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Happiness

Ancient Indian Wisdom for a Restless Age

Jahnvi Borgohain looks at a variety of approaches to happiness.

Across many centuries and all continents, philosophers have wrestled with a deceptively simple question: ‘What makes human life happy?’ Aristotle called his version of happiness eudaimonia and said it was achieved through virtue and reason. Epicurus saw happiness as tranquillity (ataraxia) – a life free from unnecessary pain and full of simple pleasures. Today, we might equate happiness with comfort, success, or even a perfect image on social media. But once we step beyond this, we discover many older and deeper traditions that invite us to think differently about it.

In India, from about the sixth century BCE on, a dazzling variety of philosophical schools or darśanas emerged, with each offering a distinctive answer to this very question.

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