The Meaning of Happiness: The Quest for Freedom of the Spirit in Modern Psychology and the Wisdom of the East
280
The Meaning of Happiness: The Quest for Freedom of the Spirit in Modern Psychology and the Wisdom of the East
280Paperback
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781608685400 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New World Library |
| Publication date: | 08/25/2018 |
| Pages: | 280 |
| Sales rank: | 442,165 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d) |
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CHAPTER 1
WAR IN THE SOUL
Almost everyone knows the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs. A man and his wife had a mysterious goose that from time to time favored them by laying a golden egg. When this had been going on for some weeks they began to think it rather tiresome of the goose to part with its gold so gradually, for they imagined that it carried a store of such eggs inside itself. Not having the sense to weigh the creature first and find out if it was much heavier than a goose should be, they decided to kill it and cut it open. As might be expected, they found only one ordinary, dead goose, void of gold eggs and unable to produce any more.
There were once scientists, too, who were similarly disappointed when they searched the human anatomy to find an organ that might be described as the soul; there are still scholars who analyze Beethoven down to the last semiquaver and Shakespeare to the last pronoun to find the secret of their genius, and there are also theologians who do much the same thing with the words of the Bible to discover the nature of God. And it is yet the hope of even the most advanced science that the universe will yield up its mysteries, its last mighty secret, to those who dissect its tiniest fragments, learning more and more about less and less. This is known as not being able to see the wood for the trees. It is by no means an error peculiar to scientists and scholars, for the fable of the golden eggs is an ancient tale of human nature.
We have a saying about the virtue of being able to "see life whole," for all meaning is in wholeness. There could be no golden eggs without the goose, and however tiresome, slow, and stupid the goose might be, he resembled life in that he was an interplay of opposites: he was slow, but his eggs were gold, and if you cut him to pieces to gather the gold and discard the slowness you were left with nothing but a corpse. This will also happen if you carve up the human body to find the mysterious source of its vitality or if you separate the flower of a plant from its muddy roots. Something very similar happens in a much more important way when men love life and hate death or cling to youth and reject old age, which is like expecting a mountain to have only one slope — that which goes up, whereas to be a mountain it must go up and down. For the meaning is in the whole, and not only the meaning but the very existence of the thing. Indeed, we are only aware of life and life is only able to manifest itself because it is divided into innumerable pairs of opposites: we know motion by contrast with stillness, long by short, light by darkness, heat by cold, and joy by sorrow.
Therefore to see life whole is to understand these opposing qualities as essential to its existence, without trying to interfere, without dissecting the body of the universe so that its pleasant portions may be preserved and its unpleasant cast away. This is what the philosophic Hindu understands when, looking at the most terrible things, he can say, "Sarvam kalvidam Brahman" —"This, too, is Brahman," that divine Being of whose Self each single thing is a changing aspect. And to him this Brahman is not merely the whole universe any more than seeing life whole is seeing the whole of life; in this sense Brahman is rather the wholeness, even the holiness, of life which can be destroyed only in the fantasy world of our own minds. Therefore those who attempt to destroy it carry, as it were, corpses in their thoughts which corrupt and poison their souls. In the life to which they cling in horror of death, the pleasure in fear of pain, the wealth in fear of poverty, and the youth in fear of age, they hold only to the world's dismembered limbs. Yet though they may not know it the dismembering and the consequent suffering exist only in themselves; they think they can take the whole apart, but it is a poor illusion. Its only result is that for all their clinging their life, pleasure, wealth, and youth have the taint of unhappiness because, having cut them off to possess them forever, they are no more alive. Thus it is not surprising that some few "wise ones" having come to grief in this way cry out that pleasure and wealth are sins wherein no happiness is to be found. But fire is not evil because it burns your fingers if you try to catch hold of it; it is only dangerous.
The Problem of Opposites
We call such things as life and death "opposites," but this is not altogether a satisfactory name seeing that it implies a state of opposition and hence of conflict. But life and death are in conflict only in the mind which creates a war between them out of its own desires and fears. In fact life and death are not opposed but complementary, being the two essential factors of a greater life that is made up of living and dying just as melody is produced by the sounding and silencing of individual notes. Life feeds on death, its very movement is only possible and apparent because of the continuous birth and death of cells, the absorption of nourishment and the discarding of waste, which in its turn provides a fertile soil from which new life can spring. For vitality is a cycle whose completion requires both upward movement and downward movement just as light cannot manifest itself without the whole motion of the light wave from start to finish; if these waves could be divided into half or quarter waves the light would disappear. So also in the biological realm we have two opposite yet complementary sexes, male and female; beings are divided in this way in order to reproduce themselves, and the meaning of man and woman is the child without which there would be no point in having two sexes at all. Thus they are the two legs upon which our life stands, and when one is cut away the whole collapses.
