Gita Rahasya -Tilak 100

Karma Yoga Sastra -Tilak

CHAPTER V THE CONSIDERATION OF HAPPINESS AND UNHAPPINESS (SUKHA-DUHKHA-VIVEKA) i. e., "that which is desired by us is happiness, and that which we dislike, or which we do not desire is unhappiness", do not become entirely faultless from the philosophical point of view. Because, the word 'ista' in this definition car. also be interpreted to mean 'a desirable thing or object'; and. jf that meaning is accepted, one will have to refer to a desirable object as 'happiness'. For example, although we might desire water when we are thirsty, yet water, which is an external object, cannot be called 'happiness'. If that were so, one will have to say that a person who is drowned in the waters of a river, has been drowned in happiness I That organic satisfaction which results from the drinking of water is happiness. It is true that men desire this satisfaction of the organs or this happiness, but we cannot, on that account, lay down the broad proposition, that all that is desirable must be happiness. Therefore, the Nyaya school has given the two definitions: "anukulavedaniyam sukham", i. e., "desirable suffering is "happiness ", and "pratikulavedaniyam duhkham' ', i.e., "undesirable suffering is unhappiness", and it has treated both pain and "happiness as some kind of suffering. As these sufferings are fundamental, that is to say, as they start from the moment of birth, and as they can be realised only by experience, it is not possible to give better definitions of pain or happiness than these given by the Nyaya school. It is not that these sufferings in the shape of pain and happiness result only from human activity; but, sometimes the anger of deities gives rise to intractable diseases, and men have to suffer the resulting unhappiness ; therefore, in treatises on Vedanta, this pain and "happiness is usually divided into 'adhidaivika' (god-given), 'adhibhautika' (physical), and ' adhyatmika' (metaphysical). Out of these, that pain or happiness which we suffer as a result of the blessings or the anger of deities is known as ' adhidaivika ', and that pain or happiness, in the shape of warmth or cold, which results from the contact of the human organs with the external objects in the world composed of the five primordial elements (such as the earth etc.), is :called ' adhibhautika'; and all pain and happiness which arises without any such external contact, is called 'adhyatmika'.