The nature of happiness
-
- Posts: 24
- Joined: September 24th, 2022, 10:41 pm
The nature of happiness
- LuckyR
- Moderator
- Posts: 7935
- Joined: January 18th, 2015, 1:16 am
Re: The nature of happiness
That's a very interesting opinion. Do you have any questions?cognition wrote: ↑September 30th, 2022, 11:22 pm All actions are done for the sake of the Self, not for external persons and things. It is not the existence of joy in the object as such that brings pleasure to the individual enjoying it, but the cooling of the fire of craving that is brought about by its contact with a particular object which is specially demanded by that special mode of desire generated in the ego-consciousness. The satiation is caused by a temporary turning back of the mind to the Self. The whole of the happiness of the world is, thus, purely negative, an avoiding of the unpleasant, and not the acquirement of any real, positive joy. This positive bliss is found only in the Self, the root of existence. The bustle of life's activity is a struggle to respond to the cry of the anxious ego which has lost itself in the wilderness of its separation from the Eternal Principle. The grieving self bound by fetters in the prison of life is ransomed by the knowledge of the non-dual nature of Existence.
-
- Posts: 762
- Joined: July 19th, 2021, 11:08 am
Re: The nature of happiness
Interesting private theory. What motivates you to publish your private theory?cognition wrote: ↑September 30th, 2022, 11:22 pm All actions are done for the sake of the Self, not for external persons and things. It is not the existence of joy in the object as such that brings pleasure to the individual enjoying it, but the cooling of the fire of craving that is brought about by its contact with a particular object which is specially demanded by that special mode of desire generated in the ego-consciousness. The satiation is caused by a temporary turning back of the mind to the Self. The whole of the happiness of the world is, thus, purely negative, an avoiding of the unpleasant, and not the acquirement of any real, positive joy. This positive bliss is found only in the Self, the root of existence. The bustle of life's activity is a struggle to respond to the cry of the anxious ego which has lost itself in the wilderness of its separation from the Eternal Principle. The grieving self bound by fetters in the prison of life is ransomed by the knowledge of the non-dual nature of Existence.
- Pattern-chaser
- Premium Member
- Posts: 8268
- Joined: September 22nd, 2019, 5:17 am
- Favorite Philosopher: Cratylus
- Location: England
Re: The nature of happiness
Altruism would seem to give the lie to this?cognition wrote: ↑September 30th, 2022, 11:22 pm All actions are done for the sake of the Self, not for external persons and things. It is not the existence of joy in the object as such that brings pleasure to the individual enjoying it, but the cooling of the fire of craving that is brought about by its contact with a particular object which is specially demanded by that special mode of desire generated in the ego-consciousness. The satiation is caused by a temporary turning back of the mind to the Self. The whole of the happiness of the world is, thus, purely negative, an avoiding of the unpleasant, and not the acquirement of any real, positive joy. This positive bliss is found only in the Self, the root of existence. The bustle of life's activity is a struggle to respond to the cry of the anxious ego which has lost itself in the wilderness of its separation from the Eternal Principle. The grieving self bound by fetters in the prison of life is ransomed by the knowledge of the non-dual nature of Existence.
"Who cares, wins"
-
- Posts: 24
- Joined: September 24th, 2022, 10:41 pm
Re: The nature of happiness
We have a physical constitution, a biological set-up, and a psychological pattern of thinking, which is also influenced by a social order. And more than all this, there is the natural set-up of things – the conditions, or the rules or laws of nature itself.
These things press upon us from every side for a particular reason of their own, and to yield to a pressure is a joy. This is a very interesting thing for us to understand. Whenever we yield to a very pressing, emphatic, annoying and irritating compulsion, to which we have been accustomed for a long time and which we have made a part of our nature due to a habitual frequenting with it, we immediately feel a sense of relief from tension.
