Thinking, Being and Plucking

Now we look at three philosophies inspired by death and suffering. Two came from poets—carpe diem and To be or not to be—and one came from a beggar—Life is suffering—who started a religion.

After looking at all three, we’ll think about thinking and end by enjoying.

We begin with carpe diem.

Most people have heard of carpe diem. Robin Williams taught us all about it in Dead Poet’s Society (1989).

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines carpe diem as “the enjoyment of the pleasures of the moment without concern for the future.” Google concurs saying, “used to urge someone to make the most of the present time and give little thought to the future.”

We moderns translate carpe diem as “seize the day.” It is assertive and refers to taking control or possession of something.

Advertisers use the expression to sell products—t-shirts, posters, beauty products, fragrances, necklaces, wine. They like to remind us that one day each and every one of us will be dead so we better buy their product and book that trip now before it’s too late!

In Carpe Diem Regained (2017), philosopher Roman Krznaric said that “seizing” the day brings to mind people who take what they can get and get things done.

It’s the philosophical equivalent of actor Shia LaBeouf screaming at us to “DO IT! JUST DO IT! DON’T LET YOUR DREAMS BE DREAMS!“

People use the phrase as a warning or direct order to take charge of your own happiness and make the most of it, but then the question becomes: “How do you carpe diem?”

Carpe diem first appeared in 20 BC in book 1.11 of the Odes by Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC – 8 BC), aka Horace. 

Horace’s poem emphasizes the fleeting nature of time. He says we shouldn’t worry about how long we live or waste time talking (presumably about death). Most translations say Horace told us to “Seize the present; put very little trust in tomorrow (the future)” (Wikipedia). 

Years later Jesus (1-33) is quoted as saying something similar, “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matt. 6:34).

No offence.

It’s no surprise that Horace and Jesus advised us not to worry about the future. Life was short in ancient days. If you include infant mortality (and crucifixion), life expectancy in the Roman Empire was about 22–33 years (source).

Trouble is, carpe diem doesn’t actually mean seize the day.

Horace has been lost in translation and distorted by modern culture. According to Latin scholars, carpe diem is really a horticultural metaphor designed to encourage people to enjoy the sensory experience of nature (source).

Funny how nature isn’t part of carpe diem today.

(Then again, maybe it isn’t.)

Carpe this!

Carpe comes from carpō meaning to “pick or pluck” fruit when it’s ready and diem comes from dies which means “day.”

“Pluck the day [as it is ripe]” or “enjoy the moment” is a more accurate translation than “seize,” as in, “take hold of suddenly and forcibly” or “take (an opportunity or initiative) eagerly and decisively.”

It’s a subtle difference but philosophically speaking, it’s huge. Instead of a fist pump to “Seize the day!” and assert one’s will, it’s an open palm receiving what is given by nature (of which we are).

Cue music: “Think About It” by SAULT.

But what if you can’t enjoy the sensory experience of nature? What if you’ve thought yourself into not wanting to live? What then?

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Hamlet asks himself if he should suffer the misery of life (a “sea of troubles”) or should he kill himself (“take arms against a sea of troubles”) to end “heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks.”

But then Hamlet wonders if there is an afterlife, and if there is, what if that afterlife is worse than life?

Source

Hamlet’s question of life and death is a question of existence and nothingness, but according to Harvard professor Jeffrey R. Wilson (2017), “To be, or not to be” is not what it seems to be (source). Hamlet could be faking because he knows someone’s listening.

Wilson points out how philosophy and drama are different. Philosophy is about knowing whereas drama is about doing.

Years before Hamlet debated life vs. death and Horace had his horticultural insight as master of a country estate, another aristocrat, Siddhartha Gautama (the “Buddha”) (c. 5th-4th century BC), bummed everybody out with his Noble Truths including: “birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering, union with what is displeasing is suffering, separation from what is pleasing is suffering and not getting what one wants is suffering” (source).

That’s a lot of suffering. You can’t win, so why even try?

According to this philosophy you’re born to suffer, but if you accept that life is crap, you won’t be surprised when it is crappy or expect it to be any other way.

If the Buddha worked in IT.
“Philosophy Tech Support”, Existential Comics 51: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/51

This idea that we cause ourselves suffering by resisting what is, is something Stoics, Epicureans and Bill W., founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, also discovered.

Gautama maintained that things which cause pleasure eventually fail because when we like something we think about it and we want it again (and again…) and it’s the craving that causes trouble.

The idea is that suffering is created by our craving for pleasure, but if Guatama had an Electroencephalography (EEG) to show brain activity in psychological states, he would see that liking and wanting are in “two different motivation systems in your brain” (source).

Unconscious thinking (System 1) is fast, intuitive, and emotional whereas conscious thinking (System 2) is slower, more deliberative and logical.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman (1934- ) explains how the two systems drive the way we think and make choices. Kahneman challenges the idea that “people are generally rational” because errors arise not just from emotions that can cloud judgement, but from our built-in brain machinery.

If you eat fried chicken, for example, you are conscious of the taste and smell in the present moment, but if you want fried chicken, that wanting could be unconscious because you smelled chicken as you walked by. It’s like a button was pushed in your brain (and you didn’t know).

