The Pursuit of Happiness

In the normal ego-driven, corrupt state, life is an exercise in trying to make things turn out a certain way. We are always looking for great experiences, wanting more than we get, and feeling only as good as externals can make us feel. We are needy and frightened, so our sense of happiness is dependent upon particular external circumstances. This guarantees random and unexpected unhappiness because there are so many factors that compose our worldly situation (money, possessions, health, love, career, security, relationships, freedom, accomplishment) that it is inevitable that at least one of them will occasionally go awry.

The “happiness” we feel when we acquire an object we desire (a possession, a relationship, money, an experience) is not caused by the object itself. If it were, then we would live happily ever after with it. But we don’t, do we? Our “happiness” is merely temporary. After a while, desire returns, causing us to once again feel a sense of lack, so we pursue something else. True happiness is inherent, but we mask it with desire and a sense of lack. We feel happy when we acquire something because desire and lack cease and we (temporarily) realize of our true self, which is naturally peaceful and happy. That is, happiness comes from our very being, not from any external object. This is why people who constantly pursue happiness are perpetually unhappy.

The only way to have lasting peace and happiness is to get over the ego. Then we will feel good from within, which will enable us to enjoy our experiences, no matter how mundane they might be. We will not be at the mercy of external circumstances. We will not need to have “all our ducks in a row”.

The Constitution promises us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness often prevents happiness. When we simply work, love, play, and relax, we get a sense of well-being (happiness) as an unintentional by-product because we are immersed in the moment. But when we think, “I want to be happier,” and do things specifically to become happy, rather than simply experience things with no expectations, we no longer enjoy the moment because we’re always looking toward the future, so our sense of well-being diminishes.

A pursuit of anything is an admission of the lack of it. When we live with the mindset that we must go out and get happiness, as though it’s a commodity, we thus tell ourselves constantly that we aren’t happy. This artificially creates the feeling of unhappiness. We might have all the basics for a good life, but we refuse to be content with them. We have this idea that we are not happy enough, that we must always be pursuing more happiness. This keeps us from enjoying what we already have.

This is not to say that we should just accept everything as it is. We do what needs to be done in order to obtain whatever increases the quality of our lives. But overdoing this can make us too tired and irritable to enjoy anything, leave us no time to enjoy the fruits of our labor, or get us into phony relationships. Will that promotion be worth all the time and struggle you buy it with? Do you really want to associate with people who would not like you if you did not put on an act?

We can continue to live in the ego’s self-centered dream of constant want, worry, toil, frustration, anger, and regret. Or we can see that we are more than the personal drama of a temporary identity, that we are not mere action figures that must have things be a particular way and then suffer when they aren’t. We can stop dreading, judging, clinging, avoiding, and blaming. We can rest in who and where we are.

Enlightenment

The term “enlightenment” gets thrown around a lot.  It might seem rather vague and esoteric.  We might picture a monk wearing a robe and meditating in a cave or on a mountaintop and imagine that he has reached a state of nirvana (whatever that is) or received some cosmic information that the rest of us will never know.

Enlightenment simply means to see things as they are.  That’s it.  Nothing magical or other-worldly.  Just the clarity of awareness to perceive reality.

We might think, “But I already perceive reality.”  Yes, we perceive reality.  However, our minds don’t.  “But aren’t we our minds?” we might ask.  No.  That is the universal mistake.  We are not our minds!

So, what are we?  Conscious beings.  Everything else about us – our bodies, our brains, our possessions – is stuff we have, not stuff we are.  Our minds are tools.  They think and feel.  They are aspects of us, but they are not us.  This is why we remain who we are even though thoughts and feelings change all the time.  If we were our minds, then we would keep changing.

One of the things that our minds do is collect information.  For example, we (not our minds) perceive a tree.  Then the mind learns about the tree: its colors, its species, its preferred latitudes, and so on.  The mind does not perceive the tree – it only knows information about the tree.  You see the difference?

The mind uses the information it gathers to develop beliefs.  Then it filters reality through those beliefs.  For example, a politician does something questionable.  If he represents our political party, we might view it as okay and excuse or even support it; but if he’s from an opposing party, we might view it as bad and criticize it.  As long as we look at things through the filter of our preconceived notions, we will not see them as they are.  We might believe that we see things as they are, but that is only because we don’t even know the filter is there.

