Transcendental Versus Material Happiness
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Chapters
Transcendental versus material happiness
No. A little bit. What one—the first one's name is Jeremy Bentham. And his, uh, his philosophy is that virtue is defined in terms of utility. And that utility is defined as that which enhances the happiness of men.
So that the goal, the goal of society according to the utilitarians is the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Yeah. So maybe that was how I am.
Uh, but that happiness is described in the Bhagavad-gītā: «sukham ātyantikaṁ yat». Ātyantikam. Ātyantikam means the greatest, highest. «sukham ātyantikaṁ yat tad buddhi-grāhyam atīndriyam»,
that happiness can be perceived by transcendental senses. So you, you're talking about a qualitative happiness, the quality of happiness. Yeah. Qualitative it must be. Ātyantikam.
Ātyantikam means the actual, the greatest happiness. Greatest, highest happiness. Happiness everyone wants. Yeah. You, you are feeling happy by eating something,
but if you get another better thing, you feel more happiness. Quality of happiness. Yes. Not the quality of happiness. You feel actually greater happiness. Just like you are taking ordinary sugar.
But if you take rasagullā, it is also sweet. But it is greater happiness. Quantity or no? The happiness. Greater happiness. Yeah, quantity you can say. Quantity. Quantity and happiness is great.
So the greatest happiness, uh, can be perceived by transcendental... happiness means satisfying the senses. Real happiness means satisfying the senses. So sense gratification.
But the actual sense gratification and the greatest sense gratification is to be derived by your transcendental senses, not these gross senses.
So now these gross senses, take for example, uh, you're eating, but uh, after everything—four, five, ten—you feel no more. No. That is not real happiness.
The happiness means you are enjoying something, you increase more and more and more enjoy, more enjoy, more enjoy, more enjoy. That is it. So that this man knows what is happening. That is it.
Limitations of physical sense enjoyment
He, he, he thinks in terms of sense gratification, physical senses, physical. But physical senses cannot actually, cannot give you, uh, the greatest, just like a man, a sensualist.
So he can enjoy one woman, two women, but he cannot enjoy unlimitedly. But, uh, our standard of happiness means which is increasingly unlimited. That's it. Therefore it is said: ramante yogino 'nante satyānanda- cid-ātmani.
Those are yogīs then. So enjoyment—without enjoyment, uh, nothing is relished. You are taking to Krishna consciousness, there is some enjoyment, transcendental bliss. Otherwise, how can we stick to it?
So real happiness means which is increasingly unlimited. That is happy. Temporary... Vidyāpati sings: tātala saikate vāri-bindu-sama, suta-mita-ramaṇī- samāje.
We are trying to enjoy in this material world happiness in the society, friendship, and love. Suta-mita-ramaṇī-samāja: friends, children, a wife, like that. That is in the society.
Vidyāpati says, "Yes, there is happiness undoubtedly." But that happiness is just like a drop of water in the desert. Desert means it is hankering after water, dry;
it, uh, he requires water, but if you go there and put a drop of water, 'Now here is water,' so... we are hankering after so great happiness that this sense gratification happiness is not giving us.
It is just like a drop in the desert. And therefore we are changing. Changing, simply. The same thing. Punaḥ punaḥ, change with the same thing. We do not know what is real happiness.
We are simply changing the posture. Now it should be mini-skirt, why they should be fully dressed? That they are also trying. Ultimately they are coming to the position of the sea. Here, here in the first place.
They're attracting to this by showing the vagina, that this is happiness. They have no other information. Come on, here is vagina. This is their standard of happiness. Yan-maithunādi-gṛhamedhi-sukhaṁ hi tuccham.
Most abominable things they have taken as happiness. So what do they know about happiness? These so-called philosophers, they do not know what is happiness, and why they are philosophizing about happiness.
Happiness is also our aim. Yeah. But that happiness is different from this happiness. It's like a hog is enjoying happiness by eating stool. No man will be happy, but he thinks so. Neither will agree to enjoy such happiness.
That is the standard of happiness according to the body. If he would have been satisfied, then he would have remained in one place. But he's searching after happiness whole day and night. Whole day and night.
So no, nobody can be satisfied possessing a material body. That's not possible. What satisfaction? Suppose you have made some arrangement according to your son, "Now I shall enjoy." But you will not be allowed to enjoy.
Death will take you out. You are thinking that "Now I will be happy." All life to understand that it is happiness. But death will come. "No. Please get up.
