Let us now reflect on whether there actually is happiness in any material object or not. You may say that you experience happiness from your wealth, spouse, children and so on. Then how can your intellect possibly accept the fact that there is no true happiness in the world? However, if you seriously reflect upon this, the intellect will definitely changes its decision. Now, which object is a source of happiness to you? If any object contains happiness, then everyone should receive happiness from it. Also, that happiness should be permanent and not followed by misery. However, neither of these conditions is fulfilled by anything material. Take liquor for instance. A drunkard experiences happiness at the very mention of liquor and definitely becomes happier when he actually drinks it. But the same liquor is a source of displeasure to a teetotaller. so the question is does liquor contain the happiness that is experienced by the alcoholic, or does it contain the revulsion experienced by the non-drinker? You may object saying that the non-drinker has never experienced the taste of liquor. If he were to actually taste it, he would also experience the same happiness as that experienced by the alcoholic. However, such an objection is naive. if that staunch teetotaller were made to drink alcohol, he would probably feel sick and be miserable the rest of his life.
There is one important truth that requires understanding. If happiness isn't experienced from any object, than sorrow won't be experienced from that object, either. The experience of sorrow corresponds to the experience of happiness. Observe, when Umesh died, his wife experienced the greatest sorrow; less then her grief was her son's grief; less then the son's grief was the friend's grief, and the one who felt the least grief was the servant. The neighbour, on the other hand was indifferent, while the debtor experienced happiness. Now, it is evident that when a person experiences a certain degree of happiness from an object or peron, he is bound to experience sorrow in the same proportion when separated from that object or person. In reality, there is no sorrow in any object. Whatever we experience is the result of the result of our own beliefs.
The second truth with regard to wordly happiness is that the happiness we experience from any object constantly diminishes. For example, a mother has been crying for two days in the grief of separation from her lost son. she is desperate to find him so that she could run and embrace him to her heart's content. Now, suppose he is found. She run to him crying, "My son, my son," and embraces him very tightly, experiencing great joy. when she hugs him for the econd time, the joy is less then what she experienced the first time. The third time, it is much less then the second time and when she embraces him for the tenth time, she experiences neither joy nor sorrow. The eleventh time, she says to her son, "Go out and play." But her son wants to remain in her lap. Now the mother begins to experience unhappines because of his stubborn insistence. she shouts at him in irritation, "Are you a special child that I should contantly keep you in my lap? Leave me alone now because I have plenty of other things to do."
You must have eaten chocolates. When you ate the first chocolate you experienced great pleasure, on eating the second, the pleasure was less, on the third, even lesser. On eating the tenth, you experienced neither pleasure nor displeasure and on the fifteenth you protested, "please, I can't eat another one. I feel sick." Now, if there was pleasure in chocolates or in any other food or object, why is there this constant abatement in the pleasure experienced and then eventually displeasure? Obviously our experience is a deception. It is merely a result of our own imagination, a fabrication of the mind.
when you are thirsty you love water, but not when your thirst is quenched. A lustful man longs for a woman, but when that lustful craving is absent, that same woman becomes burdensome. This fact is experienced by everyone, but no one actually bothers to reflect upon it. No one bothers to analyze the delusive nature of material happiness. It is obvious that there is not a trace of happiness in any object in the world. whatever we experience is the deceptive reult of our own imagiination. Observe, people think there is happiness in beauty, but our own experience is contrary to this. Suppose a child who is very ugly gets lot in a fair. His mother files a report at the police station. there she is shown a number of children who were found wandering about alone at the fair. she looks at them one by one, but experiences no joy because her ugly, squint-eyed son i not among them. Now, the other children present at the police station were better-looking then her son, but she did not experience any happiness from them. However ugly her son was, he alone was her source of joy.
Liquor smells disgusting to a teetotaller and is immensely pleasurable to an alcoholic. Onions and garlic smell disgusting to one man and aromatic to another. The worm that lives in garbage would be repulsed or even die if surrounded by fragrant perfume. In other words, beauty, fragrance, etc. do not contain happiness. However, if someone repeatedly thinks of a particular object to be a source of happiness. he becomes attached to it.
One more point needs to be noted. There is definitely an experience of momentary happiness when a desire is fulfilled, but it is immdiately followed by greed for more. One who acquires a million rupees is engaged in finding the ways and means to acquire two million. Thus the vicious cycle of planning and implementation of the plan follows. If the desire is not fulfilled, anger aries. Every desire is either fulfilled or unfulfilled, so either anger or greed is bound to follow the desire. Thus, pain inevitably follows the appearance of any desire. If you say that one should abstain from desires, it is not possible. The reason is that unless and until we attain Divine Bliss, the emergence of desires is natural. No one can put an end to them...
