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THE NECESSITY OF DHARMA IN LIFE
Dharma is more essential in life than happiness. In fact, we get happiness only from Dharma.
सुखं धर्मात् दुःखं पापात् (Happiness accrues from Dharma and sorrow accrues from sin). This is an eternal truth. Dharma brings us happiness in the other world. Not only that; Dharma bestows happiness upon us even in this life which we are living at present. It happens so in this manner.
Happiness relates to our experience within ourselves. It does not lie in outward objects. We may have heaps and heaps of the objects that can bring us happiness, but if our minds are being agitated by some anguish can we really be happy ? Thoughtless people believe that happiness lies in wealth; or in the things that they eat and drink; or in honour and prestige or in power and grandeur. But if we observe the world a little carefully we find that countless people in this world are happy though, they do not have wealth and grandeur and that countless people are unhappy and miserable though they have enough or excessive wealth.
If happiness lay in wealth and worldly grandeur, our happiness should have increased in proportion to the increase in our wealth and worldly splendour. If happiness was an attribute of the things that we eat and drink, then our happiness should have increased in proportion to the increase in the things that we eat and drink. But our actual experience is different from this. We may experience a kind of happiness when we eat one or two pieces of sweet-meat but if we consume too much we grow sick and feel like vomiting; and we experience unhappiness. The pleasure that one gets from one wife decreases if one has many wives.
How can we say that there is happiness in these things ? Can this be called happiness ?
Let us think of it from another point of view. The same object may give happiness at one time and may cause unhappi
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