You construct a very nice house, and next day it was set fire and blitzed. So you have made... I mean, fire brigades always running on the street. But it means you want to enjoy happiness without any disturbance.
Critique of utilitarian and communal pleasure
Happiness means which is eternal. That is happiness. And we are giving, we are trying to give people that happiness. It will never be exhausted. That is our objective of happiness.
He sees this happiness in a communal aspect, then it must be for the greatest number. So he advocates a democracy where everyone is given individual, unlimited individual freedom. Well, that is all kind of nonsense.
In democracy nobody is happy. The so-called democracy does not give anyone any happiness. Otherwise, in America, the greatest democratic country, why there are so many unhappy people? That is also nonsense. That is not fun.
He says that the interest of the community would be the sum of the interests of the individuals in the community. That is a compromise. That is not happiness. That you don't harm me, I don't harm you, and we remain happy.
That does not mean you are happy, I am happy.
He says simply, he says we can determine what is happiness for the whole by examining what is happy for the... Happiness is this. What is happiness that we describe in the Bhagavad-gītā?
Happiness means absence of distress. That is happiness. So Bhagavad-gītā recommends that: «janma-mṛtyu-jarā-vyādhi-duḥkha- doṣānudarśanam». You may think that you are very happy. But this is not happiness.
You have to see to your distressed condition because you have to take birth, you have to die, you have to suffer diseases and... and janma-mṛtyu, old age. So where is your happiness?
If the distresses are present, then where is that happiness? This is another ignorance. Nobody wants to die, but death is there, then where is that happiness? Nobody wants to become old, but the old age is there.
You must become old; then where is your happiness? Nobody wants diseases, but disease is there. You cannot avoid it. Then where is the happiness? These are less intelligent. That actually we are not in happiness.
But by our so-called philosophizing theories, we are trying to be happy, means another illusion, and we take it as happiness. Actually, it is not happiness. Why didn't it happen?
Evaluating material happiness through criteria
Well, he has seven measurements for happiness. It's called the hedonistic calculus. How to evaluate happiness according to seven principles. One is intensity: how intense is the pleasure in question?
Two, duration: how long can a certain pleasure be expected to last? Three, certainty: how much can we depend upon a certain experience to produce the expected pleasure?
Four, remoteness: how immediate or remote is the anticipated pleasure? Five, fecundity: how many future pleasures will result, and will each pleasure terminate in pain?
Six, purity: how free is the pleasure from painful elements? Seven, extent: how many other persons can share the pleasure? This is a nice definition; we accept it, this criteria.
But if you put material happiness and test by this criteria, there is one... there is no happiness.
Therefore the conclusion should be that if we test with this acid test of happiness, it is impossible to get happiness in the... there's no question of it.
These testing points are nice, but as soon as we put any kind of happiness to this test, we'll find it is fail. Take any standard happiness; within neither of these tests will be there.
So the conclusion should be: there is no happiness in the material world. These tests are applicable and... and in the spiritual world.
So he says that everything... everything should be utilized to extract the most pleasure from life. Well, that is... that is our theory: to make the best use of a bad bargain. You are already cheated.
Now, all right, let me utilize it. Don't admit that I have been cheated. Now I've been utilizing.
He says that utility is that property in any object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness. That is nice.
This definition also, but if we put to test all our so-called happiness, it will not be possible to come out of success.
He said... he realizes that this view could give rise to egoistic overindulgence, that when someone would think, "Well, if pleasure is my only goal, let me do anything, never mind others." But that—how long it will stay?
You come to the test that it will not stay. Suppose one has decided that "I have learned how to cheat others."
So you can cheat for some time all men, or all men or some men for some time, but he cannot—he'll be caught, he'll be captured as a cheater, then he'll be punished. So the duration is not permanent.
Well, the test is duration. One of the tests is duration. The deviation will not allow to enjoy that kind of cheating happiness.
He rejects duty, a sense of duty or conscience, to be the guide for moral conduct, good and bad conduct, and he accepts only the amount of pleasure or pain as the criterion of right conduct.
Whether I'm doing right or wrong will be measured by how much pain or pleasure I'm getting from it. Yes.
The definition we can also accept because we are trying to be Krishna conscious to derive the permanent happiness and the first-quality happiness.
So if I'm feeling happy, that means I am proceeding. If I must feel—if it is happiness, you must feel happy. Just like eating is happiness. So if you actually eat, you must feel happiness.
