On Happiness (revisited)

...maybe 'part two' would be a better title...

In rereading the previous post I asked myself what it could mean to "be happiness"? I spent the whole entry arguing that we struggle to define happiness for ourselves, but I couldn't avoid suggesting the answer was simply to find happiness inside... Yet, what is it? Moreover, what does it mean to "be happiness"?

Here is what old Lao Tzu, in chapter 38, suggested:

It is because the most excellent do not strive to excel

That they are of the highest efficacy.

Thus according to Lao Tzu happiness, or anything for that matter, is actually only attainable when we don't forcefully attempt to obtain it. It is our attempt to define it which actually stops us from experiencing it, precisely because we are obsessed with achieving it. Perhaps it is not so different from John Lennon's line: life is what happens to you when you are busy making plans. Things never work out the way you planned, not matter how detailed your spreadsheet is. So to plan for 'it' is counter productive. Happiness is not a destination, not something to plan for, and it is not a future destination, subject to flight schedules or Gucci suits. It only exists in the present moment.

Or maybe it is more like those strange pictures where you can only see the shapes by un-focusing your eyes. When you stare at the page with your 'normal', rational vision/mind, then all you see is a bunch of spots of color. But when you when you let go of the normal method of digesting information, you reveal the actual meaning of the picture.

So the whole approach of trying to find your happiness is wrong, because you are already your own happiness, you just cannot see it because you are trying to hard. Of course, the danger here is that one might understand that we should just stop trying and everything will find its order. This is not totally correct, not in the economic and not in the political or social sense. We still need to be aware of our surroundings, we still have to make decisions and that always involves a degree of coersion. But we can do it in a way that is more balanced, that involves a critical self-awareness, and that doesn't essentialize any maxims or trends or medications.

Thus to be really objectless in one's desires is how one observes the mysteries of all things,

While really having desires is how observes their boundaries. (Chapter one)