The Realisation of the Absolute :4-3-7.

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Chapter 4: The Nature of Reality : 3.7

3. Brahman as Bliss or Happiness-7.


Further, common experience shows that happiness is a fact of life. It is the supreme value of life.

There can be no other meaning in life’s activities than the attempt at the acquisition of happiness in some way or the other, whatever be the quantity or the quality of the happiness derived.

In fact, happiness has no differences, and, if at all any degree is felt in its experience, it is because of the degrees and differences present in the means made use of for the purpose of obtaining it, and not due to differences existent in happiness itself.

The light and heat of fire differ due to the differences among the media through which it burns.

Happiness is generally, though not always, experienced in this world as the result of the contact of the mind or the senses with certain pleasant objects or states.


No object or state can, in fact, be pleasant in itself.

If so, the same thing should rouse the same kind of love in every being.

This, however, is not a fact. The same thing can stimulate love or hatred in different beings.

A man may be a friend of one person and at the same time the enemy of another.

Worms are seen to revel even in pungent and poisonous fruits.

The same object can appear as having different natures even to the same person in different conditions.

The view that anything is pleasant by itself is incorrect.

Then what is happiness, where is happiness?

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ...



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