Little Crumbs Of Happiness

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)

AUDIENCE: If within the material world you, it makes you happy to go a club and dance for a few hours, why is that wrong?

JAYADVAITA SWAMI: What's wrong? Well, here's the problem! That, first of all, the Bhagavad Gita says (Sanskrit), okay, what is this happiness. First thing is that the happiness is not really happiness. What do I mean now? I go to a club, I dance, first of all I'm out of how many pounds, it cost me something, second of all okay I have to go there and drink, that means I've clouded up my mind is that really something that is in my best interests? To cloud up my mind? And then I meet people and I engage with them in some sort of interactions, when their minds are cloudy and my minds are cloudy? My mind is cloudy? Where does that go?

AUDIENCE: Who says that drinking and dancing within a club go together?


JAYADVAITA SWAMI: Okay we just go to the club and dance, alright it's a teetotallers club, we go there and we drink fruit juice and we dance. Alright and we go, we have a good time and it's lovely. Um, first thing is: it may not be so lovely actually. That I'm again telling myself that I'm having a good time, it's so great, I got this really nice boy, and he was so, he was just like nobody else, he was so nice to me and da da da da da da, and, it's great except later it's not so great! Because then he finds another girl and he says you know 'Get lost!' or he says, 'You're the girl for me' and then 'I'm pregnant' and then you know 'I can kill the kid' or have it. Either way it's a problem. Or we get married and we live happily ever after for five or seven years!

So it's supposed to be great but it's not always what it's chalked up to be. But let's say it is great. It's really good, but then it has a beginning and an end. So then now I have do something else. I went to the club, I danced, it was really nice, and now what, now I'm bored. Huh ?
So what, okay, we're going to look forward to going to the club again next week, and, so on.....It's little crumbs of happiness! The crumbs are finally taken away. This happiness that I'm getting by the dancing in this sense, it's all based on the body. Hm? You can't dance without the body. It's all preceding from the body, I see this, I touch that, I hear this. And the body itself is not a stable platform for happiness. It's not a stable source for happiness.

I'm trying to get happiness from the body, I'm thinking in fact that I am the body! If you ask who am I, I say 'Why I'm an American' or 'I'm British' or 'I'm Smith' or 'I'm Jones' or 'I'm Young' or 'I'm Old' or I am this or I am that. I'm thinking in terms of this body. As if the body were myself. Which it's not! So I'm getting happiness for this body and it's senses as if it was giving happiness to me, but because I'm not this body, feeding the body what it wants still leaves me hungry. You have your car, and you fill it with petrol, and now you don't have to eat right? No. Because you are not your car, you're just driving it around, driving it around, driving it around many times. Feeding the car doesn't feed you.

So doing whatever it is to satisfy the senses still leaves the living being himself dissatisfied. Otherwise you know you live in Britain, I live in America, you know, super advanced countries, whatever you want, order it on the internet and it's on your desk the next day: What do you want, name a material thing, you can have it.....Third world country where you might have to be deprived of something. Basically in Britain if you want it you can have it. So in Britain everyone's walking around um, jubilant? The faces are all smiles? Everyone is in untold ecstasy, throughout the day? and if not why not? Because we have all this stuff, you want a girl the girls are all there, you want a boy the boys are all there, if you are a boy and you want a boy the boys are all there!!! Whatever you want it's there. Fames, there all there. Do anything, sure why not, it's all there. Okay so where's the equation going wrong? If it's all available we should be the happiest people in the world, and you know, go out on the street, do your own inventory and tell me how it looks. Are they all really jolly jolly jolly out there? Why not?

So our proposition is, because the living being himself is starving. The petrol is being put into the car and the driver is hungry!

(Jayadvaita Swami 10/2007)