Happiness

[Rhiannon]

Thinking back to Frankl again, it wasn't so much that he didn't care about the suffering around him, or his own terrible bereavement. It was more that he accepted that life was currently this way.

Again this isn't happiness as we might think of it, but it was a life he identified as meaningful. He was alive to life even in the darkest of circumstances.

[Shaker]

Thinking back to Frankl again, it wasn't so much that he didn't care about the suffering around him, or his own terrible bereavement. It was more that he accepted that life was currently this way.

Again this isn't happiness as we might think of it, but it was a life he identified as meaningful. He was alive to life even in the darkest of circumstances.

Nietzsche said that a man can bear almost any how just as long as he has a why. I often think of that in connection to Frankl and others in the death camps who managed to hang on to - or create - a meaningful existence pro. tem.

[Rhiannon]

Nietzsche said that a man can bear almost any how just as long as he has a why. I often think of that in connection to Frankl and others in the death camps who managed to hang on to - or create - a meaningful existence pro. tem.

Yes.

[Bramble]

It seems very hard for humans to accept things as they are. We tend to see ourselves as fixers and view our lives and the world as a set of problems to be solved. That's what progress is all about. Everything can and must be improved. Much misery comes this way.

'The universe is sacred. You cannot improve it. If you try to change it, you will ruin it' (Dao De Ching). This kind of thing doesn't go down well with most people. The other Krishnamurti (U.G.) believed that the human self was composed of nothing but the demand to bring about change in itself and the world. One interpretation of the Adam and Eve myth is that eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was precisely this: deciding to change things according to ideas of good and bad. Now we're back to having preferences.

Don't we always give life our best shot? In the relative world of comparisons we cannot avoid measuring our lives against hypothetical alternatives but don't we always simply do what we can at the time? Is it even the case that 'we' do anything at all, or do 'we' simply claim ownership of things done? The older I get the more it seems to me that this is so. It isn't a popular view because it seems to rob us of a sense of self-determination without which we may believe our lives to be void and meaningless, but I don't think it does. It's the tyranny of a self that is somehow thought to be master of its own destiny that strikes me as horrific. You can't win in the game of success and failure. The Zen master Lin Chi talked of the person of 'no rank' inside us all. We can't escape the dimension of rank, but it's there that we suffer. Perhaps the secret of lasting happiness is to find that person of no rank, for whom success and failure are meaningless fictions.

[Shaker]

Don't we always give life our best shot? In the relative world of comparisons we cannot avoid measuring our lives against hypothetical alternatives but don't we always simply do what we can at the time? Is it even the case that 'we' do anything at all, or do 'we' simply claim ownership of things done? The older I get the more it seems to me that this is so. It isn't a popular view because it seems to rob us of a sense of self-determination without which we may believe our lives to be void and meaningless, but I don't think it does.

I agree. Alan Burns's really quite desperate not to say frantic insistence that we must have free will, should have free will and by God do have free will springs to mind here.

The Zen master Lin Chi talked of the person of 'no rank' inside us all. We can't escape the dimension of rank, but it's there that we suffer. Perhaps the secret of lasting happiness is to find that person of no rank, for whom success and failure are meaningless fictions.

The older I get the more I come around to the idea - found in Zen as you say; also sketched in some of the Stoics - that a meaningful and worthwhile life could well be one in which considerations even of happiness and unhappiness don't matter, or not as much at any rate.

This - what the bubbles called ataraxia and the Romans called aequanimitas - is highly unnatural and ferociously difficult to achieve, which of course is why people have historically had to spend brutally, punishingly long periods in silence/isolation/meditation to be in with a shout.

Great post btw.

[Rhiannon]

I would argue that we don't have free will, but when something happens in our lives that shifts us from feeling that we don't have choices to feeling that we do then we live from a place where we can take responsibility. The alternative for me would be perpetual victimhood and that's no fun. I suppose what has gone before has led to this person inevitably doing things this way or that way. And I think it's important to honour the fact we do make choices, not just for ourselves but for others.

At the same time there's no point in arguing with reality - if you do, you lose.

I know what 'unhappy' looks like. Increasingly as I'm trying to grab at where my thoughts are going it seems 'meaningful' is what 'happy' really is.

[wigginhall]

It seems very hard for humans to accept things as they are. We tend to see ourselves as fixers and view our lives and the world as a set of problems to be solved. That's what progress is all about. Everything can and must be improved. Much misery comes this way.

'The universe is sacred. You cannot improve it. If you try to change it, you will ruin it' (Dao De Ching). This kind of thing doesn't go down well with most people. The other Krishnamurti (U.G.) believed that the human self was composed of nothing but the demand to bring about change in itself and the world. One interpretation of the Adam and Eve myth is that eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was precisely this: deciding to change things according to ideas of good and bad. Now we're back to having preferences.

