The Secret of Being Happy : 3.

To evaluate the worth of a person through the riches one possesses, the appearance of one’s body or one’s objective relationships would be to equate the person with a quantity, while a person is not a quantity. We are not a weight or a length or a breadth. We are something quite different from these measurements of space and time. There is some worth and value, some meaning, significance and connotation in us which we intuitively feel but cannot explain, cannot understand and, therefore, cannot appreciate. Inasmuch as we are unable to have a grasp of this quality in us, we run for quantities. We want a huge furnished bungalow to live in, a vast field, a garden and many possessions, which is a quantitative satisfaction that we are trying to achieve because we have lost the quality of life.


If we have a quality in us, we will not ask for quantities. We will not want riches, buildings, lands and properties. We run after properties and quantitative possessions because quality is missing. When quality has been lost, we want to possess quantity; but unfortunately, quantity is a perishable entity. It comes and goes. It never stays with a person. We cannot possess a building for all time. We cannot be rich or be a landholder for all time, nor even will we be able to possess this body for all time. So all quantitative associations of our personality are doomed to ultimate failure, and yet, unfortunately for us all, there is nothing in this world but a quantity.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued  ...