Q. Is mental happiness and the happiness of atma
different?
A. So this goes back to an important discussion we had in last week's satsang about Ananda. In that discussion we made it very clear that when we say your true nature is ananda we said you cannot translate ananda as bliss or blissful as a an experience, in that context.
Ananda is who you are. Ananda
is not a transient experience. And just to complete that review of what we saw
last week, I said that ananda in Vedantic context is not really translatable
into English. The word bliss is absolutely wrong in this context. Ananda can
mean bliss in other contexts. But when we use the expression such an atma-ananda
in that context atma most certainly does not mean bliss.
What does it mean? Words that can lean in the right
direction are words like contentment, fullness, completeness, perfection. One
of our uh students suggested inner beatitude, being blessed in nature.
So all of these are fine. But if you ask what particular English word is an exact translation of ananda in this context, we don't have one. So with that in mind, we can come back to the question of the difference between mental happiness and happiness of atma. Mental happiness as we know is an experience that comes and goes.
Atma doesn't come and go. Ananda doesn't come and go. Atma is ananda. Atma doesn't come and go. Atma is pure consciousness. Consciousness doesn't come and go. You don't come and go. Experiences come and go.
So here again we have to re-translate ananda. So we don't say the happiness of atma. Atma doesn't possess happiness. Atma is happiness. I wrote down a metaphor to use.
Atma is happiness.
To understand what that means, imagine if sugar could think.
This is a silly example. I think this example was given by Sri Ramakrishna and
some others. It's a kind of a folksy
kind of metaphor. If sugar scould think and the sugar thinks I wish I were
sweet, sugar wants to be sweet. Sugar is already sweet. Or if sugar says,
"I want to experience sweetness." Sugar is sweetness. Sugar wants to
experience sweetness. What for? Sugar is sweetness.
In the same way, the goal of Vedanta is not to experience
some kind of ananda because any experience comes and goes. The goal here is not
to experience ananda but to discover your true nature as Ananda. As such ananda is pure consciousness.
