IS HAPPINESS POSSIBLE?
The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.
MAHATMA GANDHI
At some point in our lives, we have all met people who live and breathe happiness. This happiness seems to permeate all of their gestures and words with a quality and force that are impossible to ignore. Some declare unambiguously and without ostentation that they have attained a happiness that abides deep within them, whatever life may bring. For such people, according to Robert Misrahi, “happiness is the form and overall meaning of a life that considers itself to be full and meaningful, and which experiences itself as such.”1
Although such a state of constant fulfillment is rare, surveys have shown that where the conditions of life are not especially oppressive, most people claim to be satisfied with the quality of their lives (75 percent in the developed countries).
It would be counterproductive to reject studies and surveys that reflect the opinions of hundreds of thousands of people interviewed over the course of a dozen years. But it does make sense to question the nature of the happiness that the subjects are referring to. The fact is, their average satisfaction remains relatively stable because the material conditions of life in the developed countries are generally excellent. On the other hand, it is eminently fragile. Should just one of these conditions suddenly vanish—due to the loss of a loved one or a job, for instance—that feeling of happiness would crumble. And in any case, declaring ourselves satisfied with life because there is no objective reason to complain about its conditions (of all the countries studied, Switzerland has the most “happy” people) in no way prevents us from feeling ill at ease deep within ourselves. By the age of thirty-five, 15 percent of North Americans have experienced a major depression. Since 1960, the divorce rate in the United States has doubled, while reported rapes have increased fourfold and juvenile violence fivefold.2
This distinction between exterior and interior well-being explains the apparent contradiction between some of these findings and the Buddhist assertion that suffering is omnipresent in the universe. When we speak about omnipresence, it means not that all people are continuously in a state of suffering, but that they are vulnerable to the latent suffering that can arise at any moment. They will remain vulnerable so long as they fail to dispel the mental toxins that cause unhappiness.
IS HAPPINESS A RESPITE FROM SUFFERING?
Many people think of happiness as merely a temporary lull, experienced as a positive contrast to suffering. For Schopenhauer, “all happiness is negative. . . . Ultimately, satisfaction and contentment are merely the interruption of pain and privation.”3 Freud writes that “what we call happiness, in the strictest sense of the word, arises from the fairly sudden satisfaction of pent-up needs. By its very nature it can be no more than an episodic phenomenon.”4 When suffering abates or ceases momentarily, the ensuing interlude is experienced by contrast as “happy.” Happiness is thus viewed as being just a deceptively calm moment in the middle of a storm.
A friend of mine who spent many years in a Chinese concentration camp in Tibet told me that when he was being interrogated he was forced to stand motionless on a stool for days on end. When he collapsed, those brief moments lying on the icy cement floor of his cell, before he was dragged to his feet again, were delightful relief to him. While this may be an example—and an extreme one at that—of happiness resulting from the attenuation of suffering, my friend took pains to point out that only his stable condition of inner well-being allowed him to survive years of incarceration and torture.
On a far less somber note, I remember a train trip through India, undertaken in rather difficult and turbulent conditions. I had reserved my seat—a good idea for a thirty-six-hour journey—but my car was never attached to the train and I found myself in a substitute wagon, jam-packed, having no compartments and no glass in the windows. Huddling on a wooden berth with a half-dozen frozen travelers (it was January), I observed the hundreds of other passengers crammed into their seats and on the corridor floors. On top of it all, I had a high fever and lumbago. We were traveling through Bihar, a country of bandits, and the passengers had chained up their luggage wherever they could. I was used to traveling in India and stowed the briefcase containing my laptop and an entire month’s work in an apparently secure corner of the upper berth. Nevertheless it was spirited away by an innovative thief from the neighboring berth, presumably with a hook. As night fell, I realized what had happened. Then the lights went out for several hours. There I was, wrapped in my sleeping bag, listening to the cursing of passengers frantically trying to keep tabs on their luggage in the dark. Suddenly I realized that, far from being upset, I felt incredibly light and experienced a feeling of total felicity and freedom. You may imagine that the fever was making me delirious, but I was absolutely clearheaded, and the contrast between the situation and my feelings was so comical that I began to laugh in the dark. This was definitely not a case of happiness via relief; rather it was an experience of innate serenity, brought into sharper focus by particularly unpleasant external circumstances. It was a moment of “letting go,” that state of deep satisfaction found only within oneself and which is therefore independent of external circumstances. We cannot deny the existence of pleasant and unpleasant sensations, but they are trivial with respect to genuine well-being. Such experiences have helped me to see that it is certainly possible to live in a state of enduring happiness.
