Note : People uninterested in philosophy,please stop reading this here.
Note 2 :Su, Lazy lavender… I want you people to read it..
“Are you happy now?”
This is one of the very first questions asked to a person who is deemed successful in his endeavor. When faced with such a question, my answer would be “What do you mean by happiness?”. I’ve always tried to decipher what is happiness but never got around finding it.
There are plethora of explanations as regards to what exactly gives happiness to oneself, but most of them seem inaccurate from their very base of assumptions.
One is born, one is educated and one leads a life. He sets a goal for himself at every stage of life and tries his level best to achieve it.And when he achieves it, he is bound to be happy.Is it happiness? No, its nothing but contempt. The same feeling a salvage beast derives from the moment it sets it eye on its prey to the moment it has endeavored it. The mere process of seeing a goal, working towards it and achieving it gives a thrill to oneself that keeps life going but it isn’t happiness by any means.
Oh, the argument comes up, as it is bound to. Is a person self satisfied with what he has happy? Be it a rich millionaire who has given up the greed to earn anymore and has decided to spend his earnings on the most expensive of lifestyles or a poor farmer whose daily meal is well earned, are they happy?? Not again. Theres an undefined characteristic about happiness that is very hard to earn.
Happiness is love. Popular but not true again. Love is that feeling what you get when you are sitting in a restaurant, holding the hands of your beloved, forgetting that a world exists beyond both of you and with that gentle squeeze of hand and a sparkle of tear in your eye, you let your parter know that there is nothing in this world that is more important than them. Love can be the closest thing in this world to happiness but it never completes it.
What is happiness. It is the truest feeling of owning own self, the whole world and all its people inclusive. Happiness is a feeling of the whole world being your child, and you the mother, deriving contempt from its growth, correcting mistakes for its own good and when the entity “you” cease to exist and selflessness is the virtue that is true,except that the selflessness loses its meaning as “I” ceases to exist. That true sense of happiness has been sought by man for many centuries and few achieved it. It is named nirvana by some and it is named Godliness by many and but its pure happiness, the highest degree of it and the path to which I wish to seek if not now, at some point in my lifetime.
It is the path to eternal bliss.
Cogito Ergo Sum 
Innnnnsult! I will not read this post… as a sign of protest 😛
@sagaro: dude… read it… i want ur comments too.. i know u r pheelings master too 😛
i am really not into ready philosophy. but the new looks good, and the updated about page is great!!!
@santosh : thank you very much 🙂
You talk a lot about contempt. Why is it contemptuous for one to set personal goals and work towards achieving them? Because it’s personal and not ‘self-less’ and therefore not the path to eternal bliss? 🙂
Anyway, when there is no self, consequently the doctrine of selflessness ceases to exist. And there can never be the absence of self. That is what I believe.
Even in doing things not for yourself, but for others – you do derive pleasure/satisfaction/gratification/happiness/nirvana from it, which is ultimately to your psychological [spiritual?] benefit.
Lastly, happiness like ALL other emotions manifests itself in a way inherent to an individual. There’s no generalizing it’s form or meaning. It’s pretty pointless to try and pin a definition so to speak to it. 🙂
I heard someone call out my name, and I came galloping here. Thanks Vignesh.
Before I begin my response to the post, let me bring out my claim – Happiness, like satisfaction, like success, is subjective. It depends on the person looking at it; the way he perceives it.
What is happiness? I’d agree with Suraksha; there’s no definition for happiness that would do justice to the emotion. In a rough sense, you could say that bliss would be having the peace of mind, and something more than that; the buoyant spirits; that which won’t be compromised or lost because of the daily happenings in life; untouched by anything outside, outside of the self. “It is the truest feeling of owning own self, the whole world and all its people inclusive.” – Good point.
(My thoughts are a lot similar to Suraksha, hence I’ll try and avoid repetition. ‘Self-less’ doesn’t exist. But discussing more on it would not be relevant to this post. I’d like to point however, that ‘owning one self’ doesn’t fit with being ‘selfless, and inevitably comes along with personal goals, and the effort put to reach them. Let’s give this discussion a separate place, and I can talk more.)
Where bliss is found or how it can be reached – depends on the individual. The points that you’ve given – achieving goals, money, love – are all means, the paths taken by different men to find happiness. They are not the end, just the means. If someone’s crying out ‘I have money. I have the friends and relatives who dote on me. I am successful. But I still am not happy’, we tend to call him greedy, we tend to call him a hopeless fool, but the reason is simple isn’t it? All that he has cant take him to where he longs to go.
The thing that would gratify a person, to each, his own. There’s no one solution that would wipe away all our fears; our miseries for us to reach Nirvana.
