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Contentment, the greatest treasure

Last Updated 25 May 2016, 02:45 IST

There is no happiness equal to contentment, said Chanakya. But unfortunately, very few of us have tasted the sweet fruit of happiness derived from contentment.

The main reason behind this is because when we are discontent, we always want more, more and more. But, when we practise contentment, we experience from within that we already have everything we really need.

So, what is so special about contentment that has made lots of great people talk or write about it? Well, to understand it, we first need to understand the opposite of it - discontentment. If we look around, then we would hardly find anyone who is not discontented. Right?

According to expert studies, there are numerous causes of man's discontentment or dissatisfaction that brings mental agitation and disturbs his intellectual equipoise as a result of which he is weighed down with despair, indifference, tension, animosity and mental agony and is not in a position to exercise his discrimination in order to find means of improving his conditions and loses the ability to act. Thus, his plans and acts go wrong and give rise to quarrels.

A dis-content person has a typical habit to build castles in the air while he is as poor as poor can be. Such people totally fail to understand that it is only by dint of hard work that a man can make both ends meet, and only a man of right understanding can work on the right lines.

Otherwise, it is a blunder to let your reason be clouded by passion and thus lose your own happiness. Hence, we should remember that just as food sustains the body, so does the mind find sustenance in happiness.

So, the saying goes: there is no food as good as happiness. And, to be happy, you have to be contented. Just as, for bodily well-being, man seeks food, so should he maintain the state of contentment to ensure happiness of mind.

As Alfred Nobel rightly said that 'Contentment is the only real wealth', we should, therefore, not run after securing another kind of wealth to lose the wealth of contentment because contentment is as good as a means of happiness as wealth is considered to be.

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(Published 25 May 2016, 02:45 IST)

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