First of all, happiness will have to be defined. What is happiness? Then, what types of happiness are in existence? Religious, material and otherwise? Or is it one indivisible happiness which takes different forms in various situations? So all these questions first have to be solved by philosophical discussion of this concept of happiness. Then things will become very easy. Otherwise, if you don’t define happiness and enter this debate, then the confusion will continue and you will not be able to make them understand what you really mean.
But as I told you, this cannot be handled in this manner that I speak to you piecemeal and then you convey because sometimes they would have questions. Suppose I have told you something about it and it is not what they had in mind. You start a few sentences and an unexpected question suddenly would arise and then you would know that the answer was not sufficient. This is like learning languages and practicing them. Did I tell you about my experience of Chinese? That landed me into a very similar embarrassing situation. You know Usman Chini Sahib, don’t you? I once asked him to teach me about a hundred odd sentences in Chinese which can be used in everyday life.
But he should teach me in such a manner that I should be able to speak it like a Chinese. Perfect pronunciation and intonation and everything. So he worked very hard on me. And we did it like this that I said, look here, if I go to a Chinese shop, I will say, hello, ni hao ma. And what would be his answer and then what would be my second question or his question.
So we visualized things. Then, fully armed with his Chinese, I walked into a Chinese restaurant in Pindi. And in the same manner as he had taught me, I said, ni hao ma. So that impressed him so much that he believed that I knew Chinese perfectly well. So he started speaking Chinese, you know, like a frontier male. And none of the sentences which I had remembered was used by him. So I started telling him in English. I don’t know, but he went on and on. So this is how sometimes one faces such a situation. Such conversations should be held directly. I prefer that.
