the main responsibility lies on the man himself.
Just like if we do not know a language,
then to get to know that language we can learn and study it.
Similarly, there is no happiness and sorrow in us,
that knowledge can be learned by all of the mankind.
It is only to attain this knowledge that this human body has been received.
Therefore on receiving this human body, one is not to become happy and unhappy,
rather we have to rise above happiness and unhappiness.
What does rising above mean?
It means neither happiness nor sorrow can reach us.
Unknown Author`s Note
"Money can buy you Solitude of Surrounding,
but not Peace of Mind"
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