Tuesday 6 November 2007

Pic of the day: Some people revere great old trees, perhaps sensing them as symbols of steady growth, the accumulation of life and energy over time. The Bible mentions a Tree of Life. My Norse ancestors believed that a great tree connected and held in place the worlds of the sentient races. In this Japanese anime, an ancient cherry tree is thought by the locals to have a small degree of magical power to grant wishes. But in real life, the tree is inside us.

Happiness is like a tree

When I think back, my life was confusing. It is pretty strange even now, and there are still some mind parasites impacting my life negatively. But compared to the swirling fog that seems to shroud most people's thoughts, I guess I am seeing fairly clearly. Of course, who really knows the mind of another? It is hard enough to know one's own. But there are things I did not know, or at least not clearly, when I was young. I offer these now, free, in the hope of sparing others from needless suffering, and to increase their happiness.

Yesterday I wrote that pleasure was rationed, as indeed it is. You can have a lot of pleasure in a short time, or you can have a decent amount of pleasure now and then, but you can't have a lot of pleasure a lot of the time. You will burn out if you try, and fall into a depression-like state of listless suffering. So while fun is fun, it is not a source of constant happiness. On the other hand, you CAN grow more happy over time. In fact, the word "grow" is the key. (Another good word is "build".)

Happiness is like a tree, in that it needs time to grow. You can't just sit down one day and decide to be really happy, and then you go out in the world and are really happy. You can summon up some degree of cheer that way, yes, but it tends to evaporate, and it tends not to be waterproof. When even a small unpleasantness comes, the cheer bursts like a bubble and small stinging worms come out and feast on the soul. Anger, resentment, envy, hate and bitter cynicism cause blight on the soul. And because we don't know better, we are convinced that someone else destroyed our precious happiness. But that was just cheer, not happiness. Happiness is a slow-growing thing, but far more durable than mere joy.

***

Actually, let us look at pleasure, joy, cheer and happiness. They all represent what we could call surplus energy. They manifest in different realms or domains, though, and have different time spans.

Pleasure shows up in the domain of the body or senses. The source of pleasure does not need to be the body, though that is certainly common. But if you look at a dog, you can see the pleasure of being praised is very similar to the pleasure of being fed. There is an influx of energy, one bodily and one social, and they both manifest as pleasure. So even with us, and we can also derive pleasure from art or from spiritual experience. In fact, the highest pleasure seems to be the Samadhi or religious ecstasy, which is highly sought after by some Hindu mystics as the peak religious experience. This pleasure is as intense as that of orgasm (for those old enough to have experienced that) but lasts far longer. In fact, if one prolongs the Samadhi for long enough it will cause the end of life in the body, so-called Mahasamadhi (great ecstasy) which is the preferred way for certain eastern mystics to end their life. (This is not to say that the religious ecstacy is less in other religions, just that they don't have the tradition for reveling in it. Certainly Christianity doesn't.)

Joy is the mental manifestation of surplus energy. If you feel the urge to break into song or dance, it is joy. The joyful person moves more quickly and with more certainty, while the joyless tend to shuffle or drag their feet. But the main thrust of joy is in the mind, a feeling of surging power that is not limited to (or even anchored in) the senses. Joy is often associated with the arts: Song, music, dance can be both sources and expressions of joy, and also the slower arts like painting or sculpture, though the link is not so immediate there. There are many sources of joy, including other people. Sometimes we simply don't know, it just seems to surge or swell from wherever it hides when not in use. Joy tend to be less sharply limited than pleasure, it ebbs rather than being cut off.

Cheer is manifested strongly in the social realm. It takes the form of goodwill, an increased ability to tolerate and sympathize with others, and attempts to spread itself by cheering up those who are less energetic. The source does not need to be social, but it can be, and putting cheerful people together tend to escalate the cheer, much as putting burning pieces of wood next to each other cause them all to burn more brightly.

Happiness is manifested in the human spirit. It is longer lasting than the others, though it also will ebb and flow. We can say that the other forms ride on the back on happiness. If your underlying happiness is high, it takes little for it to flow into the shorter-lived forms. Also if your happiness is high, the opposites make less impact on you. You won't loose your cheer just because the weather is not as nice as you expected, and you don't feel suffering just because you're a little bit hungry or your joints ache just a tad. It takes more to break your stride.

People can be more or less familiar with this interior science, the observation of life qualities by looking inward. Those who are inexperienced or easily distracted tend to not see the difference between the short and long term manifestations of surplus energy. It may be better to say that happiness is an increased CAPACITY for taking in what is good. Its deep waters run stiller, but are not easily drained. Happiness is like a lake: The babbling brook that has not passed a lake will quickly rise from nothing to a boisterous river on a rainy day, and in its sudden energy it dislodges stones and runs brown with soil. But if there is a lake in its course, it will buffer the sudden swell and pass on a more steady stream of water, which does not dry out the next day when the sun returns.

The water in the brook and the water in the lake are identical, but there is great depth in the lake, and so also with happiness. There must be depth, or there is no happiness. If there is no depth, then the slightest disappointment can send one plummeting from heaven to hell, as you will see in a toddler. The toddler squeals and jumps with unrestrained joy, but some small thing happens and the toddler screams in unbearable pain. This changes when we grow up, but not equally in all of us.

There still has to be an influx of happy content, of course, and certain sources are more reliable than others. But there could be books written about that, and in fact already are. I may or may not revisit it, as the weirdness takes me. Have this for today!