For far too long, humans have speculated on the enigma of happiness... and how to get there.
So much so, that the American Declaration of Independence enshrined an old Christian purpose of life, The Pursuit of Happiness, as its founding and grounding creed. In the process, America, modern America, has brought untold misery to much of the rest of the world.
Are the Americans happy?
Not as long as the Soviets were chasing them, not as long as the Chinese are pursuing them... for global dominance. Perhaps.
And certainly not as long as the measure of happiness is calculated in a person's credit score with the banks, that allows him to spend out of a lifetime's debt.
That brings us to the point, what does it take to be happy?
Through the ages, philosophers have speculated on the meaning and purpose of happiness, equating it with the idle preoccupations of hunting 'joy', chasing 'bliss', indulging in sadistic pleasures and masochistic denial, self denial.
Yet, nowhere has happiness come close to experiencing the "effulgent joy" that comes with the sudden spurt of orgasm, where time collapses into nothingness. In common parlance, you can call that the joy of living, an occasion that cannot be captured in words.
And yet, India's ancients captured that essence of "giving forth as the past ceases to matter," in a single word of hidden subtexts: "ananda".
The Upanishad, part of the world's oldest doctrine, the Veda, reveal the most ancient, yet succinct description of that enigmatic experience of ananda...
Ananda, it says, is the outcome of youthful countenance, physical vigour, sound education, quick deed, steady mind, strong body...
and abundant wealth.
And that alone is happiness for us, humans.
A hundred times that prerequisite is the ananda of the hero, the living god, a 100 times that is the ananda of the celestial.
The ananda of the one and only immortal cosmic power -- call him Brahma, Jehovah, God, al~Lah or Whosoever it may concern -- is 1e18 times of what it takes us to be happy. That is a billion-billion, or a quintillion, times what the richest guy on earth can aspire for.
By that measure alone, it makes little sense to be lost to oblivion in chasing bliss, as with the quaint mountain kingdom of Bhutan which measures its progress in gross domestic happiness.
By that measure alone, it makes immense sense for a Nordic nation to be counted among the world's happiest people by the gauge of human development index.
Where does all this leave us Indians?
Unhappy!
In denial.
Unaware that our own texts propounded first that it's happy to be rich.
Vasistha, the family teacher of archaic India's Iksvaku clan that gave us our first god king Ram, is known to have said to the young prince:
"Acquire wealth. This world is rooted in wealth. I do not see the difference between a poor man and a dead man."
Original Sanskrit:
II dhanam arjaya kakutstha dhanamulam udam jagat
antaram babhijanami nirdhanasya nrtasya ca II
A person who has it all, is able to give forth effulgent joy. And that alone must be our pursuit of happiness.
At the height of the Lanka war, Lakshman, the younger brother and lifelong companion of Ram, advised his hero:
"Purposeful action flows from the accumulation of wealth, from all possible sources, like rivers from a mountain. Men who lack wealth and power can never act in any significant way. The man who renounces wealth will continue to hanker after pleasure because he is accustomed to it. That will lead him to unethical practices. A wealthy man can support his friends and well-wishers who will then proclaim his wealth, his learning, his skills and his virtues. I do not know what you were thinking about when you gave up the kingdom.
Wealth gives access to pleasures and happiness, to fulfilment of desires. It sustains a man’s pride and allows him to cling to dharma."
When Ram returned to Ayodhya, and ruled a long time, his Ram Rajya became a wealthy state in the pursuit of happiness.
For far too long our society has stressed on the virtues of poverty and frugality with disastrous consequences, little appreciating that it is actually virtuous to be frugal-rich.
(c) Shubhrangshu Roy
India's Independence Day
15 August, 2024