Happiness

FALSE FRIENDS

Those who seek happiness in pleasure, wealth, glory, power, and heroics are as naive as the child who tries to catch a rainbow and wear it as a coat.

DILGO KHYENTSE RINPOCHE

If we wish to identify the external factors and mental attitudes that favor genuine happiness and those that are prejudicial to it, we must first learn to distinguish between happiness and certain conditions that may appear similar to it but are actually very different.

HAPPINESS AND PLEASURE: THE GREAT MIX-UP

The most common error is to confuse pleasure for happiness. Pleasure, says the Hindu proverb, “is only the shadow of happiness.” It is the direct result of pleasurable sensual, esthetic, or intellectual stimuli. The fleeting experience of pleasure is dependent upon circumstance, on a specific location or moment in time. It is unstable by nature, and the sensation it evokes soon becomes neutral or even unpleasant. Likewise, when repeated it may grow insipid or even lead to disgust; savoring a delicious meal is a source of genuine pleasure, but we are indifferent to it once we’ve had our fill and would get sick of it if we continued eating. It is the same thing with a nice wood fire: coming in from the cold, it is pure pleasure to warm ourselves by it, but we soon have to move away if we don’t want to burn ourselves.

Pleasure is exhausted by usage, like a candle consuming itself. It is almost always linked to an activity and naturally leads to boredom by dint of being repeated. Listening rapturously to a Bach prelude requires a focus of attention that, minimal as it is, cannot be maintained indefinitely. After a while fatigue kicks in and the music loses its charm. Were we forced to listen for days on end, it would become unbearable.

Furthermore pleasure is an individual experience, most often centered on the self, which is why it can easily descend into selfishness and sometimes conflict with the well-being of others. In sexual intimacy there can certainly be mutual pleasure through giving and receiving pleasurable sensations, but such pleasure can transcend the self and contribute to genuine happiness only if the very nature of mutuality and generous altruism lies at its core. You can experience pleasure at somebody else’s expense, but you can never derive happiness from it. Pleasure can be joined to cruelty, violence, pride, greed, and other mental conditions that are incompatible with true happiness. “Pleasure is the happiness of madmen, while happiness is the pleasure of sages,” wrote the French novelist and critic Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly.

Some people even enjoy vengeance and torturing other human beings. In the same vein, a businessman may rejoice in the ruin of a competitor, a thief revel in his booty, a spectator at a bullfight exult in the bull’s death. But these are only passing, sometimes morbid states of elation that, like moments of positive euphoria, have nothing to do with happiness.

The fervid and almost mechanical quest for sensual pleasures is another example of gratification’s going hand in hand with obsession and, ultimately, disenchantment. More often than not, pleasure does not keep its promises, as poet Robert Burns describes in Tam O’Shanter:

But pleasures are like poppies spread,

You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;

Or like the snow falls in the river,

A moment white—then melts forever.

Unlike pleasure, genuine flourishing may be influenced by circumstance, but it isn’t dependent on it. It does not mutate into its opposite but endures and grows with experience. It imparts a sense of fulfillment that in time becomes second nature.

Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity; it is a state of being, a profound emotional balance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions. While ordinary pleasures are produced by contact with pleasant objects and end when that contact is broken, sukha—lasting well-being—is felt so long as we remain in harmony with our inner nature. One intrinsic aspect of it is selflessness, which radiates from within rather than focusing on the self. One who is at peace with herself will contribute spontaneously to establishing peace within her family, her neighborhood, and, circumstances permitting, society at large.

In brief, there is no direct relationship between pleasure and happiness. This distinction does not suggest that we mustn’t seek out pleasurable sensations. There is no reason to deprive ourselves of the enjoyment of a magnificent landscape, of swimming in the sea, or of the scent of a rose. Pleasures become obstacles only when they upset the mind’s equilibrium and lead to an obsession with gratification or an aversion to anything that thwarts them.

Although intrinsically different from happiness, pleasure is not its enemy. It all depends on how it is experienced. If it is tainted with grasping and impedes inner freedom, giving rise to avidity and dependence, it is an obstacle to happiness. On the other hand, if it is experienced in the present moment, in a state of inner peace and freedom, pleasure adorns happiness without overshadowing it.

HAPPINESS AND JOY

The difference between joy and happiness is more subtle. Genuine happiness radiates outward spontaneously as joy. Inner joy is not necessarily manifested exuberantly, but as a luminous appreciation of the present moment, which can extend itself into the next moment, creating a continuum that one might call joie de vivre. Sukha can also be enhanced by unexpected delights. And yet not all forms of joy proceed from sukha—far from it. As Christophe André stresses in his work on the psychology of happiness: “There are unhealthy joys, far removed from the serenity of happiness, such as that of vengeance. . . . There is also calm happiness, often far removed from the intrinsic excitation of joy. . . . We jump for joy, not for happiness.”¹