Once we have come to that conclusion, our goal becomes to determine levelheadedly the causes of unhappiness and to correct them. Since true happiness is not limited to momentary relief from life’s ups and downs, it requires us to eliminate the major causes of unhappiness, which, as we have seen, are ignorance and mental toxins. If happiness is indeed a way of being, a state of consciousness and inner freedom, there is essentially nothing to prevent us from achieving it.
The denial of the possibility of happiness seems to have been influenced by the concept of the world and mankind as being fundamentally evil. This belief stems largely from the notion of original sin, which Freud, according to psychologist Martin Seligman, “dragged . . . into twentieth-century psychology, defining all of civilization (including modern morality, science, religion, and technological progress) as just an elaborate defense against basic conflicts over infantile sexuality and aggression.” This kind of interpretation has led a great many contemporary intellectuals to conclude absurdly that any act of generosity or kindness comes from a negative impulse. Seligman quotes Doris Kearns Goodwin, the biographer of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, according to whom the first lady devoted a great portion of her life to helping people of color because she was compensating for her mother’s narcissism and her father’s alcoholism. Goodwin, says Seligman, never even considers the possibility that Eleanor Roosevelt was simply acting out of pure kindness! For Seligman and his colleagues in the field of positive psychology, “there is not a shred of evidence that strength and virtue are derived from negative motivation.”5
We also know that our constant bombardment with bad news by the media and the presentation of violence as the ultimate solution to any conflict encourages what sociologists call the “wicked world syndrome.” One simple illustration of this was at the 1999 Visa pour l’Image, an international photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France, in which I participated as an exhibitor. Of the thirty-six exhibits mounted there, only two were devoted to subjects that put a constructive spin on human nature. The thirty-four others were about war, Mafia crimes in Palermo, drug dens in New York City, and other negative aspects of the world.
The “wicked world syndrome” calls into question the very possibility of actualizing happiness. The battle would appear to be lost before it’s engaged. The belief that human nature is essentially corrupt taints our vision of life with pessimism and makes us question the very basis of the search for happiness, that is, every human being’s potential for perfection. Trying to purify something that is fundamentally bad would be as pointless as trying to bleach a lump of coal. Conversely, the development of our deep human potential is like polishing a gold nugget to bring out its shine.
WHEN THE MESSENGER BECOMES THE MESSAGE
All of this is very nice in theory, but how does it translate into practice? As the American psychiatrist Howard Cutler puts it in The Art of Happiness: “I became convinced that the Dalai Lama had learned to live with a sense of fulfillment and a degree of serenity that I had never seen in other people.”6 Such an example might seem a little out of our league, but the truth is that as inaccessible as it may seem, the Dalai Lama is definitely not an isolated case. I myself have spent thirty-five years living among not only sages and spiritual masters, but also a number of “ordinary” people whose inner serenity and joy help them to withstand most of the ups and downs of life. These people have nothing further to gain for themselves and are therefore entirely available to others. My friend Alan Wallace relates the case of a Tibetan hermit whom he knew well and who told him, with no pretension whatsoever (he was living peacefully in his hermitage, making no demands on anyone), that he had lived for twenty years in a “state of continuous bliss.”7
This is not about marveling over exceptional cases or proclaiming the so-called superiority of one approach—Buddhist, in this case—over other schools of thought. The main lesson I draw from it is this: If the wise man can be happy, then happiness must be possible. This is a crucial point, since so many people believe, in effect, that true happiness is impossible.
The wise man and the wisdom he embodies do not represent an inaccessible ideal, but a living example. It so happens that it is precisely such points of reference that we need in our daily lives so as to better understand what we can become. The point here is not that we need to reject wholesale the lives we are leading, but that we can benefit immensely from the wisdom of those who have elucidated the dynamics of happiness and suffering.
