Happiness and Bliss

1. A congenial mental feeling is called happiness.

If the mental waves of someone whose saḿskára happens to be the quiescent form of those waves, find similar waves emanating either from any crude object or from any other mind-entity, then those waves, in that person’s case, are said to be complementary and reciprocal.

The contact of these mutually-sympathetic waves is what is called happiness.

2. The attachment to happiness is the primary vrtti (propensity) of living beings

Every living being wants to keep itself alive.

This self-preserving instinct is a mental faculty.

The lack of happiness endangers one’s very sense of existence.

And so one does not want the lack of happiness.

One wants to have the pervasiveness of happiness as one’s sole refuge.

3. Infinite happiness is ánanda (bliss)

No living being is content with a little happiness, especially human beings.

One wants endless happiness.

This limitless happiness is what is known as ánanda [bliss].

Sensory happiness is limited.

4. Ánandaḿ Brahma ityáhuh.

This ánanda is called Brahma

The limitless object is one, not many.

Many-ness can have no quarter in endlessness. That self-same blissful entity is Brahma, which is the composite of Shiva and Shakti.

5. Attaining Brahma permanently quenches all thirst

There is in the living being a thirst for limitlessness.

It is not possible for limited objects to quench one’s thirst.

Brahma is the only limitless entity, and so establishment in Brahma’s bearing alone puts an end to all thirsts or cravings.

6. To long for and run after the Great is dharma

Knowingly or unknowingly, human beings are indeed running after limitlessness.

When knowingly one tries to attain the Great and to that end one prays, that bearing is called dharma, and the effort involved is called dharma sádhaná [the practice of dharma].

7. Therefore dharma should always be practised

Since happiness is the cherished goal of all, and the desire for happiness is not to be satiated without the attainment of limitlessness, and then again since this attainment of limitlessness itself is dharma sádhaná, then dharma sádhaná is indispensable for every living being.

Creatures inferior to humans cannot do dharma sádhaná due to their undeveloped minds. But humans can, and the one who does not do it ill fits the epithet of human being.