The Nectar of Gita…for you, me and all! Essay 4: Is your ‘Vessel of Happiness’ always complete and full to the brim?

Om Namo Bhagavathe Vaasudevaayaa!

Essay 4:

Is your ‘Vessel of Happiness’ always complete and full to the brim?

If you were to put this question across to anyone in our day to day life – be it a man or a woman; teenager or a septuagenarian; a student or an employee; a street hawker or a businessman; a homemaker or a career-woman; a local politician or a national level leader; a street mechanic or an IT professional’; a school teacher or a university professor; what could be the most probable and general answer? An affirmative ‘NO’, I believe.

But if you were to rephrase the question and ask “Is complete and permanent happiness your ultimate goal in life?”. The answer I believe, would be an affirmative ‘YES’. Two things flow out of this - one is that all of us want complete happiness as our life’s goal and secondly, no one’s happiness is always full and complete. Let’s see how and why this happens.

A teenager wants more freedom and adventure; a septuagenarian wants health and longer but enjoyable life; a student wants either better scores or reduced burden of studies; an employee wants a further raise and rewards; a street hawker wants to set up as shop; a businessman would like to be an industrialist; a home-maker may want to become an earning member; a career-woman may want better work-life balance; a local politician aspires to become a state or a national leader; a national leader may want to continue in power always; a mechanic may wish to set up a workshop; an IT professional may wish to work with the best names in the world; a school teacher may dream to move onto a university; a professor may be dreaming for a Nobel nomination. Where is the end for such aspirations, dreams and pursuits?

The vessel of happiness is housed in your mind and your life long effort is to see that it is always full to the brim and overflowing. But does this happen? It brings us to the first question where the probable answer was a big NO. Is it then that our vessel of happiness is ever growing in size so that we are not able to fill it up or does it leak? Both look possible.

At work, you may have done something special and you become a ‘shining star’ for a month. You are heaped with laurels and rewards and you are thrilled and overjoyed and share this happiness with your near and dear. Suddenly you find your vessel of happiness overflowing. A few days pass. The excitement and euphoria die down and   a look at your vessel of happiness indicates that there is a gap. Your efforts begin again. There are so many facets to your life and your quotient of happiness or otherwise comes from all these various sources. So, there is always a pressure within you to plug the gap arising from various quarters, by trying to fetch and fill in happiness from various sources. This unending cycle goes on and on!

Where lies the problem? The vessel of happiness is within you but you are trying to fill it up from sources outside you. Happiness is a state of mind and unless you choose to be happy, you can never be happy. No amount of external stimuli can ensure your happiness in a sustained way. Whatever flashes of happiness occur, they are only transient and temporary. As the rewards generally fall short of expectations, the happiness is partial. So, the key lies in reigning in your expectations. While your actions should be sincere, your ability to get non-attached to the outcome, takes you closer to your happiness goal. There will be fewer disappointments, frustrations and the vessel of happiness tends to remain full.

Karma Yoga of Gita trains one in this area. It advocates continuous and dedicated practice of one’s enjoined actions without attachment to the outcome, leading to a state of equilibrium of mind. It trains one to be in a state of intellectual stability that helps one to view the positive or negative outcome of one’s actions with equanimity. Perpetual and complete happiness is then just a natural corollary!