The Happiness We Have Been Seeking
"One's love for happiness is eternal. Love for everything else in the world is temporary."
Everyone in the world tells lies - white lies. People say, "I love my mother, father, wife, or husband," but this is not entirely true.
A question naturally arises: if that is so, why do people genuinely weep when their parents, spouse, or loved ones die? Their tears are certainly real.
It is true that when someone close to us passes away, we sincerely grieve. However, the root cause of our sorrow is our beginningless attachment to the world, and it is this attachment that becomes an obstacle to attaining God.
To understand this, we must seek the answer to two questions:
- Why does this love arise? and
- What kind of love is it?
We are all travelers in this world. Each of us arrives at our destined time and departs according to our own karma, at the moment determined by God:
jīvitaṁ maraṇaṁ jantoḥ svenaiva karmaṇā
We never love anyone without a reason. The love we feel is not for the other person's happiness; it is for 'our own' happiness. In other words, worldly love is conditional and mixed with self-interest.
It lasts only as long as compatibility remains. As long as someone's thoughts, actions, and behavior are favorable to us, we love them. The intensity of that love depends upon the extent to which they serve our self-interest. If someone fulfills our interests completely, we love them completely. If they fulfill only half of our expectations, our affection also diminishes. The moment they become unfavorable, that love disappears in a moment.
This is business, not love.
For example, we ask a shopkeeper for a sari. He says, "It costs two thousand." We have only one thousand. Immediately he replies, "Sir, please go somewhere else." His affection for the customer ends the moment his self-interest is no longer served. In the same way, worldly love is based on self-interest.
There are countless examples of this in the world. A father leaves his property to someone else, and his own son shoots him. Or consider another example. A father asks his son for a glass of water. The son immediately runs to bring it. The father proudly says, "What a wonderful son! He is just like Shravan Kumar, the ideal son." Five minutes later, the father asks him to bring his spectacles, and the son refuses. Now the father exclaims, "A demon has been born!" A moment ago he was Shravan Kumar; now he has become a demon.
In contrast, there is one love that exists naturally, without any reason and without anyone teaching us. At all times and in every situation, we instinctively love happiness.
Even in the mother's womb, the soul longs for happiness. The moment it is born, it cries. We seek happiness while sitting, standing, sleeping, waking, crying, and laughing. Although these actions are completely different, the objective behind every one of them is the same - to attain happiness.
Yet everyone from whom we seek happiness in this world is a beggar themselves. No one possesses true happiness here. Everyone deceives one another by trying to obtain happiness from the other.
Only God, and the saint who has attained God, possess true happiness. Even the celestial beings of heaven do not possess it.
Happiness is our intrinsic nature because we are parts of Bliss itself -
Amṛitasya vai putrāḥ -
We are the children of God.
The Vedas describe God as -
yo vai bhūmā tatsukhaṁ, ānaṁdo brahma, raso vai sa:
He is happiness, He is bliss.
divyo deva eko nārāyaṇo mātā pitā bhrātā nivāsaḥ śaraṇaṁ suhr̥d gatiḥ
He alone is our mother, father, brother, abode, refuge, friend, and ultimate destination.
All beings are His parts. He alone is everything to us.
Yet we have forgotten that He is not merely 'also' our everything - He 'alone' is everything to us.
According to our karma, we take birth in countless species. Sometimes we become a dog, sometimes a donkey, sometimes a cat. In every birth, we acquire new parents, children, and relatives, and then we leave them behind.
putra dārāpta bandhūnāṃ saṅgamaḥ pānthasaṅgamaḥ -
Just as fellow passengers meet temporarily during a train journey, our relationships in this world are also temporary. We meet one another for a short time. When someone's designated station arrives, they must get off the train. Likewise, every soul enters this world at its predestined time and departs when the time allotted by God comes to an end.
If these relatives were truly ours, they would remain with us forever. But this world is merely a travellers' inn.
Therefore, our love for happiness is eternal because we are parts of God, who is Bliss itself. On the other hand, our love for people in this world lasts only as long as they remain favourable to us and continue to fulfil our self-interest.
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