Happiness

Divine Life Society Publication: Chapter 3 The Chhandogya Upanishad by Swami Krishnananda

Every effort is motivated by happiness. This is not merely a practical fact, but also a psychological truth. The whole process of creation, manifestation and dissolution, evolution and involution, the entire activity of the cosmos is an urge of happiness. It is happiness that is trying to recover its own consciousness and establish itself in its own pristine all-comprehensiveness. It is this that is called activity. It is this that is called enterprise and aspiration. It is this that is also called cosmic evolution. Happiness is at the back of everything. Happiness alone is.

Normally in our workaday world, we are accustomed to think that happiness is an achievement, by means of an effort, in the direction of an object which is regarded as the location of happiness. It is strange, no doubt, that different subjects endeavoring in the direction of happiness have different objects wherein happiness is supposed to be lodged. This is the reason behind a doubt that can arise in the mind as to where happiness lies.

There seems to be a flaw in the doctrine that the mind alone is the source of all happiness, because this doctrine is refuted by the very activity of the mind every day, which moves towards things other than its own self, viz., the objects in the world around us.

But the other doctrine that the world is the source of happiness also seems to be refuted by a deeper analysis that no object seems to be capable of attracting the attention of everyone at the same time, nor even one and the same subject at all times. So, there seems to be some mystery behind even the assumption of the presence of happiness in the objects outside.

Happiness is not in the mind, nor is it in the object, taken independently by themselves. Sanatkumara says, "My dear Narada, happiness is not anywhere and yet it is everywhere; it is in a completeness of Being that you can find happiness."

Even the whole world put together is finite. It cannot be regarded as infinite, because it is limited by space, time, and limited by the very presence of inner discrepancy within its own self. Then where is happiness? Not in anything that can be conceived by the mind or perceived by the senses. Happiness cannot be in anything in this world, because everything in this world is finite. The infinite Reality that is behind all finitudes, that alone can be regarded as complete by itself, because That alone is independent of any kind of contact with the finitudes. That infinitude is the source of happiness whose reflection in some manner or other in the finite objects of sense becomes responsible for our belief that happiness is in the objects outside.

"Happiness is completeness, happiness is the totality, happiness is in the Absolute," declares the great master Sanatkumara.

If that alone is happiness, why is it that we feel happiness in objects of sense? "Nalpe sukham asti—the finite things do not contain happiness," says Sanatkumara to Narada.

It is completeness of being that is the source of happiness. But where is this completeness of Being? It is not in the objects of sense, not in the union of one and two, or in the union of many. The Absolute, Fullness alone is Bliss—bhumaiva sukham.

Excerpts from:

Happiness – Chhandogya Upanishad by Swami Krishnananda

Archives - Blog