Maha Yoga - Are We Happy?, (by Who)

January 6, 2006

Are We Happy?

(taken from MAHA YOGA, by WHO)

This world is to us a means to an end, namely happiness; at least it is so for most of us. Some there are who maintain that we are here for the sake of the world, not for our own sake. What they mean is that we ought not to live forourselves, but for the world. But that is quite another matter.The fact is that we live for ourselves in the first place, and for theworld also in so far as the good of the world happens to be also our own. That being the case, we shall have to consider, sometime or other, whether we have found happiness, and if not, then why; we shall have to think over the question whether, in seeking happiness in and through this world, we have not made some false assumptions.We begin life with the belief that happiness can be had in and through this world. And most people go on believing thus to the very end. They never pause and think; they do not take notice of the fact that their hopes of happiness have not been realised. How then can they consider the further question, why those hopes have been falsified? Not all the religions and philosophies of the world can do for us what we can do for ourselves, if we pause and think; for what we get from these is just so much mind-lumber — mere fashions of thought and speech which do not fit in with what we really are; for only what we find out for ourselves from our own experience can be of real use to us.

Further, we can find nothing of real value, even from our own experience, if we do not pause and think. If these religions and philosophies just hasten the day when we shall pause and think, they shall have done quite enough for us.What keeps us from pausing and thinking is the belief that we are getting — or shall soon get — from life the thing we want, happiness. The one thing that can possibly shake this belief is experience of the tragic side of life. We are told by theSage of Arunachala that this is Nature’s way; and he gives us the analogy of dreams to prove it; when we are dreaming of pleasant things we do not awake: but we do so as soon as we see visions of a frightful nature. A life of placid enjoyment is naturally inimical to serious thinking on serious subjects; and here the religious-minded are no better than the rest of us. Let us suppose that we have found life disappointing, if not quite intolerable — that we have found it so either on our own account, or as representatives of the whole race of men. We must suppose so, since these inquiries are only for those that have so found it. In fact many of us have found it so, and that not once, but again and again. What have we done each time? We have consulted priests or astrologers, or prayed to God; these are the popular patent remedies for the disease that afflicts us all. And these have only postponed the crisis. And this will be so till we pause and think .We sought happiness through all the weary years; again and again we were on the point of winning it and making it ours for ever; but each time we were deceived; but without pausing to think — as we shall now do — we simply went on in the same old way. If now we pause and think,— the thought will occur to us, that probably we set out on the quest of happiness without a right understanding of the true nature and source of it.

First let us look at happiness itself and find out what it is.

What we mean by happiness is something constant — something that will abide with us in all its freshness and purity so long as

we ourselves exist. What the world has given us is not that, but something transient and variable, and its rightful name is pleasure. Happiness and pleasure are two entirely different things. But we assume that pleasures are the very texture of happiness; we assume that if we can provide for a constant stream of pleasures for all time we shall secure happiness.But it is the very nature of pleasure to be inconstant; for pleasure is just our reaction to the impact of outside things. Certain things give us pleasure, and we seek to acquire and keep hold of them; but the same objects do not give equal pleasure at all times;sometimes they even give pain. Thus we are often cheated of the pleasure we bargained for, and find that we are in for pain at times; pleasure and pain are in fact inseparable companions.The sage of Arunachala tells us that even pleasure is not from things. If the pleasure that we taste in life werereally from things, then it must be more when one has more things, less when one has less, and none when one has none; but that is not the case. The rich, who have an abundance ofthings, are not exactly happy; nor are the poor, who have very little, exactly unhappy. And all alike, if and when they get sound, dreamless sleep, are supremely happy. To make sure of the undisturbed enjoyment of sleep we provide ourselves with every available artificial aid — soft beds and pillows, mosquito-curtains, warm blankets or cool breezes and so on. The loss of sleep is accounted a grievous evil; for its sake men are willing to poison the very source of life, the brain, with deadly drugs. All this shows how much we love sleep; and we love it, because in it we are happy.

We are thus justified in suspecting that true happiness is — as many wise men have told us — something belonging to our own inner nature. Sages have ever taught that pleasure has no independent existence; it does not reside in external objects at all; it appears to do so because

of a mere coincidence; pleasure is due to a release of our own natural happiness, imprisoned in the inner depths of our being; this release occurs just when, after a rather painful quest, a desired object is won, or when a hated one is removed. As a hungry street-dog munching a bare bone,and tasting its own blood, might think the taste is in thebone, so do we assume that the pleasures we enjoy are in the things that we seek and get hold of. It may be said that desire is the cause of our being exiled from the happiness that is within us, and its momentary cessation just allows us to taste a little of that happiness for the time being. Because we are most of the time desiring to get hold of something, or to get rid of something, we are most of the time unhappy.

The desire to get rid of something is due to fear. So desire and fear are the two enemies of happiness. And so long as we are content to remain subject to them,

we shall never be really happy. To be subject to desire or fear is itself unhappiness; and the more intense the desire or the fear, the keener is the unhappiness. Desire tells us, each time, ‘Now get thou this, and then you shall be happy.’ We believe it implicitly and set about getting it. We are unhappy for wanting it, but we forget the unhappiness in the effort. If we do not get it, we have to suffer. Neither are we happy if we get it; for desire then finds something else for us to strive for, and we fail to see how desire is fooling us all the time. The fact is, desire is like a bottomless pit which one can never fill up, or like the all-consuming fire which burns the fiercer, the more we feed it .

As desire is without end, so is fear; for the things that fear tells us to avoid are without end.Thus we come to this conclusion; so long as desire and fear have sway over us, we shall never reach happiness. If we be content to remain in bondage to them, we must, as rational beings, renounce all hope of happiness. But knowing that desire and fear are our enemies, can we not put them away by sheer will-power? The answer that experience gives is ‘No’. We may, like the Stoics, wrestle with them and succeed in overcoming them for a time. But the victory does not last, and finally we give up the fight.Without help from someone else, we feel, we cannot hope to achieve lasting deliverance. And who can help us, but one that has himself conquered desire and fear, and won for himself perfect happiness? Such a one we must seek and find, if we are sincerely and earnestly resolved to become free from these our foes— the foes of happiness. He alone can show us the path, and also give the power to tread the path; for he knows both the goal and the path. The ancient lore tells us — and we can now see that it does so rightly — that one that is in earnest for freedom must seek and reverently question one that is himself free. He that feels acutely the need for a remedy for the ills that are inseparable from life cannot help seeking someone who is competent to guide him aright; he can no more help it, than a sick man can help going in search of a healer.There have been men in the past, who had won trueh appiness for themselves and were thus able to help others also; what they taught their own disciples is recorded,more or less faithfully, in the scriptures of the religions they are supposed to have founded.

But the records as we now find them are incomplete, and more or less distortedby the want of clarity of those that wrote them down; the teachings were given orally; they were not written down till long after the Teachers had passed away. They cannot have for us the same value as the words heard from a living Teacher; and this not only because we can be sure that the teaching is genuine, but also — or chiefly —because the living Teacher is a centre of spiritual power, which we lack. Such a Teacher is the Sage of Arunachala.

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