“Father, everybody seems to be looking for happiness. But what exactly is this happiness?” This is the most important and a wise question Svetaketu asked his father and Guru Sage Uddalaka in Chandogya Upanishad.
“One of the indications of happiness in a person is that he becomes active. While a person who is not happy is gloomy and does not feel active and his mind is cramped, his will become weak. It is only that which is Vast and Infinite that brings happiness. Hence there is no joy in what is Small or Limited. This Infinity is the sole reason for happiness and you must have a desire to understand this Infinite, my son.” said Sage Uddalaka.
“I want to understand it, Father,” said Svetaketu.
Sage Uddalaka said, “Then you must listen carefully to what I say and contemplate on it till you understand deeply about it:
“When a person understands that no one and nothing is separate from him, and when he recognizes the oneness with all people, animals and objects in the universe and when he does not hear, see and know anything else, that is being Infinite. But, when one feels separate from other thing, he is obstructed from the sense of being infinite, it is then he is finite and has not yet found the Infinite. The Infinite never passes away; it lasts forever; but what is finite will pass away.”
In this dialogue between the father and son in Chandogya Upanishad, it is very well explained that if one’s thought is universal then he is happy but if his thought is limited to himself then he feels unhappy and depressed.
If a younger brother builds a house, the elder brother instead of feeling happy may feel jealous or unhappy that he has not, here again the person is limiting his thought to himself, this make him depressed and will definitely take toll on his health. We all would love to be the kind of people who are happy for others when they are successful in their lives, but it is not easy. Instead of reaching out and celebrating with them, we may feel the rising up of our own soreness. This soreness may be because we are jealous of them for having something we don’t have. The essential thing is not to brush such kind of thought aside, but to take it seriously and look at it; suppressing it will only make things even worse. At the same time, we need to be sure to find a way to congratulate and celebrate their successes as if they were our own. Unwillingness of being happy for others is there in us since childhood itself. In our infant age, if a friend had a toy, which we had not we would either try to get it or were in tears. Those primal feelings are still present in most of us, and we have to admit having it. At the same time, it is when we care enough for someone to let go of what we want for ourselves that we grow as a matured person. It can be a difficult task to find ourselves suspended between wanting the toy and throwing a party for our friend who got the toy. Yet, it is in throwing the party that we share in the happiness and to some extent getting the feel of depression away. Extending ourselves to celebrate the happiness of others requires a bigheartedness that we find only in the process of doing it.
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