A person's need for happiness is infinite, while the nature of material happiness is limited. Why wealth cannot give lasting happiness, and how spiritual practice opens its inner source.
To be happy is a person's main need. There are four levels of happiness: physical, psycho-physical, psycho-spiritual and spiritual. When all of them are realized, a person becomes someone who can serve as an example to others.
All material objects of pleasure exist in the outer, limited world, and this is what makes their nature limited. A person's capacity to enjoy these objects is also limited. There is a certain limit to what the nervous system can do, and pleasure beyond that limit is out of reach. The taste buds can recognize only a certain concentration of sweetness. You can add as much sugar as you like, but you won't taste anything sweeter. The pleasures we experience are transient by nature: today I love chocolate, and tomorrow I no longer do; today I like this person, and tomorrow I'm indifferent to them.
In the human mind there is a specific mechanism — attraction to certain objects of pleasure. And the moment a desire is satisfied, that need disappears and interest in it is lost. Whatever a person gets, they will be happy for only a few seconds. Then a new thought arises, and a new need for something that might bring happiness.
When a person seeks the sensual pleasures that external objects can give, it becomes harder and harder for them to turn their gaze inward. Besides, a person can become dependent on external objects of pleasure. For example, smoking contributes to lung cancer. But that doesn't stop most smokers. It's the same with alcohol — you can get cirrhosis of the liver, but people who know this don't stop drinking. Giving up material sources of happiness is hard. Having grown used to getting pleasure from them, a person's mind becomes extroverted. Even if only a very little happiness is expected from some object, the mind finds it hard to let go of it, and attachment arises.
A person's need for happiness, love and bliss is infinite; it knows no bounds. But the nature of material happiness is limited. That is why wealth cannot provide any lasting happiness.
And so summer has passed,As if it had never been.It is warm in the sun.But that is not enough.Life took me under its wing,Kept me safe and saved me,I truly was lucky.But that is not enough. >A. Tarkovsky
Because of the influence of our past actions and of our surroundings, we fall under the sway of the force of ignorance, which carries us away from our true purpose. This happens to everyone. The wind of ignorance blinds us, and a person begins to think that happiness, for them, means sensual pleasures.
Yes, wealth can satisfy material and, to some extent, psychic needs. But it cannot satisfy a person's spiritual needs. You can be poor or rich, but the essence lies in knowing that happiness is within. To reach this source, a special effort is needed — the practice of Spiritual practice: the daily effort, above all meditation, to move the mind toward the Infinite.. The ability to withdraw from external sources of pleasure and turn one's attention inward helps a person find deep within something that brings incomparably greater happiness than any external objects.
The one who can open the inner source and become happy is the person who limits their outer pleasures through self-discipline. Spiritual practice is the gradual transformation of a person's personality, the refinement and elevation of the mind. Only an elevated mind is able to enjoy subtle objects; for a mundane mind they do not exist, just as creativity does not exist for it. A crude mind cannot understand lofty poetry, the subtlest ideas that delight a spiritual seeker.
By repeating a A sound or set of sounds that, repeated with its meaning in mind, carries the mind toward the Infinite., a person is filled with subtle energy and pushes back the boundaries of their mind, and the crude wave of their mind gradually straightens out. As a result, the person's vibration becomes subtler, and they gain access to a happiness incomparably sweeter than the crude happiness of material objects. The vibration of absolute happiness is a straight line. By straightening the vibration of their mind, a person gradually draws closer to what they desire more than anything in the world.
To reach true happiness on the spiritual path, you have to get up again and again after falling. To go through difficulties, through inner and outer conflicts, through working off karma.
Every person is given certain resources by nature. And how a person uses them is very important. Physical poverty is not an example to follow. But it is better to be physically poor and spiritually rich than the other way around. A materially well-off person has every opportunity to develop spiritually, and it is unforgivable if they don't. Wealth without spirituality, like the power it gives, destroys and corrupts a person. That is why the saying "money can't buy happiness" is true. Wealth cannot bring happiness; it only gives a person a base that lets them set out on the path of spiritual development without delay and help others do the same.