All human pursuits are directed towards one thing and only one thing: happiness. The terms used to explain it might vary but the essential meaning remains the same. Some may term it as happiness, some as joy, some as bliss and some as ecstasy and so on. Ecstasy is just a more heightened state of happiness.
Some might say “not everyone is seeing their own happiness but they are working for others selflessly”. There are no selfless acts at all. All acts are selfish. If you take the self as the central point, for some the circumference might circle around themselves and their family, for some their community and for some, their nation. So the difference between one person and the other person lies in the circumference around the self. But essentially it is springing from or directed towards the self.
People have tried different ways of achieving happiness and the innovation for more methods continues. People have tried drugs; people have tried sex, yearned for success, power; all in the same pursuit. They have achieved it too. Thus achieved success is ephemeral. Else, people should have stopped looking for happiness. They are deprived of it therefore the search is always on. We search for the things which we don’t have.
All are capable of happiness but the problem is in the sustainability of it. People indulge in sex and feel great for some time and after sometime they are back to square one. People in search of happiness indulge in drugs and feel great for sometime (some drugs expands the consciousness) but again when they fall back, they return with a terrible feeling.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev of Isha Foundation articulates it beautifully through a story:
A pheasant and a bull were together in a meadow. The pheasant was on the bull’s back picking ticks as the bull grazed. The pheasant looked at the towering tree in front of him, sighed and said nostalgically,
“When I was young and strong, I could fly to the top of the tree.”
The bull nonchalantly said “You can still do it, just eat my dung for a week. “
The pheasant shrugged and said “what non-sense”.
The bull persisted and said “just try it, the whole humanity is on it”.
The pheasant reluctantly ate some. The very next day, much to his glee, he could fly to the first branch. A week later, as promised he was on the top of the tree. He crowed in delight, a farmer seated on the verandah of his house, saw this fat pheasant crowing, got his gun and shot him to the ground for a meal.
The moral of the story is, “sometimes even bullshit can take you to the top but it never lets you stay there.”!!
Adding to the ephemeral nature of these things, they are not good for the human system too. Indulging in alcohol or drugs can give pleasures for some time, but in a long run they are detrimental to the system (body and mind both). Now contrast this with the attitude of Yogi. A yogi is also in pursuit of happiness but more of a permanent one, the one that he can behold for a long term. The system of yoga that the yogi applies doesn’t hamper mind or body but instead enhances them.
If you look at some yogis, they will be disinterested in the things that interests most of us. There’s nothing wrong with that. They have graduated to finer states of things. As kids we treasured toys but now we never bother for them. They are nothing for us now because we have found they no more hold our interests. In the same way once someone graduates to finer things the base things appear meaningless.
The path of yoga that the yogi follows bypasses many unwanted steps for achieving permanent state of bliss. So it saves enormous amounts of time and effort. When each one of us is traveling in an Ambassador car, the yogi has learnt to use the F1 car. He’s put himself on a fast track. When the stated goal is same for all, when somebody is achieving swiftly than others without damaging others or himself, he should be a very efficient and intelligent person. These things make me to call the yogi the most intelligent person.