It is not that... so eating, when you are hungry, eating is happiness. But if you are not feeling happiness, then what is the use of eating? By eating, if you feel happiness, then you are eating. Strength,
we feel strength. Yes, I was fatigued, now eating I am getting strength, satisfaction—these three things are to be there when you are eating. If there is no satisfaction, no strength, then what is the meaning of eating?
There is no energy. He raises... someone might raise the point, "Well, the man is hungry and has no food, and therefore in order to feel pleasure he must steal it and cause displeasure to someone else."
Natural curbs and spiritual engagement
But Bentham says that there are four natural curbs or preventions, preventative forces to keep people from egoistic overindulgence. One is the physical consequences of overindulgence. If I eat too much, I get sick.
One is political, that I will be imprisoned if I transgress. I'll be punished. One is moral or popular opinion, that the public will think badly of me if I overindulge.
And the fourth one is religious, that—that God will punish me if I'm an evildoer. These four preventions, he says, keep us. But
uh, if there is some happiness, if there is no prevention, that is the other—there is no prevention. Simply go on increasing. Indulging, yeah. Just like Krishna's happiness. There is no—there was no prevention.
So that is real happiness. Prevention means material. Limited. Yeah. Just like, um, the drinking liquor. There is prevention also. There are a law, alcoholic, yeah. You have seen the signboards. Yeah. But it's preventive.
To be over twenty-one years old. No, some signboards—you cannot drink even sitting on that bench. I've seen in India some place. So alcohol is very nice, happiness. But there is prevention.
In your country, if prevention is not so, stop. And our country is very—if one is caught and drunk and stayed, immediately he is taken to the police. You cannot come on the road in a drunken state.
You are found in a drunken state on the road, you—your law is very strict. You do everything in your home. Well, in most cities drinking is private. Just lifting ban and some things in Bombay. Bombay. It was prohibition area.
So Gandhi made this prohibition as far as possible. Now they are lifting. Because simply private prohibition will not help you. Unless you have got a better engagement, this prohibition will not help you.
By law, you can say, "Don't do this." But if you have no better engagement, this order of the law, "Don't do this," will not act. Just like government. Your government is trying to stop this, uh, intoxication. The drug.
It is increasing. But so, uh, so far as our society is concerned, anyone who is coming here, immediately there is no interest. That means he gets something better.
Therefore, he voluntarily checks himself, and it is possible to check. So unless you give better things, simply by prohibition, you cannot check. That's not possible. The same example again: just like a thief.
He, he knows the punitive order that "you shall not steal." He knows the punitive order even in śāstra, that if a man is a thief, he will suffer this kind of hellish condition.
So he has heard it from the lawyer and from the śāstra that stealing is not good, and he has seen it, that a thief is arrested and is punished, but still he does it. But a Kṛṣṇa conscious person will not do it.
There is a difference. So by law or by pressure, you cannot make anyone moral. That's not possible. He has to be given something which is, uh, better than morality, then he knows to stop committing all kinds of sins.
Establishing authoritative standards of life
He says that the pleasure of one person will coincide with the pleasure of others. We are all more or less desiring similar pleasures. It will be similar to what other people...
Ah, that may not, may not be on the similar standard. The standard of pleasure is according to the body. The same example: uh, if you give halavā to the hog, he'll not be interested. He wants stool.
But he has got a body which will not allow him to accept halavā.
But if, if we take a consensus of all the citizens in the state, that we must try to satisfy the majority for what they expect to be good or happy, happiness...
No, you would say that, uh, "this is my happiness, I will take meat." You may say that you take prasāda. But the majority will take meat, so therefore that's... meat is very good.
That is the standard, that therefore to the rascals meat is very good. Utility. Majority of the people are meat-eaters, then meat is, uh, very good, full of vitamins.
So that's why it is folly to be wise where ignorance is bliss, but we have to see what is the standard. A standard is given
in the Bhagavad-gītā: that which increases duration of life, which increases strength, which increases, uh, feeling of pleasure, they are sāttvika. Yeah. And these are status.
His idea is that the standard is decided by the majority of the people. But majority of people, if they are asses, what is the value of the voice of the asses? Why don't you take a horse from so many animals?
Why you take horse from the human being? In the country, the animals are also there. Therefore the standard of happiness we must know, and if we take that type of happiness, then that is Krishna consciousness.
We derive our standard from authority. Yes. And actually we feel it is so.
Not only accepting word, the theory is there, but when one actually takes Krishna consciousness, he understands that here is the standard of happiness. I receive so many hundreds of letters accidentally.
How they are feeling happy.