Hello Dear,
Few questions came in my mind after reading this question,
Is happiness same for everybody?
Do we know happiness?
Have we ever tried to see how dependent & conditioned our happiness is?
why it happens that when two people or teams play one gets happy other does not?
Can happiness be there without sadness?
From where do we get our benchmarks for happiness?
Lets understand happiness first.
Our happiness is trained (conditioned) happiness. Can we even call this our happiness? But the fellow will say, ‘I am feeling happy.’ When the very thought of when to feel happy has been drilled inside you by somebody else, can you even claim that this is ‘my’ happiness?
Do we even have the right to say, ‘I am feeling happy’ when my happiness is a totally conditioned and trained happiness? I have been trained to feel happy in certain situations and the other side is trained to feel happy in just the opposite situations. So, there is no truth in this happiness. You feel happy when ‘X’ happens, and the other feels happy when ‘Y’ happens, because you have been trained to feel happy when ‘X’ happens and they have been trained to feel happy when ‘Y’ happens.
Now, suppose one kid from this side accidentally came over to the other, when he was three years old. He would also feel happy when ‘X’ happens. Right? There is nothing intrinsic in this happiness, nothing innate. It’s just that you are born in a particular land, you are surrounded by a particular type of people who have constantly told you that this is what is meant by happiness. When this happens, start laughing. This is happiness. ‘When the Indian batsman hits for a six, start laughing’, this is happiness.
All this is conditioning, not really happiness. We do not know what is it to be happy. You go to school, and as a kid when you go to school, it is just another place where you meet other kids, and there is a building, there are toys and teachers. And as you are six-eight years old, you are told that if you come first in the class then it is a matter of great celebration.
‘You will get a new dress, you will get a cake and we all will laugh’. So, what is the message that goes to the kid’s mind? What is happiness? He concludes that coming first in the class is happiness. He picks up a journal and on the cover page of the magazine is a photo of a board-exam topper and he is smiling, everyone is congratulating him. Now the child himself has not written the board exams, but he looks at all those faces and comes to the conclusion that this must be called as ‘happiness’.
‘O! everyone laughs when someone tops the board-exam, so surely, this must be happiness’.
You are being trained into believing that this is what is happiness. Then you go to watch a movie in which there is a man living in a huge mansion, riding a mammoth car, eight-wheels and it is being displayed with great fanfare. What is the conclusion that your mind draws? That this must be happiness.
‘O! so happiness means having a great palace, lots of money and this big car’.
Then after that you move in life and what do you see? Somebody gets married and after a couple of years of marriage, they post a photograph on social networking sites in which they are holding a baby in their hands and the woman is smiling from ear-to-ear. Now you do not know anything about having a baby, you have not had a baby yet, but you look at the face of the woman with the huge smile and what do you infer? ‘This must be called as happiness. Otherwise why is she happy?’
You go and ask that woman, ‘Why are so happy about it?’ She will say, ‘Because everyone told me that this is happiness, having a baby is happiness.’ And if you ask her, ‘Who told you?’ She will say, ‘Those three people told me.’ You go to those three people and ask, ‘Why did you tell her that this happiness?’ They will say, ‘Oh, everyone told me that this is called as happiness.’
Is it really happiness? And if this is really happiness, then why does it fade away so soon? Why does it always have sadness lurking around? In fact, why does it require sadness for its presence, if it is really happiness?
Have you noticed that you cannot be happy unless you are sad? The deeper is your sadness, the greater is the possibility of happiness.
To get more clarity on it kindly visit: http://prashantadvait.com/2015/01/13/hap...
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