veD OF HAPPINESS IN kli-yug: WEALTH & POWER AND MATERIAL POSSESSIONS FROM WEALTH & POWER...WILL DISAPPEAR WHEN WEALTH & POWER EXHAUSTED.....
Posted by Ashram News Reporter on October 25, 2004

THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS IN kli-yug:
THERE IS ONLY
ONE CREATOR & SUSTAINER
&
THIS ONE CREATOR IS THE ONLY
GIVER OF HAPPINESS..
JOBS, WEALTH, HUSBAND, WIFE, SONS, RELATIVES & POWER
 DO NOT GIVE HAPPINESS.... 

 A smile is probably the most common symbol of happiness in humans.

veD knowledge shared on this PVAF web site has made us aware that as per teachings of bhgvD giitaa:

"THE ONLY THING THAT CAN REDUCE AND ULTIMATELY ELIMINATE IS
DuKH
(unhappiness, suffering and pain)
AND GIVE suKH (happiness, joy and bliss without any cyclic suffering of pain) IS
 GNaan (True Knowledge)....

The above is part of how SRii kRUSH`AN removes the UNHAPPINESS of aARjun at the start of the mHaabhaart war....Daily life is a mHaabhaart war at the micro level in individual life ...in daily life wars instead of loss of 1.7 billion peoples in mHaabhaart war in 18 days each of is dying slowly over the period of life with unhappiness...bhgvD giitaa is an evergreen knowledge giver to remove YOUR UNHAPPINESS in your daily life wars....Try the sharing of life sciences knowledge from bhgvD giitaa in the archives of TODAY'S PRAYER on this PVAF web site.....

In order to make your tomorrow happier by yourself, the above GNaan was shared by SRii Champaklal Dajibhai Mistry of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada from his veD library......

Please click on the next line to read a life anecdote which we quite often experience about happiness but do not really go after it because of human greed and fear due to lack of knowledge of the SCIENCES OF LIFE AND CREATION called veD....the anecdote which is called SECRET OF LIFE was submitted by SRii Jaswantbhai Mehta of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada... and while you are on this topic of HAPPINESS also read some thoughts from western civilization at WIKIPEDIA...the free encyclopedia about HAPPINESS and compare them to the simple teaching of bhgvD giitaa....


SECRET OF HAPPINESS.....

One day, one friend asked another:
"How is it that you are always so happy?
You have so much energy, and you never seem to get down."

With her eyes smiling, she said,
"I know the Secret!"

"What secret is that?"
To which she replied,

"I'll tell you all about it, but you have to promise to share the Secret
with others."

The Secret is this:

  • "I have learned there is little I can do in my life that will make me truly happy.
  • I must depend on God to make me happy and to meet my needs.
  • When a need arises in my life, I have to trust God to supply according to HIS riches.
  • I have learned most of the time I don't need half of what I think I do.
  • He has never let me down.

  • Since I learned that 'Secret', I am happy."

The questioner's first thought was,
"That's too simple!"
But upon reflecting over her own life

  • she recalled how she thought a bigger house would make her happy, but it didn't!
  • She thought a better paying job would make her happy, but it hadn't.
  • When did she realize her greatest happiness?
    Sitting on the floor with her grandchildren, playing games, eating pizza or reading a story, a simple gift from God.
  • We can't depend on people to make us happy.

Only GOD in His infinite wisdom can do that.
Trust HIM!

And now I pass the Secret on to you!

So once you get it, what will you do?
YOU have to tell someone the Secret, too:
That GOD in His wisdom will take care of YOU!

But you know it's not really a secret...
We all know that in our heart...
but in this
kli-yug, we just have to believe it and do it...
and really trust God! ...

Tell others that it is a secret...
and may be then they will believe it in this
kli-yug....

And now continue to read some thoughts from western civilization at Wikipedia...the free encyclopedia about HAPPINESS and compare them to the simple teaching of bhgvD giitaa....

 

Happiness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

 

This article is about an emotion. Happiness is also a 1998 U.S. film written and directed by Todd Solondz. See also Joy for the disambiguation of that term.


Emotions
Acceptance
Anger
Anticipation
Boredom
Disgust
Envy
Fear
Guilt
Hate
Joy
Jealousy
Love
Remorse
Sorrow
Surprise
 

Happiness, pleasure or joy is the emotional state of being happy. The definition of happiness is one of the greatest philosophical quandaries. Proposed definitions include freedom from want and distress, consciousness of the good order of things, assurance of one's place in the universe or society, inner peace, and so forth. More generally, though, it can be defined as the state which humans and animals are behaviorally driven towards, to counter external forces which would otherwise lead to unhappiness (and presumably eventual death).

Associated emotions include joy, exultation, delight, bliss, and love. Antonyms include suffering, sadness, grief, and pain. The term pleasure (like its opposite pain) is often used to specifically indicate localized, physical sensations, while happiness is sometimes used to refer specifically to a long-term, inner feeling.

Contents [hide]
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Philosophical views of happiness

A smile is probably the most common symbol of happiness in humans.
A smile is probably the most common symbol of happiness in humans.
  • Utilitarianism commonly seeks the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
  • Epicureanism is the belief that the greatest good is to seek happiness for oneself.
  • Hedonism is any ethical theory that gives pleasure a central role.
  • Eudaimonianism is any ethical theory that gives happiness a central role.
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Psychological views of happiness

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Positive Psychology's view of happiness

Martin Seligman in his book Authentic Happiness gives the Positive Psychology definition of happiness as consisting of both positive emotions (like comfort) and positive activities (like absorption). He presents three categories of positive emotions:

  • past: feelings of satisfaction, contentment, pride, and serenity.
  • present (examples): enjoying the taste of food, glee at listening to music, absorption in reading.
  • future: feelings of optimism, hope, trust, faith, and confidence.

