#178 What is happiness?

People will remember hearing this –

Is it is a bird, Is it a plane..No.. It ‘s superman.

My variation of this.

Happiness is it an object, Is it a person..No, it ‘s you!

Let’s unpack this

Everyone wants to be happy. All the time. In all situations and in all places.

Since this is true across cultures, then it is worth enquiring into what is happiness?

Is Happiness an object ? Can it be perceived? Is Happiness an object that you can taste, smell, see, feel, hear? No. You can’t go to the supermarket and say – I will have 1 unit of happiness. Well, make it two. The salesperson will look at you strangely. There is no object called happiness.

Ok. Is happiness a quality of an object? Like a tall tree. A sweet chocolate. Then it could be subject to change. Still, how does one measure it? We do see overtly happy people who are smiling, laughing and their eyes reflect it. There is no quality called happiness that is centred on the object.

Ok. Is happiness a place? You go there you become happy. You come away from it, you become unhappy. While it is true that we may feel happy in our homes or in beautiful locations, in nature and so on, happiness does not seem like a place. If this was true people living in the Himalayas would not want to travel to the plains and vice versa. People living in Hawaii would not want to move to New York and vice versa.    

Ok. Is happiness a particular time? Clubs and Bars have what are called happy hours. To encourage more people to come in, discounts are offered because of which people drink more. You see your friend with a scar on the face and ask what happened? Oh, I got into an argument, was pushed to the corner of the table and bruised my head. And all this during the happy hour. Happiness is not a particular time. If you have an astrological bent of mind, although you will consider auspicious times during the day such as Vijaya muhurta, Ravi yoga or Abhijit muhurta, happinesss is not a particular time.        

Ok. Is happiness then a particular action? Hugging a person? Some people enjoy it while some just do not like to be hugged. So, happiness is not a particular action, either.  

Then, is Happiness a person? Well, we all know that ‘I love you’ in a few months or maybe years may give way to ‘I allow you’ to go your way and I will go my way.

According to the Upanishad, Happiness, Ananda is in you. Means what? Is it in the liver? In the heart? In the lungs? “No, that’s the physical body”. Then, where is it? “Within your mind”. Oh, mind is happiness? “Yes”. Then sorrow, where does it exist? “That’s also in the mind”. Then how can you say that there is happiness in the mind? And both of them are living together? How can opposites exist in the same place? Unless one is intrinsic, the other is a super imposition. Or you are neither happiness, nor sorrow. They all come and go. They are visitors, like you have pleasant guests and unpleasant guests.

But there are times that I forget myself and then I am happy. So, thinking is the problem. And for this people do all forms of meditation or try to knock off the mind into a no-mind state. An empty head is not happiness.       

When I see something beautiful I am happy. The object of sight is there. I the subject is there.

I listen to music, the object of hearing, music is there, I, the subject am there. On a recent flight, I am trying to catch some sleep but my chair is swaying. Because the fellow next to me is swaying. I look at him closely him. His eyes are closed and his ears are covered with headphones. He is fully absorbed in his Happiness. Subject and object disappear.

In fact, all of our known forms of happiness imply a fusion of the subject and the object. Suppose I ask, what do you experience in happiness? This fellow thought – I experience happiness.

I persist in my question – When you are happy, what do you experience? Do you experience an object other than you? Then it’s an object. Let’s say, you have been waiting to see this person since the pandemic. After two and a half years, with flowers in your hand you are waiting at the aiport. The person is coming out of the exit. You are so happy seeing this person. Do you experience happiness leaving the person, the object of your happiness and entering you the subject? 

Or you experience yourself as happiness. Happiness is always is centered on yourself, the subject.We always say I am happy. We never say. This is happiness.

Happiness is centered on you which means that there are no obstacles that prevent you to be happy. You are not denying happiness.

It envelops you. It envelops the object. Both are included in that happiness.

