True Happiness

- Samte Samuel Zou

Jesus word in Mat. 8:22 “Let the dead bury their dead” makes one ponder how dead can bury other dead. Yes, Jesus was referring off course not to corpses getting up and buries other corpses, but to people who walk around, apparently living but no life in their hearts, no joy, and no happiness. Psychologists too have long proved that a life without happiness is meaningless and no more than the dead.

But how can one be happy always? Where can he get/find them? It won’t be a tough question if we ask these to a daily wage-earning villager. For one who hardly manages to get a square of meal a day will promptly agree that he will be happiest if he has bundles of bucks. Although we all may agree that riches, powers, etc. can’t buy us true happiness and inner peace, it will be as a matter of fact sometimes difficult to rule this out to a poor laborer merely fighting for his stomach.

With regards to true happiness, joy, inner-peace, there has been worldwide discussions amongst various ethics and faiths. India’s celebrated Swami Ramdev (Hindu) has made valuable attempts on how to acquire true happiness. In one of his teaching he said – “It’s a false belief that the rich and powerful live a life of luxury and pleasure…a life very different from you and me. He leads his life just like a layman (ordinary man) does. Just like the common man he too longs for the good old daal-chawal when his stomach is upset with all the rich food: he sleep on cushy comfort but he has to discard his silk mattress and embrace the hard cot as old age approaches because his backache would not let him enjoy the comfort of his million dollar mattress. The difference between a rich and poor man is that one needs to travel fast so he flies whereas the other has time and takes the road. Both are same in their anxieties and usual action.”

True happiness has nothing to do with whether one has all the things that money can buy. It can be ours only to the extent that we have life within. When people asked him, “Swamiji, we keep looking for happiness why can’t we find it?” He replied – “I ask for sadness, why doesn’t it come to me? You may say that why not enjoy good things in life, because you live only once, I say there is no satisfaction in experience. Satisfaction comes from self-awakening: it comes from your conscious, not from your stomach?”

Bold. Isn’t he? Sure, he is on top in my lists of great men. True happiness can only be achieved when we concentrate on “being more” rather than simply “having more.”

Counter View:

We find a number of instances in the Bible wherein we are promised not only inner happiness (spirituality) but also with great outer richness. Remember God’s promised to Abraham. “Wealth is good and spirituality too! I love God and I love wealth too because God is very wealthy” says Vikas Malkani, an Indian saint. Spirituality does not mean poverty, it means that you are rich from within, and will make effort to be rich externally too, as there is no contradiction between the inner and outer worlds (rich and poor). Outer richness does not destroy your inner spirituality; neither does outer poverty foster/promote it. Glorifying poverty is one of the greatest blunders (mix-up or excuse) one can make in one’s inner or outer growth, he adds.

One can be rich, both within (wealth and inner joy) and without, why choose only one? Very often we ought to realize that we are the creators of our own happiness or misery, our success or our failure. It is logical that we choose prosperity and hence take immediate steps rather than complain about poverty. Well, I am for luxury, for comfort, for success and for abundance, because I am convinced that my God is so big, so strong so mighty and above all so good.
*Comment(s) if any will be excellent.