Human pursuit is always after happiness. It may be a car, a bike, a nice saree or dress, an ice cream or a visit to the beauty parlour for a facial, a new hairdo, scoring top rank in school or wanting to win the highest medal in sports. However, the purpose of all activities has one propelling cause—happiness.
If ‘I want happiness’ is clearly understood, then the search for it can be put to an end easily. Most often, we go after these pursuits of choosing to learn a new language, shifting a home to a more upper class residential area, spending lakhs of rupees on giving the building a facelift and going on an exotic vacation without this knowledge that the search is for happiness.
There is nothing wrong with finding joy in these situations, people and objects. However, it is important to understand that the joy, which comes from all this, will be limited. Limited things can by no means give unlimited joy. How much ever a telephone company may cry out aloud, unlimited talk time at no cost at all, the person who uses the phone knows that the voice box will become the limit and there can be nothing which is eternal, free and unlimited. It will be like the case of being thrilled about getting a permanent job in a temporary company.
The fourth qualification of a sadhaka or a seeker to know and be established in the truth is called mumukshuthwa or an intense desire for liberation. This whole world out there is an instrument which is so mindboggling in its intricacy that surpasses any magical 3D vision we can create. It plays two functions in relevance to our life. It gives us experiences and supports our reactions.
Constantly, this process of experiencing and reacting is happening and the purpose of this process is to realise who the experiencer is. A mumukshu is a person who is cultivating this intense desire to be free, to be liberated, and to experience happiness alone.
When we seek happiness in the world, we don’t experience it alone. We also experience a bit of sorrow, a dash of misery, a sprinkling of pain, fear and guilt; anger rears its face once in a while; competition, jealousy and greed also make their presence felt. There are bouts of delusion, sometimes arrogance raises its grotesque head. Forgetfulness forgets to make its absence felt. All these distractions keep happening to our experience of happiness.
To have happiness, we must want it and want it alone to the exclusion of everything else. Then alone will the secret be revealed in the form of the knowledge of the source of happiness—the self.
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