Our filter system pervades almost every aspect of our lives: who we associate with, how much money we hoard or spend, our body image, who we vote for, our opinion on whether abortion/prostitution/marijuana should be legal, what we worry about, etc.  We might believe that we are “right”, that we see things as they are, and that all the people who disagree with us are just too blind or stupid to see how right we are.  Meanwhile they think the same thing about us.

You ever notice how little children and animals are care-free most of the time? It's because they aren't thinking.  They are just being.  We are born enlightened, then as our minds/thoughts/beliefs/desires develop, we unenlighten ourselves.

So, given that we don’t perceive things as they really are, we have two options: keep living with our illusions, or wake up.  Illusions are comfortable, which is why so many people prefer to keep them.  They might believe that they are smarter or nicer than others, that their particular country or ethnic group is better than all the others, that their children are smarter or cuter than all others, or whatever, and they are comfortable with that.  But illusions can also get us into trouble.  For example, the belief that we need lots of money or social status in order to be happy can make us miserable when we lose them.

As long as we are comfortable, we will continue to live with our illusions, because why jeopardize a good thing?  Only after our filter causes us a certain amount of suffering will we have incentive to remove that filter.  We will, or will attempt to, put aside our old, erroneous, destructive notions that have kept us miserable, wanting, worried, angry, and frustrated.  This process of removing our filter, of waking up from our dream of illusions, and seeing things directly, is enlightenment.  It can be a gradual process wherein we experience it with increasing frequency, or it can occur all at once (usually due to some sort of disaster).

We might get occasional glimpses of enlightenment even before we become aware of our filter.  Sometimes our minds stop spinning when we are involved in an engrossing activity or just waking up from a nap.  These are times of relaxation and clarity.  But later our minds start spinning again and we are back to illusion and agitation.

Even when we learn that our filter has been ruining our life, it can still be difficult to put it aside.  This is because the mind can’t stand to not be in control, to not think, because this is what it is made to do.  It is a necessary tool that enables us to invent things and keep appointments and remember not to touch a hot stove.  But some of the beliefs it develops are wrong and damaging, and we need to dispel them if we are to experience lasting peace.

Why Do We Suffer?

Why do we suffer?  Because it steers us toward enlightenment. Everything we think or do that is part of the unreality of ego will cause pain. If it weren’t for suffering, we would keep living in illusion. We have to suffer in order to wake up.

As we wake up, we think and do fewer egoic things, so we suffer less. This is why we tend to have less anger and worry as we get older. Of course, some people remain in illusion their entire lives so their negative emotions and suffering don’t diminish.

Why should anything cause us to suffer?  Sure, notions of materialism and superiority might be wrong, but why should they cause us pain? Because our purpose is to find out who we are. All illusions get in the way of that, and suffering teaches us which things are illusions.

But why should we find ourselves?  Why can’t we exist in comfortable illusions? What benefit does truth bring us? Truth brings peace. Illusions don’t because trying to exist in something unreal is an attempt at self-annihilation, and anything that opposes our very existence cannot be comfortable. We, being real, can exist only in what is real, i.e., truth. When we do this, we experience the natural bliss of being.

Resistance

All mental suffering involves resistance.  Something happens that we don’t like: we get cut off in traffic, our investments lose value, someone criticizes us, the ceiling leaks.  Or maybe we just want something, like a possession or a lover.  The ego naturally resists the situation, because it needs to struggle.  The ego is nothing more than a mental process that battles the Now.  It almost always wants things to be other than the way they are, even when there is no immediate crisis, so it chases money, puts up a façade for social acceptance, replaces perfectly good possessions with new versions, judges, competes, and compares.

Why does resistance make us suffer, and why does it never get us what we want?  Well, what are we resisting?  What we’re perceiving.  So the mind is fighting itself.  It cannot stop perceiving what it perceives and nothing will change it, so resisting it is always a battle that cannot be won.  The ego is therefore fighting an unwinnable battle against reality, which not only does not change things, but also makes matters worse because the battle is painful.

