True Happiness

By B. Srinivasa Rao, M.A., B.L.

THAT men should seek to be happy is both natural and logical. Yet when we survey the course of mankind, we are struck by the observation of Voltaire–“Man is born free, but everywhere is seen in chains.” The cause is not far to seek. Man’s first instinct is self-preservation. This entails search after food, raiment, and shelter. To stabilise his amenities he seeks society, and in return for the pleasures he expects, binds himself voluntarily to serve it. By efflux of time, however, the joys he expects bear a poor proportion to the obligations society entails–social, political, and religious.

As men seriously ponder over this ratio, they come to different conclusions. Some believe that the chains above referred to are not in fact handicaps, but bonds of love, designed to ensure happiness. Others hold they are fetters in truth and have smothered our joy and corroded our soul. To decide who is correct depends on what we mean by happiness.

Obviously it cannot be gratification of the senses. Equally it does not consist in intellectual pursuits. It should comprehend every urge of man, and set him at rest vis-a-vis the world. Finally in attempting to gain the whole world, he should not lose his soul. In other words, true happiness connotes permanence of joy and harmony of relations.

Herbert Spencer defined life as a continual adjustment of internal relations to external relations. Such an adjustment should not be temporary in character, or selfish in outlook. It proceeds out of the “discovery of our soul in the surrounding world, and surrendering to its spontaneity,” to use the language of Tagore, “with the innocence of children who gather pebbles and scatter them again.”

Both in the eastern and western systems of thought, a course of mental and moral discipline has been insisted on, to facilitate such an outlook and ensure such an achievement. It therefore behoves us to examine its rationale.

Western philosophy starts with Socrates who exhorted every Athenian to “know thyself.” Plato, succeeding him, developed the idea, and enjoined on men the search after “the good, the true, and the beautiful.” His disciple Aristotle simplified and systematised the same–which till the last century held the field, on the continent of Europe.

The discoveries of Freud, Adler and Jung in the province of psychoanalysis, the collation of “varieties of religious experience” by Prof. James, and the monumental treatises of the French philosopher Bergson, have struck a new note, and have enlarged the scope of human psychology, and focussed attention on the ‘subconscious’, and the role of intuition in understanding reality.

Religious-minded people like St. Francis of Assissi, have purified western thought and life; alike by their example and precept they have demonstrated the feasibility of the Ten Commandments, as well as the Sermon on the Mount.True happiness and spiritual life were, in their opinion, convertible terms.

But the discoveries of modern science, the evolution of natural sciences, the emergence of Darwin and Karl Marx, the increasing conflict between the Papacy and the State, the gradual deterioration of the Clergy, and the inevitable unrest among the laity have stood in the way of bridging the differences, and it looked as though they were relegated to the first rung in their ladder. Europe was faced with a wave of atavism, for some time, and in sheer despair the shrewder among them have been looking to the East for light and solace.

Indian thought starts with the assumption that the function of philosophy is to destroy human misery and promote perennial happiness. It is based on the Gita, the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras, compendiously known as Prasthanatrayam. The Gita is a complete code of Ethics and enjoins on every member of our society, performance of the duties pertaining to this station in life. The Upanishads reflect deep psychological experiences of our forefathers, and their conclusions bear the imprint of abiding joy. The Sutras constitute a logical collation and correlation thereof: and their pith and substance is “to know God, know man first, and to know man rely on the Scriptures.”

To fall on the Scriptures, a course of elaborate mental and moral discipline has been prescribed, which, though ostensibly adequate in the days of our Rishis, cannot honestly be said to be either feasible or advisable at the present day to all and sundry, in its entirety, at any rate.

The world has completely changed since the collation above referred to. Nations with different cultures have infiltrated into our land. Nor is this to be regretted. Our Scriptures have always distinguished between the essential and the non-essential. The latter may present a diversity but the former always discloses unity, of life, light, and love. The shrinkage of space, and the concomitant shifting of our frontiers to the ends of the earth, furnishes the best opportunity of fulfilling the injunction of the Gita “to see Him in every one and every one in Him,” and thereby demonstrate the unity of man.

Alone among the nations of the world who suspect each other’s bonafides, we set about seeking our real happiness in the love and service of our fellowmen, and the observations of the Chinese philosopher, Chang Tzu, regarding the man of perfect virtue are to the point:

“--In repose has no thought, in action no anxiety. Within the four seas when all profit, that is his pleasure. When all share, that is his repose. Men cling to him as children who have lost their mothers. They rally round him as wayfarers who have missed their road. He has wealth, and to spare, but knows not whence it comes. He has food and drink, more than sufficient, but knows not who provides it. Such is the man of perfect virtue.”

Such is also the truly happy man–for, by all accounts, true happiness and perfect virtue are the obverse and reverse of the same coin. Such a one is at rest as much with himself as with the world. The silent joy of his soul synchronises with the clamorous rapture of the multitude. In the innermost depths of his being he sees that formless One which continually expresses himself as many. Our Upanishads declare, he alone who has realised that his heart-cavity is in fact the abode of God realises eternal happiness–none else.