Don't we always give life our best shot? In the relative world of comparisons we cannot avoid measuring our lives against hypothetical alternatives but don't we always simply do what we can at the time? Is it even the case that 'we' do anything at all, or do 'we' simply claim ownership of things done? The older I get the more it seems to me that this is so. It isn't a popular view because it seems to rob us of a sense of self-determination without which we may believe our lives to be void and meaningless, but I don't think it does. It's the tyranny of a self that is somehow thought to be master of its own destiny that strikes me as horrific. You can't win in the game of success and failure. The Zen master Lin Chi talked of the person of 'no rank' inside us all. We can't escape the dimension of rank, but it's there that we suffer. Perhaps the secret of lasting happiness is to find that person of no rank, for whom success and failure are meaningless fictions.

Very nice post.  I was at my meditation group last w/e, and we were talking about this - that when we were young, there was this fierce determination to achieve, which in the case of meditation, meant getting somewhere, that is not here!

Anywho, I have wandered the highways and byways about this for decades, and remembered Lenin's great question, 'what is to be done?', and I thought that there is nothing to be done.   Of course, sometimes there is, just to be awkward.   Ego and no ego.

Also, Shaker's point about not minding about happiness and unhappiness, I think this is very relevant, and seems to arrive with great age!  You can't expect anyone under 50 to think like this, except unusual people. 

[Rhiannon]

I don't know, I still rage against the amount of time I wasted being unhappy. How much choice I ever had is a moot point, but it took up far too much of my life.

[wigginhall]

I don't know, I still rage against the amount of time I wasted being unhappy. How much choice I ever had is a moot point, but it took up far too much of my life.

Yes, I still do that.  In fact, it's quite addictive, I want to prove that X was a really mean bitch.   But I spend less time on it now!

[Rhiannon]

Yes, I still do that.  In fact, it's quite addictive, I want to prove that X was a really mean bitch.   But I spend less time on it now!

It's not about proving anything, it's about reaching 45 and feeling that life's finally just starting. But then would I be who I am now without the shit? No.

[Bramble]

I was at my meditation group last w/e, and we were talking about this - that when we were young, there was this fierce determination to achieve, which in the case of meditation, meant getting somewhere, that is not here!

Yes, the first part of life seems to be taken up to a large extent with striving of one sort or another and then in middle age there comes a looking back as well as forwards and with it, perhaps, a reconsideration of what it's all about and whether we're going anywhere but a wooden box. Then certain ideas often drop away, not so much I think as a result of letting go, which suggests an active relinquishment, but as a kind of wearing out. They just don't seem relevant any more. It may be one of the few compensations of old age.

[Nearly Sane]

What a lovely meandering thread this is!

[Bramble]

I don't know, I still rage against the amount of time I wasted being unhappy. How much choice I ever had is a moot point, but it took up far too much of my life.

I can still remember - very vividly - stopping my bicycle on a hill, aged 17, and marvelling at a feeling I couldn't recall ever having had before. I realised it was happiness and it felt so good. Sadly it didn't last and was followed by many years of misery and depression as I sought to work through those childhood years and find some sort of peace. I don't know whether we ever 'get there', whatever that might mean, but something I did learn was that we start afresh in every moment.

[wigginhall]

Yes, the first part of life seems to be taken up to a large extent with striving of one sort or another and then in middle age there comes a looking back as well as forwards and with it, perhaps, a reconsideration of what it's all about and whether we're going anywhere but a wooden box. Then certain ideas often drop away, not so much I think as a result of letting go, which suggests an active relinquishment, but as a kind of wearing out. They just don't seem relevant any more. It may be one of the few compensations of old age.

One of the great joys I've found in Zen meditation, when faced with a particularly noxious koan, such as 'what is the purpose of my life?', is that I can say, I don't know and I don't care.   This is my mini-liberation, and I don't care if any Zen big cheese likes it or not.   We also work on 'What am I?', and again, I felt very satisfied to say, 'it doesn't matter what I am'. 

[Rhiannon]

One of the great joys I've found in Zen meditation, when faced with a particularly noxious koan, such as 'what is the purpose of my life?', is that I can say, I don't know and I don't care.   This is my mini-liberation, and I don't care if any Zen big cheese likes it or not.   We also work on 'What am I?', and again, I felt very satisfied to say, 'it doesn't matter what I am'.

Yes, this I get. When I had my breakdown I had loads of therapy and came out of it with the realisation that everything I thought about who I was (largely based on what other people told me) was actually false. So I knew what I wasn't, but had no clue what I was.

And I still don't know. But does it matter? I'm this person that does this, and my purpose is to do this, until I don't and I'm not.