The true self simply is.  It embraces the Now.  It does not worry about the future, regret the past, or resist or struggle in the present.  That is why its natural state is peace.

This does not mean that the true self does nothing.  It avoids reckless motorists, decides whether to pull out of losing investments or walk away from critics, and calls repairmen to fix the house.  But it does so in a matter-of-fact manner.  It does not fret and tremble in the process.  It also pursues things that make a good earthly life, such as a career, friends, lovers, and possessions, but again, it does so matter-of-factly.

It is not our activities that determine our well-being, but the mental state we are in while we do them.

Expectations

Our enjoyment of something is not merely the result of how it affects us.  It’s how it affects us relative to expectations.

We’ve all planned to do something that we thought would be a wonderful experience, only to find that we didn’t enjoy it as much as we’d hoped.  What happened was that we “set the bar” too high, so that even though the experience was enjoyable, the enjoyment did not reach the bar, and as a result we felt disappointed.  If we’d not built up those expectations, we’d have had a much better time.

One reason we build expectations is that we believe that this world is all there is, and that the false self is all we are.  This causes us to try to squeeze all the juice out of life that we can, because this is all we get.  We normally feel sort of empty, bored, or lacking, so we might seek peak experiences in order to make life worth living.  Being empty, we bring nothing to experiences; our enjoyment is dependent entirely on them.

When we get in touch with our true selves, we feel complete, full, and satisfied, even when our worldly situation isn’t perfect.  We are what we are, and nothing can either add to or subtract from us.  When we experience things, we bring ourselves to them, so our enjoyment is not completely dependent on the experiences, but is the result of a combination of experiences and us.  Thus, our experiences do not need to be peak because we bring our own joy to them.  Peak experiences might even seem superfluous since we feel joyful without them.

Addiction

Some folks are addicted to alcohol or drugs.  Others are addicted to non-chemical things such as gambling, sex, television, or approval.  These are nothing more than external manifestations of selfing.

We are constantly thinking, judging, planning, worrying, and/or regretting.  We trap ourselves in a state of self-centeredness, of viewing everything in terms of how it affects us, how it has affected us, and how it will affect us.  We picture ourselves as little action figures that must obtain and accomplish, and if we don’t, woe is us.  Life in this mode is nothing more than a struggle to “get” things.  Even when we get something we want, we can’t enjoy it for very long because we start thinking about how to get the next thing.  For example, if a gambler wins, he can’t simply walk away with his winnings – he has to pursue more.

We cannot stop this stressful process because we believe that we are the process, and that if we stop it then we will cease to be.

We develop external addictions when the stress of selfing becomes too much to bear.  We reach for something – anything – as a form of distraction from or deadening of the mental pain we cause ourselves.  We keep using it time and time again.  The relief is only temporary because the burden of selfing does not go away.  As soon as the drug or alcohol wears off, the sex or television show is over, or we’ve gotten the money or compliment, we are back to the pain of selfing, with nothing to buffer us from it.

We might mistakenly blame others’ problems on the particular thing that they attach themselves to.  It might seem that overindulging in something is the root cause of their pain, so we might label them “alcoholic” or “sexoholic” or “foodaholic”.  Well, they were already in pain – that’s why they became alcoholic or sexoholic or foodaholic in the first place.  What caused that pain?  Selfing.  So all of them are selfoholic.  This is why “solving” an addiction by giving up alcohol or sex or gambling doesn’t stop the existential pain, and also why people sometimes relapse or develop an addiction to something else.

Nonduality

The Western view of reality is one of duality: everything is separate from everything else. There are people, animals, rocks, trees, buildings, cars, water, fire, and planets. For each of us there is “me”, and “not me” (i.e., everything/everyone else). This seems obvious: we see a tree, but we are not the tree.

Activity in the dual world involves an ego doing something in order to achieve a result. We lift a weight, throw a ball, or strike a nail with a hammer. A does B in order to get result C. Everything is goal-oriented.

