The unknown cause of happiness

Favorable experiences of all the senses of our body create happiness. Fulfillment of desire brings the happiness. Achievement of wealth, authority and power gives the happiness. Everyone knows where from the happiness arrives but only few people know how to continue the happiness.

As such happiness is an auto response to favorable circumstances, desired events and good thoughts, even though, sometime, the negative traits and emotions of our mind do not allow experiencing happiness with all good reasons. It is well known that our wisdom can play a greater role in managing our emotions, expectation, thoughts, belief and pattern of thinking, which contribute to our conscious efforts for maintaining happy state of mind

It is true that happiness is a state of mind created in response to favorable outside environment or positive internal thoughts but the external environment or internal thoughts go on changing so the state of happiness is also goes on changing.

Let us understand why happiness does not remain long-lasting. We know that accomplishment of desire creates happiness. So check it out the status of a desire from its creation to accomplishment. The creation of desire is its birth, the activity to fulfill the desire is its life and accomplishment of desire is its end or death. Like all other living beings a desire also has life-cycle of birth-activity-death. The birth of a desire is an event with full of hope. Life of desire is full of the activities in present. At the end the desire does not exist either due to accomplishment or termination. When it ends as accomplishment it gives happiness, but that is also a temporary phase which disappears with the passage of time. And we need to feel happy continuously forever, so our mind creates another desire and then more and more desires to repeat the experience of happiness.

Recall the memories that how many times your various desires had been accomplished in the past in your life, then why we are not happy for those but awaiting for next accomplishment to become happy? 

A birth and an end both are the events of a very short duration but life or the activities is long lasting, till we alive. Our activities or work of choice is a purpose of our life and we can be happy for the reason of our existence. When we do the work of our choice, our happiness would be linked with an action instead of the result, so that we would be happy while working continuously till we work. Lord Krishna said in the Hindu Holy book “Gita” to enjoy the work and leave the result on him. The purpose of advice of Lord is to make us detached from the result to keep our mind in present activities for enjoying happiness continuously throughout life.

Therefore, select an activity of your choice and make a very high goal. Detach from the result on account of positive attitude, strong belief, trust and faith, then live in the present involving in and enjoying the work. The persistent hard works required to achieve higher and difficult goal provide more happiness, and its accomplishment will not only create happiness but also create confidence, self esteem and great sense of achievement, that will condition the mind for permanent state of well being and happiness. Furthermore, if your achievement would be beneficial to other than you, your family, friends, neighbors and people living in your world, then it would make you feel worth living. The sense of worth living is the happy state of mind.

There is a difference between enjoyment and happiness. One can enjoy abundant wealth and all the material facilities of the world but will never satisfy from them. Enjoyment is a need of mind where as satisfaction is a need of soul. The satisfaction of soul is extremely necessary for enduring happiness in life. The satisfaction cannot be achieved by getting any amount of wealth. But great satisfaction can be derived from by giving to others without any expectation in return.

When we had born in this world, all facilities were existed for our living and development. Food, water, cloths, house, roads, transportation, electricity, medicines and all the means of comforts were available. This entire development was existed, for which we had not done anything. It was done and left for us by the people who had come and gone before us. This was the contribution made by our previous generations for living our life better. So everyone takes birth in this world with that debt. Our conscious mind might have forgotten this debt but soul is well aware of it. That is why most people always feel incomplete in their life. This incompleteness creates lack of satisfaction in life which does not allow us to be happy. Therefore, in order to satisfy our soul and create happiness, everyone has to return the debt by contributing to the world little more than he or she has utilized.

I would like to mention here a very important message of the universe. Universe is designed to grow. But if an individual works only for his or her living and does not contribute little more than he or she has utilized, then there will be no further development of the world. Universe requires the contributions from every human being for coming generations and its continuous growth. So urge of giving contributions has been implanted in the soul of each and every human being. Therefore, no one can be happy unless he or she fulfills this requirement of the universe.

Most people remain unknown to this secret act of universe. But, even unknowingly, we all have strong desire for creating and giving something more to universe for accomplishment of our life before we leave this world. If we create something more than our requirement and give to our world with generosity, God compensates us for this noble act by blessing happiness, peace of mind and bliss of soul. And an experiencing the bliss in our being is the state of enduring happiness!

--- By Dr. Jayanti Rusat
The content of this article is from my book, “Self Elevation: creating wealth, wisdom and peace".