We have seen how hard it can be to agree on a definition of happiness and have tried to pin down the meaning of true happiness. The word joy is equally vague, since, as the psychologist Paul Ekman has shown, it is associated with feelings as varied as the pleasures of the five senses: amusement (from the chuckle to the belly laugh); contentment (a calmer kind of satisfaction); excitement (in response to novelty or challenge); relief (following upon another emotion, such as fear, anxiety, and sometimes even pleasure); wonder (before something astonishing and admirable, or that surpasses understanding); ecstasy or bliss (transporting us outside ourselves); exultation (at having accomplished a difficult task or undertaken a daring exploit); radiant pride (when our children earn a special honor); elevation (from having witnessed an act of great kindness, generosity, or compassion); gratitude (the appreciation of a selfless act of which one is the beneficiary); and unhealthy jubilation, schadenfreude (in relishing someone else’s suffering, such as through revenge).² We might also throw in rejoicing (in someone else’s happiness), delight or enchantment (a shining kind of contentment), and spiritual radiance (a serene joy born from deep well-being and benevolence), which is indeed more an enduring state of being than a fleeting emotion.

These emotions all possess an element of joy, generally bring a smile to the face, and are manifested by a specific expression and tone of voice. But in order to participate in or contribute to happiness, they must be free of all negative emotion. When anger or envy erupts, joy is abruptly extinguished. When attachment, egoism, or pride creeps in, it is slowly smothered.

If joy is to endure and mature serenely—if it is to be, in the words of Corneille, a “blossoming of the heart”—it must be linked to other aspects of true happiness: clarity of mind, loving-kindness, the gradual withering of negative emotions, and the disappearance of selfish whimsy.

LIVE IT UP!

“Living it up” has become the leitmotif of modern man—a compulsive hyperactivity without any downtime, no gap of unscheduled time, lest we end up alone with ourselves. The meaning doesn’t matter, so long as it’s intense. We feel that without constant activity, life would be fatally insipid. Friends of mine who lead cultural tours in Asia have told me how their clients can’t bear the least gap in their itinerary. “Is there really nothing scheduled between five and seven?” they ask anxiously. We are, it seems, afraid to turn our gaze in upon ourselves. We are fully focused on the exterior world, as experienced through the five senses. It seems naive to believe that such a feverish search for intense experience can lead to a lasting enriched quality of life.

If we do take the time to explore our inner world, it’s in the form of daydreams and imagination, dwelling on the past or fantasizing endlessly about the future. A genuine sense of fulfillment, associated with inner freedom, can also offer intensity to every living moment, but of an altogether different sort. It is a sparkling experience of inner well-being, in which the beauty of each thing shines through. It is knowing how to enjoy the present moment, the willingness to nurture altruism and serenity and to bring the best part of ourselves to mature—transforming oneself to better transform the world.

AN ARTIFICIAL HIGH

We might imagine that achieving sudden fame or sudden wealth would satisfy all our desires, but more often than not the satisfaction provided by such achievements is short-lived and does nothing to improve our well-being. I met a famous Taiwanese singer who, having described her discomfort and disenchantment with fame and fortune, burst into tears, crying: “I wish I’d never become famous!” Studies have shown that an unexpected situation—winning the lottery jackpot, for instance—can lead to a temporary heightening of one’s pleasure quotient but has little long-term effect on the happy or unhappy disposition of the subjects involved. In the case of lottery winners, it has been found that most experience a period of elation following their stroke of good luck but a year later have returned to their normal satisfaction level.³ Sometimes, too, the event, which was presumably enviable, destabilizes the life of the “happy winner.” The late psychologist Michael Argyle cites the case of a twenty-four-year-old Englishwoman who had won a jackpot of more than one million pounds sterling. She quit her job and was soon consigned to boredom; she bought a new house in a fashionable neighborhood and found herself cut off from her friends; she bought a fancy car, although she didn’t know how to drive; she bought mountains of clothing, most of which never left the closet; she went to fine restaurants but preferred to eat fish and chips. Within a year she began to suffer from depression, her life empty and without satisfaction.⁴

We all know how very clever and tireless our consumer society is at inventing countless bogus pleasures, laboriously hyped stimulants designed to keep us in a state of emotional tension capable of triggering a kind of mental anesthesia. A Tibetan friend of mine who was contemplating the flashy advertising billboards in New York commented: “They are trying to steal our minds.” There is a distinct difference between true joy, which is the natural manifestation of well-being, and euphoria, the elation caused by passing excitation. Any superficial thrill that is not anchored in enduring contentment is almost invariably followed by disappointment.

SUFFERING AND UNHAPPINESS

Just as we distinguished between happiness and pleasure, we must also make the distinction between affliction and suffering. We incur suffering but we create unhappiness. The Sanskrit word dukkha, the opposite of sukha, does not simply define an unpleasant sensation, but rather reflects a fundamental vulnerability to suffering and pain that can ultimately lead to world-weariness, the feeling that life is not worth living because there is no way to find meaning in it. Sartre put these noxious words into the mouth of the hero of his book Nausea:

If someone had asked me what it means to be alive, I would have answered in good faith that it means nothing, merely an empty vessel. . . . We were all just a pile of awkward lives, embarrassed by ourselves. We hadn’t the slightest reason to be there, none of us. Every living being, confused, vaguely anxious, felt redundant. . . . I was redundant too. . . . I had vague notions of doing away with myself, to rid the world of at least one of these superfluous lives.⁵