Suppose you are carrying a heavy load on your head – perhaps two mounds of wheat. Upon throwing down the weight, you feel happy. A great joy has come because you have thrown down the load. You were unhappy due to the nervous tension caused by carrying such a weight, and when it is thrown, there is happiness. Can you call this happiness, merely because you threw off a load from your head? Very strange, indeed. When you had no load on your head, you were neither happy nor unhappy; you were not even thinking about it. Suppose I put one mound on your head, and then remove it – you would feel happy. The very moment I removed it, a feeling of happiness would come over you for no reason other than the act of removing the load and throwing it down. If the absence of a load on the head is to cause you happiness, you must be very happy just now. All of you must be terribly happy, because you have no load on your heads. How terribly happy you must be, and all because you have no load on your heads. But you are not happy. So why don't I just put a load on your heads, and then remove it? Immediately, you will be happy. Now, look at this strange, peculiar, causative factor behind your happiness. It is not merely the absence of a load that causes you happiness, in which case you would all be happy just now. I must put a load on your head and then throw it down – this is what you want.
This is what happens to us every day. A load is kept on the entire nervous system by social conditions, biological conditions and natural conditions, and we have no knowledge of any of these conditions. We are ignorant of social laws, ignorant of physical laws and ignorant of biological laws, because we are utter slaves of these conditions. An utter slave, a bonded slave, cannot know anything. He is simply an automaton, a machine driven by the master. The masters are these forces - the biological forces, the natural forces and the social forces. We have been born into these forces like bonded slaves. If my father was a slave, I am also a slave because I am his son – hereditary slavishness is continuing. So we are all slaves and slaves and slaves, to the core of our being. We are slaves to forces which are external to us, which compel us, impress upon us, press upon us, and we are forced to yield to this pressure. A yielding to a pressure from outside cannot be called an act of freedom.
So, a joy in life is not an act of freedom; it is slavishness that makes us happy. What a pity. Can this be called a pleasure when it is caused by a slavish mentality? When we yield to a compulsive external pressure, do we call it freedom? Where there is no freedom, can there be happiness? And yet, how is it that we are happy merely because of the absence of freedom? This is the reason why every so-called joy in life is followed by a real sorrow. Sorrow is at the back, and the joy is only an outer whitewashing that has been given to the real substance that is behind it, namely, subjection to forces, which is the essence of pain and sorrow of every kind.
The consequences of the pleasures of life are only sorrows. No person who is happy today can be happy always. Today's joy is followed by tomorrow's sorrow, because these pleasures have not been caused by real or true factors; they are unreal factors. Also, says Patanjali, there is an ensuing anxiety. When we are enjoying a pleasure, we have an anxiety in our minds, "Oh, something is not all right." Who is telling us that something is not all right? If something is not all right, how can it cause pleasure? How very strange, again. Everything is strange if we go into it.
A person who is possessed of an empirical happiness has an anxiety at the back of his mind, because there is a feeling that this pleasure may pass away. How long will it continue? How long we can be happy? We know that it will pass away in a very short time, and so there is a feeling of anxiety, "Oh, it is going. It is bound to go, and after that, what happens? I will be left at sea. I will lose it, and I will be unhappy once again." The pleasure comes like a lightning flash and vanishes, and because of the apprehension of such a possibility, the mind is unhappy even at the time of enjoying. A rich man is unhappy because of the fear that he may lose his wealth one day or the other. He knows very well: "I will lose it; something will happen." So even when we are possessed of a large amount of wealth, there is a subtle insecurity felt within which is gnawing away inside at the subconscious level. Therefore, the consequence of happiness is sorrow, and there is anxiety even at the time of enjoyment of the pleasure, so we are not secure; we are insecure, even at that time.