[Rhiannon]

I can still remember - very vividly - stopping my bicycle on a hill, aged 17, and marvelling at a feeling I couldn't recall ever having had before. I realised it was happiness and it felt so good. Sadly it didn't last and was followed by many years of misery and depression as I sought to work through those childhood years and find some sort of peace. I don't know whether we ever 'get there', whatever that might mean, but something I did learn was that we start afresh in every moment.

No, we don't get there, and nor would I want to. Always a journey, always being unmade and made.

The concept of starting afresh is an interesting one. There's nothing new about the person that looks through my eyes, yet the moment itself is new. So do I bring to it what I am or lose what I am? But then I e just said to Wiggs that I'm just this.

[wigginhall]

Yes, this I get. When I had my breakdown I had loads of therapy and came out of it with the realisation that everything I thought about who I was (largely based on what other people told me) was actually false. So I knew what I wasn't, but had no clue what I was.

And I still don't know. But does it matter? I'm this person that does this, and my purpose is to do this, until I don't and I'm not.

Yes, I kind of broke down what I was, not via a breakdown, but through other means, and drilled down to some sort of base, which is not even being a person.  But then I got bored with all the Zen stuff, and now I don't care really, and I don't know what I am, and if people try to define me, that's them getting their rocks off.   And I'm not on a journey at all.

[Rhiannon]

Yes, I kind of broke down what I was, not via a breakdown, but through other means, and drilled down to some sort of base, which is not even being a person.  But then I got bored with all the Zen stuff, and now I don't care really, and I don't know what I am, and if people try to define me, that's them getting their rocks off.   And I'm not on a journey at all.

I haven't really done Zen stuff, but I'll live.

I like the journey metaphor simply because I don't want to have a destination.

[wigginhall]

No Direction Home.

[Shaker]

Very nice post.  I was at my meditation group last w/e, and we were talking about this - that when we were young, there was this fierce determination to achieve, which in the case of meditation, meant getting somewhere, that is not here!

Anywho, I have wandered the highways and byways about this for decades, and remembered Lenin's great question, 'what is to be done?', and I thought that there is nothing to be done.   Of course, sometimes there is, just to be awkward.   Ego and no ego.

What I find interesting in many of the (generality alert) spiritual teachings I've read both ancient and modern (the latter frequently based on the former, of course) is that the Great Work as it's called in occult circles or individuation (Jung) isn't about discovering something brand-new but rediscovery of something we already are but have forgotten - a clearing away rather than creation. This implies that working on oneself isn't about the creation or adoption of a new thing but cleaning the mirror, so to speak, in order to see what's actually there already. Which is a rather positive and optimistic view, I think.

[Shaker]

One of the great joys I've found in Zen meditation, when faced with a particularly noxious koan, such as 'what is the purpose of my life?', is that I can say, I don't know and I don't care.   This is my mini-liberation, and I don't care if any Zen big cheese likes it or not.   We also work on 'What am I?', and again, I felt very satisfied to say, 'it doesn't matter what I am'.

Obviously, if you were at all bothered by doing this Zen mularkey properly, in response to such questions you would have to respond with someting like, 'Rowntrees fruit pastilles', nod gently and smile very slightly but sagely for the full effect. I don't think you're taking the whole thing seriously at all.

[Rhiannon]

What I find interesting in many of the (generality alert) spiritual teachings I've read both ancient and modern (the latter frequently based on the former, of course) is that the Great Work as it's called in occult circles or individuation (Jung) isn't about discovering something brand-new but rediscovery of something we already are but have forgotten - a clearing away rather than creation. This implies that working on oneself isn't about the creation or adoption of a new thing but cleaning the mirror, so to speak, in order to see what's actually there already. Which is a rather positive and optimistic view, I think.

Well it's said we all come into the world ok and collect the shit that sticks as we grow. So it's a matter of clearing that away, layer by layer, to get back to the thing that is ok again. And that I think is a place of non-judgement.

[Bramble]

Yes, I kind of broke down what I was, not via a breakdown, but through other means, and drilled down to some sort of base, which is not even being a person.  But then I got bored with all the Zen stuff, and now I don't care really, and I don't know what I am, and if people try to define me, that's them getting their rocks off.   And I'm not on a journey at all.

Bodhidharma cut off his eyelids and spent nine years staring at a wall before concluding that he didn't know who he was. I think you got away lightly.

[Bramble]

I haven't really done Zen stuff, but I'll live.

I like the journey metaphor simply because I don't want to have a destination.

'Every day is a journey and the journey is home' (Basho)

[Shaker]

To be fair, if he'd cut off his eyelids he'd have spent nine years staring at absolutely anything.