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IN SEARCH OF HAPPINESS
one person but may be injurious to the health of another person suffering from asthma. Similarly, it is believed that curd is good in the morning but harmful in the evening. A thing may work like a medicine for one person but the same can be harmful for another person. A person is loved by his mother or wife but may be an object of hatred for another person. Even a person may love one person for sometime but may cease to love after sometime. So an object is of liking or disliking is not so much dependent on the object as on the liking or attitude of the subject. Whether a person gets happiness or unhappiness from a thing or a person depends on the mental state or attitude of that person. If we like it, we may get happiness otherwise suffer due to its presence. We are happy with our children so long as they work according to our expectation. No sooner they start working against our expectations or wishes, we feel bad about it and become unhappy. So the sons and daughters or other objects and persons, per se, are not the source of happiness or unhappiness. It is our wishes and expectations that determine it.
As soon as our wish is fulfilled, we become happy but, soon after, we become unhappy because new wishes and desires have cropped up. As we fulfil some desires, the bundle of new unfulfilled desires keeps on bludgeoning. We find that the bundle of unfulfilled desires is incomparably larger than that of fulfilled desires. As the desires are infinite, it is impossible to fulfil all of them. The degree of our unhappiness can be measured by the lot of unfulfilled desires and as this lot continues to amass greater and greater along with fulfillment of desires, our unhappiness also keeps on increasing along with fulfilment of desires. It is a paradox yet true. As we keep on making efforts to fulfil new desires, collect more and more things of liking and comfort, the demand for new ones keeps on increasing and that makes us more and more unhappy. This is the reason why we see the affluent people unhappy, lacking and yearning compared to the poor who have few things in stock. Those, who yearn for less and so they are less unhappy and lacking.
possess less,
In this context there is parable of a King who fell ill and could not be treated by renowned physicians both within and outside the kingdom. No medicine would work. Then came an experienced physician who understood quickly that the illness of the King was not physical or pathological but psychological. He prescribed that the King would become healthy if he wore a shirt of a 'happy man'. No sooner had it been prescribed, messengers were sent far and wide to search a 'happy man' and bring his shirt for the King. The effort, however, proved futile as they could not find a single happy man in the kingdom. All were unhappy for one reason or another. One day, the King saw, from his window, a fellow rolling in the garden with great happiness.
