“You have never enjoyed happiness in full freedom Little Man. That’s why you consume it. You take no responsibility for the preservation of your happiness. You haven’t learned (you never had a chance) to cultivate your happiness with loving care, as a gardener cultivates his flowers and a farmer his wheat. You consume your happiness.” ~ Listen, Little Man!
Questioner: Acharya Ji, can you please clarify, what does it mean to enjoy happiness in full freedom? Is it the conditioned mind of the little man that stops him from cultivating and preserving happiness? The author also indicates that in the company of little man, cultivating happiness is a little hard. Please help me understand how the little man could grow from being a consumer of happiness to a cultivator.
Acharya Prashant: Happiness is a glimpse. Glimpse of what? Glimpse of the absence of suffering. That’s why we like happiness. That’s why everybody says, “I want to be happy”. Why do we say we want to be happy? Because our default state is of suffering. And man suffers much more than any other being in the world. No being is capable of suffering as much as man is.
Man is a suffering animal. Other creatures have pain but not so much suffering. To suffer, you require a consciousness with depth. Man has that. Other beings have that only in a limited way. You could say, “Man is born suffering or Man is born to suffer.” That’s the arrangement his physical apparatus has ensured for him. Suffer.
Trapped in this body you want great things to happen to you. Suffer. Confined to a little stretch of time, a little expanse of space, you want everything to be limitless. Now suffer. That which your consciousness wants militates against everything that your body has arranged for you. It’s a very-very peculiar situation. You could call it tragic. That which your consciousness wants is not at all what your body is configured to give you. So the body gives you one thing and what consciousness wants is not merely different but dimensionally different. So man suffers.
Because we suffer, therefore we are always hungry for happiness. That’s why in the world of Homosapiens happiness is such a precious commodity. Everybody wants it without any exception. "What do you want?" "Happy happy I want to be happy." Happiness sells, it doesn’t matter what is been sold and where. If you just probe a little you will find that happiness is being sold. Happiness is valuable for the human being because he is suffering.
So far so good. Now there is a glitch. What is the glitch? The normal, common happiness, as we get is just a byproduct of suffering. Those who have known have said that our so-called happiness is just another name for sadness or suffering. It cannot come without sadness; it comes along with sadness or it comes as a product of sadness. And it’s not merely preceded by sadness, it is also succeeded by sadness. When sadness reaches some kind of a crest, then the curve takes an inflection and there is a little happiness. And just as you are consuming your happiness, what’s being cooked for you? Sadness again.
So the happiness that we get is just a glimpse, it is a valuable glimpse. Even if for a limited time, it still tells us that freedom from suffering is possible. It is a trailer, a thirty-second trailer for a three-hour-long movie. The thing is that trailers don’t last long and trailers are free. But for the movie, you have to pay your way in.
Happiness comes to you so that you become interested, you become inquisitive, your longing gains depth and you ask for permanent happiness. You say, “Oh this that was given to me was so ephemeral! Thirty seconds, that’s all? No no no! It was good. But I want the real thing. I want that which will last. And thank you for giving this little happiness to me, it vetted my appetite. Now I want deeper happiness and that is called the cultivation of happiness.”
What is the consumption of happiness? Thirty seconds were given to you, you ate them up and you said, “Fine”. The seeds were given to me, what did I do with the seeds? This is consumption of happiness, that’s what most people do. Seeds were given to you, there was a potentiality. But you consumed the seeds.
And then there is another one who starts loving the taste. He says, “I just had a few seeds and if these seeds are so delicious, I would want them to become my life. I don’t want to just gobble them down my throat, I will sow them, I will let them strike roots deep into the earth, my earth, my inner earth. I will let them become full-fledged trees for me.”
This cultivation of happiness is called in classic parlance as the pursuit of Ananda. This consumption of happiness is called Bhoga (i.e. consumption of Sukha). Sukha and Bhoga go together. Happiness is consumed, Ananda is cultivated. This cultivation you could call as Sadhana. With Sukha, no Sadhana is needed. For Ananda, Sadhana is definitely needed.
To make things clearer you could say that our normal happiness is ephemeral and dualistic. Dualistic because it is preceded and succeeded by sorrow, so it is dualistic. And great happiness is permanent and non-dual. Non-dual because it is freedom and total freedom from suffering. It is freedom not merely from sadness, but also from superficial happiness. Real happiness which is Joy or Anand is freedom not merely from sadness, but also from superficial happiness.
Ananda means that you are now free from both Sukha and Dukha . And that is called the cultivation of happiness. Do you get the difference between cultivation and consumption? If you are a little man, what will you do with the seeds given to you? (Gesturing for eating with fingers) For instant gratification. But if you have something large, a bit expansive within you, then you will be patient. Then you will say, “I am prepared to work my way through to deeper happiness.” And you will use the seeds, you will use the trailer to reach a place far deeper. Is that clear?
So there is this three-day camp. What is this? These are just seeds. You may as most people do, just consume these seeds, let out a loud burp, and go home. "Acharya Ji came and he served us some delicious seeds. We put some sauce on them, some pepper, and some seasoning. Acharya Ji is so wonderful. Every six months he comes with his bag full of seeds and what do we do? Seeds are delectable, who can refuse that?” But there would be one odd person, who would say, “The seeds are great. I don’t want the matter to end here. I will show some responsibility. Now I will raise an entire crop. All thanks to the visitor that he introduced me to the taste, that he showed to me the possibility. But now the onus is on me. I will take things ahead from here.”
All good things can be utilized by you in two ways. Because they are good they can be instantly consumed or they can be further cultivated. Depends on how much you love yourself.
