We all want to be happy. Indeed, behind each of our goals, is this primal desire of happiness.
Where is happiness?
A natural answer is that happiness is the by-product of experiences we have. For instance, when I have a sweet say a laddu, I feel happy. This experience of eating the laddu causes happiness.
Some experiences result in a deeper happiness. For instance, the happiness after a game of Scrabble with family may be more fulfilling. Or the happiness after solving a hard problem may be more satisfying.
Apart from the intensity, there is also the matter of sustainability. Some experiences provide happiness for longer. For instance, the happiness after a good session at the gym may outlast that after eating a laddu.
We lead our lives trying to maximise these happy experiences. This seems to be a tricky affair and hence most “life advice” is about smartly choosing the experiences which result in deeper and more sustainable happiness.
However, there is a subtle yet fundamental flaw in supposing that the locus of happiness is in the world of external experiences. To understand this flaw we need to depend on an ancient Vedantic metaphor.
Consider yourself on a cold and cloudy day in the Himalayan valleys. Now, due to a gust of wind, the clouds suddenly move about and leave a gap for the sun to shine through to you. And you experience the happiness of warm sunlight on a cold day.
Let us suppose this experience repeats on and on. Then, it would be correct to state that the onset of your happiness is correlated and even caused by the wind gusts which moved the clouds.
The locus of your happiness you say is in the wind and the clouds. Of course, this is an error - It misses the true locus of happiness which is the sun and it’s ever present warmth.
Applying this to the case of eating a laddu: Is the laddu like the wind gust and cloud movement or is it like the sun? Yes, the eating of a laddu is correlated and even causes the happiness that we experience (through an understood biological process). But is there a separate primal cause of the happiness, like the sun, which we do not apprehend?
Notice that this investigation is not essential if we are quite satisfied with the pockets of happiness we get from laddus. Like in the example, discovering the source of warmth is not crucial if we want to wait in the valley for the wind to blow and clouds to part.
This investigation is crucial and perhaps possible only if we are motivated to seek the source of the warmth and then climb the mountains to experience the uncovered sun.
An aside on metaphors.
Before the metaphor our question was: Is laddu the cause of our happiness or not? After the metaphor, we have sharpened our question: Is the laddu the wind, the cloud, or the sun? All three of these can be thought of as correlated or even causing the experience of warmth or happiness.
The metaphor has lent us this depth of perspective.
Metaphors are not occasional instruments. The entirety of our thinking is metaphoric as is shown by the philosopher George Lackoff in his book “Metaphors we live by”.
Within Indian philosophy and pedagogy, recognising the centrality of metaphors has been an ancient and natural position.
Back to our question.
How do we recognise that there is an independent sun? We can do so, only if we observe that the sun’s warmth is available unconditioned by wind and clouds. For instance, if one sees a clear day, one understands that warmth comes from the sun and is only veiled by the clouds and re-exposed by the wind.
Applying that to the notion of happiness: Are there experiences where people are happy without eating sweets, playing games with family, or solving hard problems in quantum physics?
Indeed, there are. The monks living in the peaks of Himalayas have none of these, and yet their faces glow with an unmatched brilliance and joy. How so?
We do not have to go so far. Our own lives demonstrate that happiness can be had without dependence on externalities. We experience this daily when we sleep without dreams. Deep sleep is indeed verily happiness. We always look forward to sleeping and if we slept deep, we wake up fresh and positive.
With these two examples, we may posit there is an equivalent of the sun - a primal cause of happiness - quite separate from the objects that enable happiness such as laddus, family, and hard problems.
So, the laddu is not the sun. Can it be the cloud that moves away for the sun? Not quite - functionally, the roles of the laddu and the cloud are very different. The cloud veils the sun, just as something veils us from the happiness in our waking lives.
The laddu uncovers this happiness, if only temporarily, much like the wind. So, the objects which we earlier localised happiness in - laddu, family, problem solving - are like the wind. They help uncover our happiness.
But what is the cloud? It must be something that moves away when we come in contact with say the laddu. What goes away when we eat a laddu?
To understand this let us reflect on what happens when have eaten 5 laddus. For most of us, the appetite to eat laddus would disappear. In other words, eating a laddu eats away at our desire for a laddu. The economists would use the more prosaic term - utility.
So, the desire of objects are the clouds.
That completes our metaphor. We map objects such as a laddu to the wind, the desire for the laddu to the cloud, and the source of happiness to the sun. When we eat a laddu, we temporarily reduce our desire for laddus and thus are exposed to the true source of happiness. This exposure is of course temporary and partial.
Deeper the desires (thicker the clouds) that are met (moved), the greater is the happiness (relative warmth) experienced.
With the help of the metaphor, we have diagnosed an essential challenge with our lives. Why is sorrow (dukham) so prevalent? Because we often veil our truly happy nature with thick clouds of desires. These desires are temporarily met when we come in contact with the objects of our desire. And this lends us glimpses of our own true happiness.
Notice how the cycles of cloud formation and parting continue incessantly. These cycles of desiring and experiencing go on reinforcing in us a false sense that our happiness is localised in the objects of our desire.
What does this philosophical argument give us?
Firstly, it does not negate the world. Indeed, it agrees that the objects outside cause happiness that we experience. Without the wind, there is no sun on a cloudy day. It also supports the “life advice” that we hear. Engaging the body in physical activities with discipline, engaging the mind is positive attitudes like kindness and gratitude, and engaging the intellect in focussed and deep work are good and sustainable ways to derive happiness.
But it points also to a deeper truth that the source of happiness is intrinsic and independent of the objects that enable its experience. In doing so, it is thus supremely empowering in effect and humanistic in approach.
It also provides an alternative route to happiness. The standard one, as we discussed, is to blow the right winds. The alternative is to evaporate the thick clouds that have gathered. Or in other words, to reduce our unmet desires.
Indeed, this is what the monks have been practising - reduce unmet desires and naturally be happy. Or this is what we have been doing daily in deep sleep - eliminate mental activity which sustains desires and naturally be happy.
Reducing desires may sound like a life of denial, defeat even. But that is not quite so.
The recommendation is to reduce desires and not work, not activity. Work and activity should continue, with utmost efficiency, care, and intent.
The only difference is, one is recommended to work from happiness of a desire-less sky as opposed to working for happiness and thereby creating more clouds in an already cloudy sky.
How much happiness is there?
One of the sought after happy experiences of human life is falling in love.
Is our source of happiness in love the other person? Yes, indeed.
But we must also recognise that falling in love is the falling of a self-centered cloud within ourselves. By expanding our self to just one more person, we experience happiness abound.
What then is the happiness experienced by one who has the heart to see the whole world as his own?
There is one more thing to mention - the position of Advaita Vedanta.
Advaita Vedanta provides us the logical finality by taking this metaphor even further. The sun is not just the cause of our happiness. It is the cause of all that is.
The clouds are up there because of the water cycle enlivened by the sun alone. The winds blow with energy obtained from the sun alone. Our ability to reason and understand all this is also lit up by the light from the sun alone.
Thus, the cloud forming, wind blowing, cloud parting, and our inferencing all have a singular cause - the sun. Or more subtly, the only ground reality is the sun. The rest are all appearances due to sun.
Let us continue to blow the winds
and evaporate the thick clouds.
But let us know that the sun shines
and that happiness is ours, always.
Om. Peace, peace, peace.
I never came across an article that explains the nature of reality, its consequence in desire-less action and its experience as love with such ease using a metaphor. Amazing clarity!