From IIM Ahmedabad To Happiness

Author(s): Vijay K Jain
Publisher: Vikalp Printers

Page 27

IN PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
true happiness. It is our freedom - from all that is the source of bondage of our soul - that can afford us joy.
Man's search for happiness is a search for a lost or hidden article, not of anything new. For, however much we may deceive ourselves with false ideas and conceptions, however much we may drown our real, natural instincts in the intoxication of the transient pleasures of the world, there is no man who does not feel the poignant craving for unalloyed happiness, whenever he gets a moment to himself.
Nature still holds the treasure of happiness in trust for the man and is ready to restore it to him the moment he gives up the pursuit of the wrong path, which leads to suffering.
Taking an Indian ascetic as an embodiment of idleness, an advocate of modern civilization once demanded of Swami Rama Tirtha when he was visiting America:
"Why do you import your Asiatic laziness to America? Go out. Do some good."
The Swami replied:
"As to doing good, is not that profession already chokeful, overcrowded? Leave me alone, I and my Rāma (God). Laziness did you say? Oriental laziness? Why, what is laziness? Is it not laziness to keep floundering in the quagmire of conventionality and let oneself flow down the current of custom or fashion, and sink like a dead weight in the well of appearances and be caught in the pond of possession and spend the time, which should be God's, in making gold and call it doing good? Is it not laziness to practically let others live your life and have no freedom in dress, eating, walking, sleeping, laughing and weeping, not to say anything of talking? Is it not laziness to lose your Godhead? What for is this hurry and worry, this breakneck, hot haste and feverish rush? To accumulate almighty dollars like others, and what then? To enjoy as others? No, there is no enjoyment in running after enjoyment. O dear dupes of opinions,
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