Ponder for a moment why you do anything you do and unravel the mystery until you cannot go any further. For example, maybe you want a high paying job. Why? So that you can live in luxury, of course! But still, why? What’s the deeper motivation? Because luxury is your definition of happiness. Or maybe you just think it is right now.
Someone else’s definition of happiness may be resolving world hunger or simply being peaceful. But irrespective of the definition of happiness, the desire for it is universal – not just among human beings but all living beings. We are ingrained with the ideal that we each should pursue our own happiness, be it through wealth or altruism or any other lifestyle.
But we can question even deeper – why do we want happiness? What is it really? Where can we find it and how can we get it?
The Vedas state:
“Anando brahmeti vyajanaat”
Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj explains the verse in this lecture:
“It is not that happiness is in God; God is happiness”
The Vedas define happiness as an entity that is unlimited in quantity and everlasting. As souls we are a tiny part of that happiness, and it is our natural tendency to merge with it, just as rivers naturally merge with the ocean.
So is the happiness in the world not enough? The quantity of happiness derived from doing the same activity repeatedly decays over time. Today riding a bicycle makes us happy. A few days later we get tired of all the physical labor and want to upgrade to a car. Then our neighbor buys a Mercedes and we want to own a better car to outdo them. What makes us happy today will not make us happy in the future. The truth is that objects of the world by themselves do not cause happiness or sorrow – it is our own mental association that does so.
It is our nature to seek the infinite and everlasting happiness that is God, but our mind has firmly decided that this happiness can be found in the world despite our experience. Spirituality in Sanatan Dharma or the Vedic paradigm is simply defined as the pursuit of that happiness, having gotten which, we have nothing left to pursue or acquire. But how can we access this happiness, especially when God is not visible? Can we subdue Him by force into giving us happiness? By definition God is all powerful, which negates the possibility of subduing Him. How about stealing? Once again, God is omnipresent and omniscient and is a witness to all our activities, thus making theft impossible. The last option is to beg for this happiness, as a newborn child cries for its mother, with total faith that God will provide. In other words, we must surrender to Him.
Jagadguru Kripaluji Maharaj says that countless saints have preached this wisdom and shown us the way since time immemorial. But to one who has no faith or shraddha even the words of saints will not make a difference. So what can be done?
He again says: detachment from the world is the basis of faith. Detachment can arise from prior knowledge that material happiness is temporary. However, it is rare to find people who have naturally come to this conclusion through their intellect – usually it is because they are already highly evolved souls. For most others, God reserves His power of material energy called Maya. Maya is the reason that souls have the desire to run after happiness in the world. However, being a power of God, she pushes souls forcibly towards God by showing them that worldly happiness is illusory. When you encounter a reversal in fortune – financial loss, death, illness, a missed promotion, a broken relationship – you can be certain that this is the work of Maya. It is a common misconception that material gains are a sign of God’s grace. The true grace of God, however, is evident in situations that create detachment from the material world and facilitate the search for God. It is a sign of His love for us, even though it appears to be anger. For souls who have not yet come to the conclusion that there is no happiness in the world, Maya is the final push towards accepting the spiritual knowledge distributed freely by God-realized saints.
Detachment arising from reversals in fortune creates faith. Faith creates the desire for more knowledge, which leads to more faith. Through increasing faith, the soul surrenders completely to God, at which point God grants eternal happiness to the soul.