There are three categories of present positive emotions:

  • bodily pleasures, e.g. enjoying the taste of food.
  • higher pleasures, e.g. glee at listening to music.
  • gratifications, e.g. absorption in reading.

The bodily and higher pleasures are "pleasures of the moment" and usually involve some external stimulus. An exception is the glee felt at having an original thought.

Gratifications involve full engagement, flow, elimination of self-consciousness, and blocking of felt emotions. But when a gratification comes to an end then positive emotions will be felt.

Gratifications can be obtained or increased by developing signature strengths and virtues. Authenticity is the derivation of gratification and positive emotions from exercising signature strengths. The good life comes from using signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification in, for example, enjoying work and pursuing a meaningful life.

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Mechanistic view of happiness

Children often show their joy with a smile.
Children often show their joy with a smile.
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Biological basis of happiness

While a person's overall happiness is not directly measurable due to limitations in neuroscience technology, this does not mean it does not have a real physical component. We know that the neurotransmitter dopamine, operating along the mesolimbic pathway and upon the nucleus accumbens, is involved in causing a human or animal to experience happiness. If we were able to accurately measure the production of dopamine in various parts of a person's brain, we would likely be able to definitively determine how happy the person is. Happiness can be induced artificially with drugs, most directly with opiates such as Morphine and Heroin, which block dopamine inhibitors.

Nevertheless, the exact chemicals and processes which cause happiness do not define the concept of happiness, they simply describe its biological "implementation". We might guess that other implementations are possible, even if they have yet to be observed in nature.

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Difficulties in defining internal experiences

It is probably impossible to objectively define happiness as we know and understand it, as internal experiences are subjective by nature. It is almost as pointless as trying to define the color green such that a completely color blind person could understand the experience of seeing green. While we can not objectively express the difference between greenness and redness, we can certainly explain which physical phenomena cause green to be observed, and can explain the capacities of the human visual system to distinguish between light of different wavelengths, and so on. Likewise, in the following sections, we will not attempt to describe the internal sensation of happiness, but will instead concentrate on defining its logical basis. Importantly, we will try to avoid circular definitions -- for instance, defining happiness as "a good feeling", while "good" is defined as being "something which causes happiness".

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Happiness as a simple physical equilibrium

Conceptually, a reasonable -- if oversimplified -- way of viewing happiness might be to describe it as an equilibrium state, in which an entity has been drawn towards and, once there, has a tendency to stay "as is". For instance, two magnets joined positive to negative can be casually described as being "happy" in that state. Two magnets with positive forced against positive are unstable and strongly prone to change -- analogous to a person with his hand forced against a hot iron -- and thus might be described as being "unhappy". While we don't really think magnets are experiencing happiness per se, the term, as well as other anthropomorphisms which express a tendency toward a certain state ("try", "want", and especially "attract") are nonetheless useful and intuitive in describing the stability of a physical object or system.

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Happiness in lower animals

For non-human animals, happiness might be best described as the process of reinforcement, as part of the organism's motivational system. The organism has achieved one or more of its goals (pursuit of food, water, sex, shelter, etc.), and its brain is in the process of teaching itself to repeat the sort actions that led to success. By reinforcing successful decision paths, it produces an equilibrium state not unlike the positive-to-negative magnets. The specific goals are typically things that enable the organism to survive and reproduce.

By this definition, only animals with some capacity to learn should be able to experience happiness. However, at its most basic level the learning might be extremely simple and short term, such as the nearly reflexive feedback loop of scratching an itch (followed by pleasure, followed by scratching more, and so on) which can occur with almost no conscious thought.

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Happiness in humans

When speaking of animals with the ability to reason (generally considered the exclusive domain of humans), goals are no longer limited to short term satisfaction of basic drives. Nevertheless, there remains a strong relationship of happiness to goal fulfillment and the brain's reinforcement mechanism, even if the goals themselves may be more complex and/or cerebral, longer term, and less selfish than a lower animal's goals might be.

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Happiness in AI and other complex systems

The view that happiness is a reinforcement state can apply to some non-biological systems as well, as a computer or robot could be said to be "happy" when it is in a state of reinforcing previous actions that led to satisfaction of its programmed goals. For instance, imagine a search engine that has the capacity to gradually improve the quality of its search results by accepting and processing feedback from the user regarding the relevance of those results. If the user responds that a search result is good (i.e. provides positive feedback), this tells the software to reinforce (by adjusting variables or "weights") the decision path that led to those results. In a sense, this could be said to "reward" the search engine, and therefore cause a form of happiness or pleasure within the machine. As technology advances, the distinction between such machine happiness and that experienced by an animal or even human may begin to blur.

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Achieving happiness

A number of commonly recommended ways to produce happiness:

Material ways:

Social ways:

Emotional ways:

Spiritual ways:

Other ways:

However, most of the above, as a side effect of being, in a way, joyful, can also be addictive and then not make one really happy on the whole. Epicurus taught that although it is good to satisfy our natural desires for food and drink, pleasures often conceal painful consequences.

See also


 

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Thesaurus

Happiness can also be said as bliss, cheerfulness, cheeriness, enjoyment, exhilaration, and light-heartedness.



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