These so-called opposites present man with a difficult problem, for there is a longing in his heart for eternity and victory over death, a longing which is misdirected because in life as he knows it he himself is one of those opposites and thus is apparently set against something over which he can never triumph. For the foundation of our life as we know it is the opposition between ourselves and the universe, between that which is "I" and that which is not "I." Here again are two things which are complementary rather than opposed, for it is obvious that the self cannot exist without the universe and that the universe cannot exist without the multitude of selves and entities of which it is composed. But from the point of view of suffering, struggling man this fact, however obvious, is purely abstract. Moreover, the existence of the universe depends apparently only on the impersonal multitude of selves of which there is an inexhaustible supply; it does not depend on any particular self. Indeed, nature seems astonishingly callous and wasteful in its treatment of individual selves, and it is therefore not surprising that man should rebel when treated with the same callous disregard for individuality as is the insect. It even seems that here there is an actual conflict which does not exist solely in the mind, for with one hand nature lavishes the most amazing skill on the creation of individuals and even on their preservation, while with the other it treats them as if they were no more than the dust from which they rose. But if one or the other of nature's hands were tied the world would either choke itself from overabundance of life or be altogether depopulated. Nevertheless, from the individual point of view the process is wasteful and callous. Man might assist nature to a greater economy by regulating the reproduction of his own kind and by adapting himself to nature instead of trying to fight it. But this requires a concerted social effort that might take thousands of years to accomplish, and hence is of little consequence to individuals living in the turmoil of the twentieth century.
However, scientific measures for the removal of suffering are here beside the point, for it is doubtful whether the resulting increase of comfort would be welcomed if it were sufficient to upset the balance of the opposites. Just as too much light blinds the eyes, too much pleasure numbs the senses; to be apparent it needs contrast. But the problem of man's conflict with the universe remains. We can present any number of straightforward, rational solutions, justifying the existence of these uncomfortable opposites and the unfortunate but necessary operations of natural law. It is the easiest thing in the world to philosophize, telling man how glad he should be that he suffers, seeing that otherwise he would be unable to feel joy. But when it comes to the point such talk is found to be remote and abstract, leaving the heart unconvinced even if the head is satisfied.
For here we are touching the very root of man's unhappiness, and to these regions the sweetly reasonable voice of pure philosophy does not penetrate. Whatever may be said about the need for basing one's attitude to life on a universal as distinct from a personal point of view, the difficulty is that in the ordinary way man does not feel universal. His center is himself and his consciousness peeps out through windows in a wall of flesh; he does not feel his consciousness as existing in things outside of himself, seeing through others' eyes or moving with others' limbs. And the world outside that wall is threatening, so much so that he does everything possible to fortify himself against it, surrounding himself with a barricade of possessions and illusions to hide himself from the world and the world from him. Within this fortress he strives to guard and preserve the thing he calls his life, but he might as well try to imprison sunlight in a room by pulling down the blind or trap wind by shutting the door. To enjoy wind you must let it blow past you and feel it against bare flesh; the same is true of time, for the moment has always gone before it can be seized, and the same is true of life which not even this wall of flesh can hold forever. To feel and understand it you must let it blow past you like the wind as it moves across the earth from void to void. But this is intolerable. It means tearing down the barricade, giving up every security, opening windows both sides of the room so that the draft sweeps through, knocks down the vases, scatters our papers, and upsets the furniture. This is too great a price to pay for having the dust and cobwebs blown out of our souls. Besides, we shall catch cold and sit shivering and sneezing till we go crazy.
From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle-home Leave thee naked to laughter Till leaves fall and cold winds come.
So we keep the windows closed and shuttered until we die from suffocation, overwhelmed by stagnant air.
The Fear of Fear
This is a malady as old as life, born of what Keyserling calls "Original Fear" whose outward aspect psychologists term the "pleasure-pain principle." For as the snail and the tortoise withdraw into their shells, man retires into his castle of illusion. But it is curious that whereas the snail and the tortoise often come out of their shells, man hardly ever comes out of his castle, because he seems to have a much more acute sense of his personal identity, of his distinction from the rest of the universe. The greater the sense of distinction, the greater the tension between the two and the more the pairs of opposites war together in the soul. This tension we call unhappiness, but it is not suggested that it will be overcome by the abolition of "Original Fear," which is in itself a most valuable instinct. If we liked pain as much as pleasure we might shortly become extinct, for it is only this original fear of pain which urges us to self-preservation. Here again we have a pair of opposites, love and fear or like and dislike, mutually essential components of the faculty of feeling, for who does not fear neither loves nor feels. But note the term original fear. Man's difficulty is that his fear is seldom original; it is once or many times removed from originality, being not just simple fear but the fear of being afraid.
