Happiness from Ancient Indian Perspective: Hitopadeśa

Piyush Gotise () and Bal Krishna Upadhyay
Additional contact information
Piyush Gotise: Barkatullah University
Bal Krishna Upadhyay: Indian Institute of Forest Management

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2018, vol. 19, issue 3, No 12, 863-879

Abstract: Abstract People who seek happiness intentionally often do not get it. That is, as per the paradox of happiness, in order to be happy one should forget about it (Martin in J Happiness Stud 9(2):171–184, 2008) and try to make others happy. Given that, the purpose of present article is to suggest a six-stage people-centric (rather than self-centric) theoretical model of happiness (sukha), which is constructed using a framework based on one of the eminent ancient Indian texts—Hitopadeśa. The ancient yet novel model describes a balanced path to happiness. The propounded model indicates “knowledge” (vidyā) as a foremost antecedent of happiness. The model propounded not only offers insights on achieving integrated well-being and happiness in a moral and philanthropic way, but also extends complex constructs and perspectives in the realm of happiness studies and psychology, which could subsequently promote further research. Furthermore, the proposed model seems to corroborate some of the modern well-being theories.

Keywords: Key to happiness; Knowledge; Dharma; Eudaimonic happiness; Humility; Righteousness; Harmony; Self-acceptance; Self-control; Moderation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-017-9853-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:19:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s10902-017-9853-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-017-9853-2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().