Wisdom of the Gurus: Happiness Beyond Self

Imagine one day that a cell in your body becomes self-conscious.

He starts thinking, “What am I doing with my life? I am toiling for someone who barely knows what I do. What is in it for me? No, I won’t live like this anymore. I’ll do what I feel like and enjoy my cellular life.”

Thus, he turns rogue. Denying the metabolic code of conduct for cells he shirks his responsibilities and seeks pleasure in cellular reproduction and creates copies of itself over and over. This affects the nearby cells and before long, that area in your body shuts down.

Your doctor labels the cell cancerous and starts the grueling process of chemotherapy. Long story short, the whole body suffers because of the one belligerent cell.

If he had put the collective good before his selfish pleasures, your body would have been healthy and prosperous.

Does this feel like a fictionalized anatomy lecture? Well, I am afraid it’s not.

If we take a moment to look into ourselves, we might find traces of this mutinous cell in all of us. No, I’m not saying we are all ridden with cancer. I think are possessed by something more sinister: egocentrism.

Like the cell, we tend to chase individual pleasure. Armed with a sense of entitlement and self-absorption, we most often choose individual pleasure. We seldom consider its impact on the collective.

Unwittingly, this self-obsession tends to alienate us from the natural harmony of the universe. In the interconnected web of phenomena, we all have our duties and responsibilities. Our obsession with ‘me, my pleasure, my comfort’ disrupts the fragile balance.

“You cannot pluck a flower without troubling a star.”

Are we really connected?

Many argue that they are not dependent on anyone; they are self-made, self-reliant, and self-sustaining. This can be quite misleading.

Just take a moment to think about the tea you drank in the morning. Many laborers, working on meager wages, woke up at 4 in the morning, endured freezing cold to pluck the leaves. Many factory workers toiled to dry, powder, and pack it, while truck drivers spent sleepless hours getting it to the store near you.

If you added a spoonful of sugar and a little milk to your tea, you’ve tripled the number of people you relied on for your cup of tea.

That tea, hence, is the testimony of the collective effort that went behind your enjoyment. Remove any one link in the chain and even the multi-millionaire wouldn’t have his morning tea.

Likewise, most facilities we enjoy—our food, clothes, gadgets, car, and so on—are the final product of the toil of a long line of people. Everyone is, in that sense, interdependent.

We might have got it backwards

Are we grateful and contribute to this collective effort? Unfortunately, I cannot give a confident yes. I am more self-centered.

If we care to glance around, we see that this self-centeredness has contributed much to many problems. Deforestation, pollution, wars, and so on reflect our insensitivity to others and even nature.

So should we be self-effacing? Of course, not. We all have the right to pursue happiness. It might be a latent survival instinct that proved useful in human evolution. But do we have to be too self-centered? Apart from the momentary pleasures, is there a possibility of sustained happiness?

There are many happiness researchers, philosophers, and saints who think that we might be looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

Collective happiness, they vouch, is the key to individual well-being. They believe factors like a happy community, good personal relationships, and an equal society contribute more to our happiness than material gains and comforts.

If they are right, we can make ourselves happy by contributing to collective happiness. Even a small act of kindness may greatly enhance our emotional well-being.

Wisdom of the Gurus

Many spiritual teachers through the ages have also been trying to get this message to us. Whether it be Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, or Mohammad, the undercurrent of their teachings was selfless efforts for the collective welfare.  

Guru Nitya Chaitanya Yati, a spiritual teacher in the Vedanta lineage, puts it thus:

“The superficial form of your self interest should be subsumed in the ocean of general interest, and you should feel the world is your country, your home. That humanity is your family, filled with your brothers and sisters.”

Nitya Chatanya Yati, That Alone the Core of Wisdom, pg 141

Yati goes on to say that such a person will lead a wholesome life and will be consumed with extraordinary bliss.

Why don’t we give it a try?

After all, we have been chasing individual happiness for a long time without much success. So if you are curious, try a small kind act this week. Maybe the next time you are going to the pub, take some time to visit that elderly widow next door.

If it brings a smile to her and you, isn’t it worth the effort?