There are two kinds of tension, creative and destructive, the first as when a string is tensed to produce music and the second as when it is tensed to be broken. Between the opposites there must also be tension if they are to produce life. Of their nature they must move in opposite directions, and yet they must be held together by a relationship and a meaning. By centrifugal force the earth speeds away from the sun; by gravity it is drawn toward it, and hence it moves around it in a circle and is neither frozen nor burned. Thus the movement of the opposites away from each other is original fear, while the tie that binds them is original love. The result is creative tension. But man is not just afraid; he fears the tension caused by his original fear so that his fear is increased. The tension is also increased, growing all the more frightening until it becomes destructive instead of creative. The tie is stretched to breaking point, whereat the opposites tend to shoot apart into utter isolation. Thus when the tension of original fear is accepted man can swing happily upon his orbit; but should he try to escape from that fear he simply adds one fear to another and one tension to another, which is a process that may go on forever. Like a fly caught in a spider's web, the more he struggles, the more he becomes involved.
In this way the tension of the opposites is turned by man into destructive conflict. Clinging to one and fleeing from the other he simply incites the one he flees to assert itself the more. To hate death and change is trying to make life deathless and changeless, and this is a rigid, moribund, living death. Hence the saying, "Cowards die a thousand deaths, but the valiant die but once." For in holding to pleasure in fear of pain man starts the tension, but the real trouble begins when he tries to get rid not only of the pain but of the tension as well, giving himself two enemies instead of one. That pain should arouse fear is as natural as that fire should arouse warmth. But let it stay there, for if we run from our fear it becomes panic, and this is the entrance to a bottomless abyss of self-deception and misery. Man does not like to admit to himself that he is afraid, for this weakens his self-esteem and shakes his faith in the security of his ego. To accept fear would be like accepting death, so he runs from it, and this is the great unhappiness. Sometimes it is expressed in sheer unbridled terror, but more often it is a half-concealed, gnawing anxiety moving in vicious circles to an ever-greater intensity. It would have been better to say in the first place, "I am afraid, but not ashamed."
Therefore in struggling with the opposites man perpetually deceives himself. The prizes he tries to pluck away from life and keep solely for his personal use turn moldy because he has severed them from their roots, and nothing that is isolated can live, since the two most important characteristics of life are circulation and change. On the other hand, the troubles which he tries to avoid are the only things which make him aware of his blessings, and if he would love the latter he must fear the former. But he is afraid of fear. These two things make him respectively frustrated and worried, driving him more and more into an attitude of isolation, of separateness from and hostility toward the rest of life, standing huddled and miserable between the devil of circumstances and the deep sea of his own unpredictable and unruly emotions. And in this isolation his spirit perishes.
Man and Nature
Man is as much attached to nature as a tree, and though he walks freely on two legs and is not rooted in the soil, he is by no means a self-sufficient, self-moving, and self-directing entity. For his life he depends absolutely on the same factors as the tree, the worm, and the fly, on the universal powers of nature, life, God, or whatever it may be. From some mysterious source life flows through him unceasingly; it does not just go in at birth and come out at death — he is the channel for an ever-moving stream, a stream that carries the blood through his veins, that moves his lungs and brings him air to breathe, that raises his food from the earth and bears the light of the sun to his face. If we look into a single cell of his body we find the universe, for sun, moon, and stars are ceaselessly maintaining it; we find it again if we plumb into the depths of his mind, for there are all the archaic urges of primeval life, both human and animal, and could we look deeper we might find kinship with the plants and rocks. For man is a meeting place for the interplay of forces from all quarters of the universe, swept through him in a stream which is the power behind all his thoughts and actions, which is indeed more truly man's self than his body or mind, its instruments. This was known to almost all the ancient peoples of the world whose sages taught that all the actions of man were as much expressions of nature's unceasing movement as the sun and the wind — a fact that would be obvious to anyone not born and bred in a place where there was little more to see than human handiwork.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Meaning of Happiness"
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Copyright © 2018 Joan Watts and Anne Watts.
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