Another contributing factor is samskara, an impression produced in the mind at the time of an enjoyment. The mind is something like a gramophone plate on which there are grooves. If we sing a song into a microphone and arrange the mechanism in such a way that a copper plate is manufactured simultaneously for the production of a gramophone plate, the grooves are formed on the plate. Then we can go on replaying this plate and our song can be heard a million times. We have sung only once, and it can be repeated any number of times merely because of the grooves that have been formed on the plate. These grooves are the samskaras, the impressions formed by a particular experience. So, if there is an urge for the satisfaction of a particular desire, and it is fulfilled temporarily by false means as mentioned earlier, an impression is formed in the mind of that condition which produced that temporary happiness. Then what happens? There is a desire to repeat that happiness again and again on account of the presence of that groove in the mind, formed like a gramophone plate. A particular experience produces a particular groove in the mind. A samskara or impression is formed, a vasana is generated, and this groove becomes the cause for a further desire to repeat the experience indefinitely. No matter how many times we go on repeating it, we will never be satisfied. The second experience produces another groove that calls for further experience of a similar type which, when fulfilled, produces a third groove, a fourth groove, etc., until there are grooves and grooves and grooves in the mind, so that the mind becomes a dustbin. It is not at all a clarified, clean slate. It is a muddled something, a hotchpotch, a confused heap of unclear notions and hazy impressions of past experiences which have made us what we are today – hopeless individuals who can know neither the beginning nor the end of our life. So, the samskara that is formed as a consequence of a pleasurable experience is also a cause of sorrow, because that will be repeated again, not merely in this life but even in future lives. Pariṇāma tāpa saṁskāra duḥkaiḥ (II.15): For this reason, everything is painful in this world, says Patanjali. There is a last reason that he gives as to why things are unhappy, when he says, guṇa vṛitti virodhāt ca duḥkham eva sarvaṁ vivekinaḥ (II.15): These experiences are caused by the operations of the gunas called sattva, rajas and tamas. We do not know why we are happy, for instance. The happiness that we experience is due to a sudden and temporary surge of sattva guna in our minds, maybe for a flash of a second, and the pressing down of rajas and tamas due to certain reasons.
- AmericanKestrel
- Posts: 356
- Joined: May 22nd, 2021, 6:26 am
- Favorite Philosopher: Yagnyavalkya
- Location: US
Re: The nature of happiness
Thus said Sage Yagnyavakya in the Upanishad! It is not for the love of the wife, but for the love of the Self that one loves. And he goes for several more lines and finishes with It is not for the love of everything but for the sake of the Self that everything is loved.cognition wrote: ↑September 30th, 2022, 11:22 pm All actions are done for the sake of the Self, not for external persons and things. It is not the existence of joy in the object as such that brings pleasure to the individual enjoying it, but the cooling of the fire of craving that is brought about by its contact with a particular object which is specially demanded by that special mode of desire generated in the ego-consciousness. The satiation is caused by a temporary turning back of the mind to the Self. The whole of the happiness of the world is, thus, purely negative, an avoiding of the unpleasant, and not the acquirement of any real, positive joy. This positive bliss is found only in the Self, the root of existence. The bustle of life's activity is a struggle to respond to the cry of the anxious ego which has lost itself in the wilderness of its separation from the Eternal Principle. The grieving self bound by fetters in the prison of life is ransomed by the knowledge of the non-dual nature of Existence.
- AmericanKestrel
- Posts: 356
- Joined: May 22nd, 2021, 6:26 am
- Favorite Philosopher: Yagnyavalkya
- Location: US
Re: The nature of happiness
-
- Posts: 24
- Joined: September 24th, 2022, 10:41 pm
Re: The nature of happiness
Therefore, the finite being, which every one of us is, is in a world of great catastrophe, error – which is the running after things that are apparently outside. How could there be anything outside if the Ultimate Being is infinite? Thus, in your search for the objects of sense, you are denying the infinite – denying God Himself. Therefore, you are suffering because God Himself becomes your enemy. The infinite Self becomes the enemy of the finite self when it is behaving in a manner contrary to the nature of the infinite Self. If you think like God, God will think you, but if you think like a finite being wedded to the sense organs, you will end up in tragedy.
