Man’s search for happiness is perfectly natural and understandable. But the search is unfortunately misdirected. Lasting bliss cannot be found in the finite things of the world. But we human beings constitutionally look for joy in outside things.
According to the Katha Upanishad – The self-existent Bhagavan (God) inflicted an injury upon the sense organs by creating them with outgoing tendencies. Therefore man perceives only outer objects with them, and not the inner Self.
The ears, the skin, the eyes, the tongue and the nose are the five windows (sense organs) in our system through which we perceive objects in the world. All the sense organs have a perpetual attraction for their respective sense objects. For most people the goal of life is no more than getting the maximum pleasure arising out of the contact of the sense organs with the sense objects.
Though in saner moments some people understand their helplessly being taken for a ride by the senses and the mind, they hardly resolve to do anything about it. They think that the mutual attraction between the senses and the objects will wear off by itself somehow, some day. Alas, things do not work out that way.
Swami Ashokanandaji puts it beautifully – Our mind, our senses are our betrayers. First of all, they clamour for things, and you take trouble to give them these things, then after a little while they are dissatisfied with them. That’s not fair, but the mind and the senses do not care for fairness. …
This mind and senses want to make you work for them. That is all they want. So when you have done one thing, dissatisfaction comes and you are made to do another thing. This is the way it is: because we have done something in the past, we are doing similar things in the present.