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Material advancement cannot make you happy. It may be for a few days, if somebody is very poor, and if he all of a sudden gets millions of dollars, he may feel happy, "Now I have got so much money." But that happiness is not ultimate. That is temporary

Expressions researched:
"Material advancement cannot make you happy. It may be for a few days, somebody, some . . . if somebody is very poor, and if he all of a sudden gets millions of dollars, he may feel happy" |"Now I have got so much money" |"But that happiness is not ultimate"

Lectures

General Lectures

Material advancement cannot make you happy. It may be for a few days, somebody, some . . . if somebody is very poor, and if he all of a sudden gets millions of dollars, he may feel happy, "Now I have got so much money." But that happiness is not ultimate. That is temporary happiness. There will be a reaction.

Kṛṣṇa expands His internal energy of bliss and knowledge, ānanda-cinmaya. Ānanda means bliss, happiness. Ānanda. The spirit soul is ānanda-moya avyasat. The nature of the spirit soul is joyful, happy, and because we are spark of that spiritual—we are spiritual spark, or part and parcel of the Supreme Lord—therefore our nature is to seek joy. Whole living entities—either birds, beasts, human beings—everyone is seeking happiness, because that is the nature. Nature of the spirit soul is to seek happiness.

Unfortunately, we have been conditioned. We have been conditioned by these material laws. Therefore we cannot, I mean to say, fully realize what is that happiness. For example, in your country, United States of America, you are known all over the world the richest nation. Actually you are. But some section of your younger population, they are not finding happiness in this material advancement.

They are frustrated, they have invented some other way of living, known as hippies, or something like that. Why? They are all sons and daughters of rich men. Their parents are puzzled how to settle up their sons and daughters. They are not happy. So many, I mean to say, endeavors are going on, from the government side, from private side, how to control. But actual defect they do not see. They do not see that happiness, real happiness, is not possible simply by material advancement. That is the defect.

Material advancement cannot make you happy. It may be for a few days, somebody, some . . . if somebody is very poor, and if he all of a sudden gets millions of dollars, he may feel happy, "Now I have got so much money." But that happiness is not ultimate. That is temporary happiness. There will be a reaction.

After he has enjoyed fully that millions of dollars, he will again feel unhappy, frustration, confusion. That is the nature, because the spirit soul’s happiness is different happiness. The defect of the modern civilization is that they do not see this, what is the defect, that in spite of so much material advancement, why a section of people is not happy, why they are seeking happiness somewhere else?

So this is the defect of modern education: they do not see it. But the answer is there in the Bhagavad-gītā. The answer is there. Unfortunately, we do not read all this literature. The answer is there. Lord Kṛṣṇa says, sukham ātyantikaṁ yat tad atīndriyam-grāhyam (BG 6.21).

The real happiness . . . happiness means sense gratification. Happiness, the other import of happiness, is sense gratification. So we are also trying to be happy by sense gratification in the material world. But because we are spirit soul, our adjustment of this material happiness will not make us happy, because our nature is different.

Page Title:Material advancement cannot make you happy. It may be for a few days, if somebody is very poor, and if he all of a sudden gets millions of dollars, he may feel happy, "Now I have got so much money." But that happiness is not ultimate. That is temporary
Compiler:Nabakumar
Created:2024-02-12, 07:28:53.000
Totals by Section:BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=1, Con=0, Let=0
No. of Quotes:1