Definition of Happiness in Life
How do we define happiness? A spiritual woke person would say it is a state of blissfulness independent of any external conditions. A family person would say it’s a state of contentment derived from seeing his family members healthy and cheerful. A businessman would see it as a state of fulfillment seeing his business grow. A diseased person would imagine his quest for happiness to feel free from bodily/ mental pain. In short, there is not a fixed definition that would cover the entire spectrum of human beings. But one thing that’s fixed is everyone is chasing it. Happiness seems to be the purpose of life in its raw essence.
In the physical realm, its manifestation is in wealth, health, intelligence, courtship, etc. All such circumstances where the sense organs are pleased and derive enjoyment. It’s not only limited to pleasing sense organs alone but happiness comes with satisfaction to emotions. For example, arousing respect for an elderly person by enthusiastically greeting him upon arrival also causes happiness. On the other hand, arousing jealousy for a competitor upon loss also results in satisfaction. Who defines these causations? Why do only enjoyment of senses and satisfaction of emotions cause happiness and why not the painful encounters for senses and dissatisfaction of emotions?
Who is feeling happiness?
To understand why let’s first address who? Who is feeling this happiness? Is it the body that is feeling happiness? The mouth might be relishing a tasty food but if the mind is occupied with an unpleasant angry situation with a co-worker then happiness wouldn’t exist, would it? So if it’s not the body then is it the mind? If it is only the mind then there is no need for a mouth, it can simply imagine eating tasty food to become happy. So body and mind are dependent and independently can’t sense happiness. There should exist another independent agent behind the scenes for sensing happiness. This independent agent here is the ego. The ego has identified that it has a body and a mind and using them it shall feel pleasantness or unpleasantness.
Modern science explains physical happiness through hormonal release into the bloodstream like the endorphin and dopamine. It’s a fair point that explains the causes of the pleasure/non-pleasure process, however, the point of contention is who makes sense of these causations. It’s the ego. The mouth gets a dose of deliciousness to which the mind immediately responds by thinking about it and craving it. Underneath all of this ego feels pleasant. To a pinch on the skin, the mind immediately responds to withdraw and avert any more of those sensations. Underneath, the ego feels unpleasant. It’s ultimately the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the ego that dictates happiness.
Why is the ego feeling pleasant or unpleasant?
The ego feels pleasantness in all the cases where the underlying vital force expands whereas it feels unpleasantness when they contract. Engaging in a voluntary workout causes an expansion of the vital force, so the ego feels pleasant. Too much workout starts depleting vital force, so the ego feels unpleasant. Whenever the mind is involved in negative feelings like jealousy or anger, the vital energy is trapped to maintain those feelings with its object of anger, jealousy, or attachment. Any event that releases those trapped vital energy results in its expansion and thus pleasantness to the ego. For example, if you are involved in a relationship of anger with another person then any misfortunate event releases the energy trapped in maintaining and thus pleasantness to ego.
If we observe the nature around us, we see expansion is less resistant and increases freedom. Contraction on the other hand occurs with lots of resistance and decreases the freedom of the system. Water becomes steam resulting in more freedom and less resistance in the system, whereas it becomes ice with much less freedom and against the resisting force of molecules. The flux involved in expansion resulting in less resistance and more freedom explains pleasantness. Change in the state results in the pleasantness of the ego and not the absolute state. A person forever earning the same money doesn’t experience happiness. Only when there is an increase in income, he becomes happy. Similarly, the change involved in contraction that results in more resistance and less freedom in the system causes unpleasantness.
Absurdity of the pleasantness or unpleasantness
If we step back and look at this entire dynamics as a witness we shall understand the absurdity of the equation of happiness. There is a hypothetical entity called the Ego, making sense of the expansion/ contraction of the underlying vital energy as pleasantness or unpleasantness. It then expresses this pleasantness or unpleasantness in the form of happiness or unhappiness to the material world through mind and body. The mind/body has been just an appearance in this hypothetical universe. The expansion/contraction of the vital energies is being read by the hypothetical medium on which the energies are acting and are being fed back to be read as happiness or sadness. It’s like a movie with some characters playing on the screen and the screen is feeding back to the unreal characters a sense of pleasantness or unpleasantness.
The Vedantic scriptures answer this with non-dualistic knowledge that there is no I. There is no one there to experience anything. The experiencer and the experience are the one and only, the infinite. Moreover, there is no separate experiencer from the experience. It’s all an illusion. Inquiring more about this knowledge, meditating on it, and practicing upon it removes that illusion and the individual then starts to perform the actions without any expectation of happiness or sadness. One understands that the actions themselves are the ‘one infinite’.
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