Atma Dharma

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 13

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To illustrate the point, suppose a certain man is very fond of milk, while a certain other person detests it whole-heartedly; suppose further that these men are so situated that they have to live on milk for a certain period of time. It is obvious that the first man would be very happy in those very circumstances which will be utterly distasteful to the second. Milk, then, is neither happiness nor misery in itself ; but only the external cause which gives rise to different kinds of experiences of pleasure and pain in different individuals, according to their own individual desires and temperaments. The same is the case with the other objects in the world outside ourselves, whether we enjoy them through the sense of taste, or touch, or any other. Mind, too, plays a very important part in our personal joys and sorrows. If I regarded a certain person as my enemy and would like to see him ruined, it would cause me no little mental pain to find him prosper and flourish.
"The happiness that transcends the senses and springs from the soul's own being itself, is such as cannot be compared with anything else in the world. It is beyond the mental reach of the ignorant, it is the giver of eternal life, indestructible, unabating, free from the impurities of private loves and hatreds ; it is not accompanied by senility or disease ; it does not lead to further transmigration, nor involve the idea of dependence on any external object; it is without an end, without trouble, and, because it originates in one's own self, also, ( indestructible ).". Ibid.