Happiness

Happiness is an eternal desire.  People have always been in the quest happiness.  But happiness can be found only when happiness of all is placed above that of an individual.  One cannot find happiness out of deprivation, imbalances, and unfairness.

In history many great personalities have spoken on happiness and the views of some of them are:

Confucius (600-400 BC) said, “Morality and righteousness, and traditional values cause happiness.  One should uphold the importance of family values, specially the virtues of goodness and benevolence.”

Laotse (600-400 BC), who lived same time as Confucius, said; “Man cannot escape from reality.  For happiness, man should be part of this world but without considering this world is his.  For happiness one should be simple and become one with others at a deeper level.” 

Pythagoras (562-496 BC) said, “The immortal soul in its infinite reincarnation is only a part.  It is a part of the cosmic divinity.  The highest happiness for man is the realisation of man through philosophical reflection of cosmic divinity.”

Plato (427-347 BC) said, “Justice creates harmony and harmony is the basis of soul’s well-being.  Thinking, desire and will are the activities of the soul and when these three are in harmony within and with others’ and their environment, the happiness will be achieved.

Highest good should be the ultimate aim of man and it can be achieved with four virtues: (1) wisdom, (2) bravery, (3) temperance, and (4) righteousness.”

Aristotle (384-322 B.C) said, “Happiness means life flourishing; a feeling of life flourishing and the state of mind at that instant.  That happy state of being arises from individual experience of rightly putting the inborn talent, the natural acceptance, into practice.  Happiness should be earned with exercising one’s abilities and potential to the fullest extent.

Happiness requires two basic skills: (1) the ability to focus on happiness-producing thoughts that brings about peace and harmony, and (2) the ability to evaluate events and situations as positive, instead of negative and remain undisturbed when confronted with downturn events or disasters.”

Epicure (341-270 BC) said, “Whom enough is too little, nothing is enough.  It is the positive thinking and reflection on positive goal of life supports living a balanced life.” 

On happiness Epicure said, “The lower soul is blown up by good fortunes and thrown down by misfortunes.  The sole aim for a person’s life is to achieve happiness, by destroying listlessness.” 

Plotin (204-270 BC) advocated, “The highest aim of a person is to reunite his soul with the divine soul from whence it came.  Happiness arises by liberating the soul imprisoned by suffering and enabling it to return to its home in the light world.  The individual soul is the arena where the eternal rivalry between good and evil takes place in search of happiness.”

Augustine (354-430 AD) wrote, “Happy is the active, gifted, zealous, the person who likes doing what he does and is capable of doing.”

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) wrote, “As we all want to be happy so we will behave morally well and impeccably, as morality is constituent of happiness.”

To be happy we have to have inner positive energies to transform and transcend unsatisfactory emotional state of being.  That positive energy lies in right understanding of self and environment we live in. 

In the pursuit of happiness, the danger lies in romanticising happiness and narrowing its domain to faith, belief and traditions.  Happiness is not gotten as gift; we have to work for it. 

By inherent nature we are motivated in life when we are connected to the sense of purpose and we find happiness in engaging to that sense of purpose.  But we continue to miss out the right sense of purpose due to lack of right perspective for our life.  It is the right perspective of life that actually determines happiness.

Lord Buddha says, “Happiness is experienced in living a life with positive thought and emotion renouncing the feeling of deprivation.  Happiness is experienced with a trained mind, a mind that can be controlled at will, a mind that does not go on to subjects that are conducive to tension.  Happiness can be experience with a mind that remains aware and mindful, keeps on developing itself, discovering itself and within itself the secret of life, the problem of life and the reality of life.  Happiness can be experienced with a pure mind as the root of all virtues is the pure nature of mind.”