Fortunately, the idea of the happy wise man is alien neither to the Western world nor to the modern world, although it has become a rare commodity. According to the philosopher André Comte-Sponville: “The wise man has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy.”8 Such qualities do not fall from the sky, and if the image of the wise man is a little old-fashioned nowadays—at least in the West—whose fault is that? We are responsible for a scarcity that afflicts us all. One is not born wise; one becomes it.
FROM THE HERMITAGE TO THE OFFICE
This is all very inspiring, you might say, but what good is it to me in my daily life, where I have a family and a job and spend most of my time in circumstances very different from those enjoyed by sages and hermits? Yet the wise man is indeed relevant to our lives in that he strikes a note of hope: he shows me what I could become. He has trod a path open to all, each step of which is a source of enrichment. We can’t all become Olympic javelin athletes, but we can all learn to throw the javelin and we can develop some ability to do so. You don’t have to be Andre Agassi to love playing tennis, or Louis Armstrong to delight in playing a musical instrument. In every sphere of human activity there are sources of inspiration whose perfection, far from discouraging us, in fact whets our enthusiasm by holding out an admirable vision of that to which we aspire. Isn’t that why the great artists, the men and women of conviction, the heroes, are beloved and respected?
Spiritual practice can be enormously beneficial. The fact is, it is possible to undergo serious spiritual training by devoting some time every day to meditation. More people than you might think do so, while leading regular family lives and doing absorbing work. The positive benefits of such a life far outweigh the few problems of schedule arrangement. In this way we can launch an inner transformation that is based in day-to-day reality.
When I was working at the Institut Pasteur and immersed in Parisian life, the few moments I reserved every day for contemplation brought me enormous benefits. They lingered like a scent in the day’s activities and gave them an entirely new value. By contemplation I mean not merely a moment of relaxation, but an inward turning of the gaze. It is very fruitful to watch how thoughts arise, and to contemplate the state of serenity and simplicity that is always present behind the scrim of thoughts, be they gloomy or upbeat. This is not as complicated as it might seem at first glance. You need only give a little of your time to the exercise in order to feel its impact and appreciate its fruitfulness. By gradually acquiring through introspective experience a better understanding of how thoughts are born, we learn how to fend off mental toxins. Once we have found a little bit of inner peace, it is much easier to lead a flourishing emotional and professional life. Similarly, as we free ourselves of all insecurities and inner fears (which are often connected to excessive self-centeredness), we have less to dread and are naturally more open to others and better armed to face the vagaries of existence.
No state, church, or despot can insist on our obligation to develop human qualities. It is up to us to make that choice. As geneticist-demographer Luca Cavalli-Sforza and his son Francesco so eloquently put it:
Our inner freedom knows no limits other than those we impose on it or allow to be imposed on it. And that freedom also holds great power. It can transform an individual, allow him to nurture all his capacities and to live every moment of his life in utter fulfillment. When individuals change by bringing their consciousness to maturity, the world changes too, because the world is made up of individuals.9
EXERCISE
How to begin to meditate
No matter what your outer circumstances might be, there is always, deep within you, a potential for flourishing. This is a potential for loving-kindness, compassion, and inner peace. Try to get in touch with and experience this potential that is always present, like a nugget of gold, in your heart and mind.
This potential needs to be developed and matured in order to achieve a more stable sense of well-being. However, this will not happen by itself. You need to develop it as a skill. For that, begin by becoming more familiar with your own mind. This is the beginning of meditation.
Sit quietly, in a comfortable but balanced posture. Whether you sit cross-legged on a cushion or more conventionally on a chair, try to keep your back straight, yet without being tense. Rest your hands on your knees or thighs or in your lap, keep your eyes lightly gazing in the space in front of you, and breathe naturally. Watch your mind, the coming and going of thoughts. At first it might seem that instead of diminishing, thoughts rush through your mind like a waterfall. Just watch them arising and let them come and go, without trying to stop them but without fueling them either.
Take a moment at the end of the practice to savor the warmth and joy that result from a calmer mind.
After a while your thoughts will become like a peaceful river. If you practice regularly, eventually your mind will easily become serene, like a calm ocean. Whenever new thoughts arise, like waves raised by the winds, do not be bothered by them. They will soon dissolve back into the ocean.