What is the tragedy? One thing is, the possessed object will leave you one day or the other. You can lose money, land, buildings, friends, husband or wife, children; everything can go at any time. You have a feeling inside that one day you will lose everything, and so the possibility of sorrow following a temporary enjoyment vitiates the enjoyment. So, even the temporary satisfaction of the sense organs is not a real satisfaction; it is a big blunder. Secondly, what happens is when your mind feels that the object of desire has been possessed, that mind which was moving outside itself – moving away from its centre towards the object – withdraws itself because of the feeling that there is no necessity now to go outside. Temporarily, for a flash of a second, the mind ceases to think of the object; it rests in itself. Then immediately, consciousness inside flashes forth in that resting condition of the mind; this is called sattva. You feel a deluded happiness when you have obtained the object of desire.
The object has not given satisfaction. Do not be under the impression that you have got satisfaction from the object. What has happened? The mind that was hovering around the desired object has ceased to function in an objective manner because of the feeling that the object has been obtained. When it ceases thinking in terms of an object, the rajoguna prakriti in the mind ceases, and sattva manifests itself. Sattva is like a clean mirror, and through that the Atman flashes forth. Immediately, you feel happy. That is why there is happiness even in sense satisfaction. Happiness is not coming from the object, it is from yourself only.
- AmericanKestrel
- Posts: 356
- Joined: May 22nd, 2021, 6:26 am
- Favorite Philosopher: Yagnyavalkya
- Location: US
Re: The nature of happiness
Not a private theory. The OP failed to credit the Brihadaranyaka Upanished for his thoughts. This is the sage Yagnavalkya advising his wife Maitreyi why wealth and fortune alone would not bring everlasting happiness or liberation. Only the knowledge of one’s own true self can bring true liberation from wants and the feeling of lack. Everything else only tries to fulfill this lack in our life which can never be satisfied but only creates more hankering which causes unhappiness and misery.stevie wrote: ↑October 1st, 2022, 4:52 amInteresting private theory. What motivates you to publish your private theory?cognition wrote: ↑September 30th, 2022, 11:22 pm All actions are done for the sake of the Self, not for external persons and things. It is not the existence of joy in the object as such that brings pleasure to the individual enjoying it, but the cooling of the fire of craving that is brought about by its contact with a particular object which is specially demanded by that special mode of desire generated in the ego-consciousness. The satiation is caused by a temporary turning back of the mind to the Self. The whole of the happiness of the world is, thus, purely negative, an avoiding of the unpleasant, and not the acquirement of any real, positive joy. This positive bliss is found only in the Self, the root of existence. The bustle of life's activity is a struggle to respond to the cry of the anxious ego which has lost itself in the wilderness of its separation from the Eternal Principle. The grieving self bound by fetters in the prison of life is ransomed by the knowledge of the non-dual nature of Existence.
- GrayArea
- Posts: 374
- Joined: March 16th, 2021, 12:17 am
Re: The nature of happiness
I think I agree with you. For the most part, at least. But we could also question this: Why do external persons and things satisfy the self to begin with, instead of the self satisfying the self? I still see this phenomenon as ironically altruistic (as much as it is egoistic). Perhaps the connection between the self and the external world is inevitable—as much as they self-sustain themselves, they sustain one another—being one in existence itself.cognition wrote: ↑September 30th, 2022, 11:22 pm All actions are done for the sake of the Self, not for external persons and things. It is not the existence of joy in the object as such that brings pleasure to the individual enjoying it, but the cooling of the fire of craving that is brought about by its contact with a particular object which is specially demanded by that special mode of desire generated in the ego-consciousness. The satiation is caused by a temporary turning back of the mind to the Self. The whole of the happiness of the world is, thus, purely negative, an avoiding of the unpleasant, and not the acquirement of any real, positive joy. This positive bliss is found only in the Self, the root of existence. The bustle of life's activity is a struggle to respond to the cry of the anxious ego which has lost itself in the wilderness of its separation from the Eternal Principle. The grieving self bound by fetters in the prison of life is ransomed by the knowledge of the non-dual nature of Existence.
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023