The premise that each of us is separate from everyone and everything else and needs to accomplish feats in order to achieve ends is precisely what allows a sense of alienation. Because everything is foreign to us, life often seems adversarial: people compete with us for money and parking spaces, the weather damages our possessions and ruins our good time, and traffic and power outages inconvenience us. “They” do unpleasant things to “me”. Other things and people are objects that pose dangers and so must be opposed. Even our loved ones sometimes seem to be “against” us.

The ego thrives on duality. It cannot survive without the concept of “me” versus “them”. It has to be in opposition to something or someone. This is why there is so much conflict in the world. All wars, arguments, competitions, manipulation, criticism, and becoming offended are born of the egoic desire to oppose someone or something.

The view of reality held by some Eastern religions is that there are no separate egos or objects. Everything and everyone is part of a unified whole. Rather than an actor performing an action in order to achieve a goal, there is only activity. There is no idea that doing is opposite not-doing. An activity is simply what it is. Likewise, an object is not a tool to be used for some purpose; it simply is what it is. This concept is called nonduality. 

Nonduality might seem preposterous to us Westerners. How can we be a flower, or a giraffe be us? It’s not that simple. Nonduality is not a literal concept. It is a way of perceiving that focuses not on everything’s separateness, but on experiences. In each experience there is no subject or object but an event and/or a perception.

To illustrate the difference between dual and nondual perception, let’s say you look at a beautiful tree. Your dual perspective says, “That’s a tree. It’s green. I think it’s pretty.” You are aware not only of the tree but also of these thoughts. You might also be aware that there is a seer (you) and a seen (tree).  Nondual awareness simply perceives. It does not label anything. Concepts such as tree, you, green, and pretty don’t arise. You are immediately and fully aware of the tree, with no thoughts taking any of your attention, so that you can fully experience the sensation and possibly enjoy it more than you could via dual perception. It’s almost as though you become the experience rather than have the experience.

Many of us have experienced nondual activity. A leisurely stroll is nondual because it is done for its own sake, not in order to get from point A to point B. When we are absorbed in a fun game or sport, without being focused on winning, that is nondual. Anytime we “forget ourselves” (i.e., stop selfing), we have nondualistic experiences.

In nonduality the feeling is that we are “one” with everyone and everything. Not that we are a rock or a butterfly, but that we are wrapped up in a single reality. Sure, we are individual entities with our own feelings and perceptions, but we are all in this together. With this view, we don’t feel that anyone or anything is in opposition to us. After all, if there is just one all-encompassing reality, then there is no “other” to oppose.

Duality makes us seem small. We feel like a very tiny body in a gargantuan Universe. Nonduality has no sense of size. We are part of the Universe, and since we are not separate from it, there is nothing other than us to feel smaller than. Everything seems to be “here”.

Duality is the micro view. It chops up reality into pieces. It perceives individual items, such as a note in a song or a pebble on a beach. It can’t see the forest for the trees. This view is necessary for constructing, analyzing, and finding things, but it is a harsh view that is not conducive to enjoyment or peace. Nonduality is the macro view. It hears a song and sees a beach or a forest. The world is a wonderful symphony.

We started life in nonduality. We simply experienced. For example, we did not think, “That is a teddy bear.” We simply experienced the teddy bear. Eventually we developed an ego, which is a thought system that categorizes, judges, and competes. That is the basic difference between duality and nonduality: duality is a way of thinking, and nonduality is a way of being.

The ego is a functional tool that we use in order to function in the world, getting what we need and preventing other people and things from harming us. Is it possible to be nondualistic and still do these things? Certainly. Living in nonduality does not mean that we don’t go to job interviews or lock our doors or get vaccinated. It means that we do so as a matter of course, without the adversarial mindset. Everything we do is part of the one and only reality, not something we do against a separate “enemy”. Even if we’re on an actual battlefield, we can do what is necessary as a matter of course, not label other soldiers as “enemies” and hate or fear them.

If you can’t grasp nonduality right now, that’s only because you’ve spent decades in duality. Perhaps it has “worked” for you: you’ve accomplished some things and you live a fairly comfortable life. But are you at peace? Or do you find yourself fearing loss, judging others, and viewing the world as a harsh place? That’s what duality does: it pits you against the world. In nonduality it is possible to accomplish while remaining peaceful.