In fact, I don’t even think one has to ‘seek’ happiness; go in search of it. Isn’t it always around us, in us, in every bit of thing we do? Instead we let fear get the better of us, blinding us to the very existence of happiness in us. Its inside, inside the head; not in some himalayan mountain, where we need to meditate for years to reach nirvana. Sure meditation gives the peace of mind (I haven’t tried though), but that’s only a helping step, probably the starting step, but not the only one. Satisfaction and happiness aren’t mutually exclusive, but the latter is not guaranteed by the former. A complete understanding of oneself should do some help getting rid of the fear, and ultimately lead us to finding our happiness. The means I mentioned above, would help do the same, rid us of the fear, leaving us feel secure and comfortable. It would not be discovering happiness; just uncovering it. 🙂
@su :
1. agreed trying to define happiness in its true form is difficult.
2. setting goals for oneself is contemptuous, i still stand by it… because as u pointed out its for oneself but not because its not selfless. If u get the hang of what i mean to say, its contemptuous as its a thrill that drives us to our goals… i hardly see any happiness in it… its my very personal feeling always… yes… viewpoints vary… so point fighting over it..
3. y is that there is always “the me” factor. I believe at the highest levels it can be lost… i’m open to debate in this case 🙂
@lazy lavender : very good points 🙂
one main thing… i wasnt discussing ways to attain nirvana or eternal bliss here… u people seem to have gone too far into it…. i was just defining what isnt happiness and what is…
“In fact, I don’t even think one has to ’seek’ happiness; go in search of it. Isn’t it always around us, in us, in every bit of thing we do?”
“It would not be discovering happiness; just uncovering it.”
– very very correct… i truely agree with it…. but completing it… just the hard n long thing….
i would love to see both of you writing about it though…
n lavender… plz also the post about selflessness which you wanted to talk about 🙂
its good vignesh nice thought..no doubt…ofcuz my ideas r similar so i wud definitly accept to them! well… i hav tried defining happiness for a long time too! but what i concluded is, i feel happiness is a practice, so no point tryin to define it or explain or even feelin it…jus practice it…n without feelin it!!! thats confusin…but true according to many philosphical books, to be in sat chit ananda, we shudnt feel it…. jus be it! u knw wat iam tryin to say…personify urself as happiness! and that one “it is truest feelin of owning own self n whole world and people inclusive” — is really good! well…comin to that, that state will be the start of it…n it will cease wen u attain the state of sat chit ananda.
let me add this as well, very blunt…emotionless….but true– happiness comes by practice(here practice is a verb unlike in previously used it was a noun then). u have to be conciously practicin it…i am sure nobody will accept to it. but thats my belief…. well one exception– the bhakti rasa– that alone is full of emotion, full of joy, full of bliss…that which takes us to eternal bliss! the practice of otherwise is a concious practice–with meditation..it starts with a desire to be happy…which ultimaltely leads to nirvikalpa samadhi or the state of eternal bliss or satchitananda!
other happiness or joy that wihich is derived from love, satisfaction would be a temporary happiness but i wud not deny by sayin as non-happiness-state, but wud say…a state of ephemeral or short lived happiness!
and yeah the “me factor” that i will suportin vignesh…. it can be lost. and that according to hindu custom is the ultimate goal of life. “ask “what is I” to urself, am I only a combination of material substances? the vedas declare “No”. iam a spirit living in the body. i am not the body” said Vivekananda in his speech at US in 1893. this “I” factor will be the start…thinkin that this world consists nothing but “i”… and the everything is “my” imagination …takes us to samadhi…. later it dilutes to the state where in the universe is am imagination of “i”…. next the “i” ceases to exist.
as suraksha already mentioned– its jus one of the paths n not the only direction!
@meghs : well i was really close to what u r trying to say i mean “the truest feeling of et al…” but being the happiness itself does certainly open a new line of thought…. i’ve missed it…. n the thing u mean by being bluntness is i hope the same thing i mean by “owning the whole world n looking from a mothers point of view” to be more precise extremely stoic… correct me if i’m wrong….
n ephemerality of other pleasures i agree…
n omg r u really saying that it all starts and ends with “I”… i’m just dumbfounded… its like reading ayn rand… anyway…. very nice thought..
p.s : i never noticed theres a post dealing wid the same subject in ur blog till now;)
hehe… mmm yes… dats the most interesting part of the paths to moksham… “i” starts n ends! n yet there are umpteen number of paths…the best chooses you! oh, soul…hold on to it n reach the feet of the almighty!
n that stoic thingy….yes …i dint notice the meaning it holds wen u said mothers view..very very true!!! really a good one.
nice da! really!
I ve also written a very similar thing today!
very similar da!! but for the conclusion!11111111111111111
nice da! really!
I ve also written a very similar thing today! very very similar but for the end
Vignesh,
Have written what I felt about ‘being happy’. You may like to check my blog.
Selflessness will soon follow. 🙂
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