Therefore, we can say happiness is the fullness, enveloping, sustaining, pervading, both subject and object. This has far-reaching consequences. If I say happiness is not even centered on me. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with subject. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the object. Because object cannot be called happiness. Subject cannot be called happiness. And happiness includes the subject and the object. The distance between the subject and object disappears. But both have nothing to do with that happiness. It seems like when we are in places we like, with the people we like, with the objects we like, we are happy. Conditions apply. But, all these experiences are present because we have no resistance to the object.

A walk in nature makes most people happy. Why? Because the wanting, judging mind goes to rest. While gazing at the sky, we don’t say – some purple to the left and some orange in the right would make the sky colorful. Maybe the huge banyan tree should have veered a little more to the right. We don’t want the sky or tree to be any different. The sky or the tree is not an object of like or dislike. The subject, I is in harmony with the object. If indeed people, hours of the day, object were not objects of intense like or dislike for us, might it be possible that we stopped putting limits on our happiness?    

The fusion of the subject and object takes away any alienation from the whole. You long to be the whole, because you are small and insignificant in your own estimation. For a moment, we forget our judgments. This is experiential happiness. You forget the judgment, and there is wholeness. That is the truth of happiness.

That fullness of the subject and object can never go away from you.

Because what is truth doesn’t go away. In fact, what doesn’t go away is the truth. If it goes away it is not true. Which is the place it will go to? From whom it will go away? To which place can it go to?

If subject is Ananda, the subject, I should be happy because the subject is always there, in all experiences. But we find that the subject is sometimes happy, sometimes sad. No object is Ananda, we have already seen. The subject is not opposed to Ananda. Object is not opposed to Ananda. Both the subject and object are present when you are happy.

There is that which always exists which pervade both the subject and the object with no lack. What is that?

Satyam means Reality which always exists in all periods of time is you.

Is that Satyam, inert by any chance? No it is Jnanam, pure being which illumines everything.

You are self-evident and hence everything becomes evident to you. How come you are self evident?

Because you are Satyam, Jnanam, ever existing and ever illumining.

Oh perhaps this is a onetime event?. No.

You are that Satyam Jnanam, Anantam, the existence that is ever present, ever conscious and ever limitless.  limitless Consciousness which is neither a part nor a property nor a product.

Then why does one experience waxing and waning happiness? Because of Adhyasa, a projection of the qualities of the subject onto the object. Happiness is projected onto the object, the person, the action, the place and so on.

How so? I am fullness, not understood and in my ignorance, I associate happiness with the object or person.

You argue, But person x makes me happy. Sure.

You project the Ananda that is your very nature onto the object and experience the object as a desired object. It is much like the dog that is chewing on a dry bone, the gums are bleeding although the dog does not feel it. Instead, the dog believes that the bone is really juicy while enjoying his own blood.

Every experience of happiness is our own nature being expressed. It might be experienced in eating the chocolate chip icecream called Vishaya Ananda or in delighting in some domain knowledge called Vidyananda or aligning the body correctly in an asana called Yogananda or listening to Vedanta called Brahmananda.

While we recognise that experiences come and go, Ananta, one’s limitless nature which is not subject to any lack, which is present in both the subject and the object but is neither the subject nor the object, continues to shine.

Does this mean that because I am Ananda, fullness so I must always be smiling? Not at all. Ananda that is me, pervades the mind but is not defined by a mood – happy or otherwise.

Ananda that is Anantam, fullness that is limitlessness is not defined by either the subject or the object.

With the addition of subject and object there is no addition to Ananta, the limitless. What cannot be added to increase limitless, is the limitless. Any addition doesn’t alter the limitless. Any subtraction doesn’t alter the limitless. Like mathematical infinity. The infinite plus anything is still the infinity. Infinite minus anything is infinity. No quantity will make a difference to infinity. The limitless remains limitless. And the entire jagat, means entire world including your body, mind, sense complex, it remains limitless. Negate the whole, still limitless. This is Ananda.

Ananda, fullness is your very nature.

And so, Happiness…Ananda… is it an object? Is it a person? No it ‘s you.