The trick is to slow thinking down. Forget Hamlet’s mental perambulations and remember Horace’s advice to enjoy nature with your senses. Watch what you’re thinking to identify biases and become aware of what’s going on in your brain and all around.

It’s all interconnected.

Now we dance, eat an apple, and enjoy simply.

Much love.

The Content of Contentment: Press Play

There’s a war going on. It’s been going on for a couple of thousand years. It’s happening right now. It’s on TV, in the news and in books and movies. It’s on the Internet and on billboards but it isn’t an obvious war. It’s subtle. There are no bombs as a rule.

Like The Troggs said, “It’s written on the wind. It’s everywhere I go” (“Love Is All Around”), but it isn’t love that’s all around: it’s thought.

From thought love flows or shuts off (“Real Love Is a Choice”). You can’t see thought of course—it’s more or less invisible, ergo: “spiritual”—but you can see evidence of thought (or lack thereof) in brain scans, behaviour and city planning.

Cue music: “Peacock Tail” or “Calcutta”.

The philosopher Michel Onfray—resident hedonist, atheist, and anarchist—says that it’s a war between materialists and idealists (source). It’s a war that focuses on the big question: “What is reality?”

How you answer determines how you relate to the world.

No biggie.

Imagine holding a spoon. You see it. You feel its weight and cool metal in your hand. These perceptions happen within your brain where data from sensory organs comes together and forms an “image” of the spoon in your brain, but apart from your perceptions and awareness of the spoon, is there really something outside and separate from your mind? Do you regard the spoon as real or not?

Materialism says yes.

Idealism says no.

Which one are you?

To a materialist everything is matter because everything, including mental activity and consciousness, is physical. It’s matter acting upon matter. Reality is independent of perceptions.

As the philosopher Alexander Spirkin (1918-2004) put it in “Matter as the Substance of Everything That Exists”, “Consciousness belongs not to any transcendental world but to the material world.”

The word “materialist” also refers to someone who displays conspicuous consumption of material goods or who pursues wealth and luxury.

If materialism had a theme song it would be “Let’s get physical” with Olivia Newton John or “Material Girl” with Madonna.

Now, the opposite of materialism (everything is “matter”) is idealism. To an idealist everything is mental (not matter) and therefore immaterial because the mind, as in, thoughts and ideas, make reality for you (source).

In the movie The Matrix, a boy bends a spoon without touching it and says, “There is no spoon.” To an idealist this means that you can’t manipulate reality, you can only manipulate yourself. Only when you change yourself can you change reality.

Idealists can be dualists or nondualists. Dualists (“being two”) think the world is made of divisions—good/bad, here/there, self/other, past/future; whereas, nondualists (“not two”) think these divisions don’t exist and that we don’t really experience them at all because everything is interconnected and not separated.

Nondualists in Eastern and Western traditions say that a dual, divided experience leaves us feeling finite and vulnerable because we think we’re separate from everything else but if we really understand the nondual unbroken-experience, feelings of separation and suffering end completely (Science & Nonduality).

Idealism says, “I am Consciousness. All objects of my awareness are really Awareness in disguise”  (source). If idealism had a theme song, it would be “Life Is But a Dream” with the Harptones, “Spirit In the Sky” with Norman Greenbaum, or “Hurdy Gurdy Man” with Donovan.

The word “idealist” also describes a person with high ideals or qualities of perfection and excellence.

In this war the lines are drawn in phrases of persuasion. When Onfray says, “Religion is like magic. It’s all about tricks,” he expresses a materialist’s position. When British physicist James Jeans (1877-1946) says, “the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine,” he expresses an idealist’s position. But why must we choose between one or the other? Why not be both together?

Whether materialist or idealist, we each live in our own little bubble of awareness. The bubble is our self—a universe of one. Some bubble-people float alone. Some bubble-people stick together like suds. Inside our bubbles we think we’re awake and aware of our surroundings. Consciousness seems to come from the operations of our brain but consciousness is tricky that way.

It’s like there’s a locked box inside our head and the key to open it is inside! Thinking about thought is like that. As the Platters said, “Only you can make this world seem right” (“Only You”). The best we can do is to make educated guesses about what others are thinking (source).

Photograph by Alex Kisilevich.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote, “There are no facts, only interpretation” (source) meaning, truth and reality are concoctions of someone interpreting reality and therefore creating it. It’s an idea verified by science. In “What hallucination reveals about our mind” neurologist Oliver Sacks said that we see with the brain but the brain can be fooled by hallucinations that mimic perceptions.

In “Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality”, neuroscientist Anil Seth said, “What we consciously see is based on the brain’s best guess of what’s out there. Our experienced world comes from the inside out, not just the outside in.”

You could be a materialist who isn’t materialistic or an idealist without ideals, but not likely. Materialism’s determination that everything is “matter” goes with a materialistic desire to buy and idealism’s realization that reality is mental goes with caring more for ideals of excellence and goodness than for anything purchased.

In the article “If You Shop on Thanksgiving, You Are Part of the Problem” Matt Walsh writes of  the materialist’s credo for happiness: “Everybody buy. It doesn’t matter what you buy. Just buy. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have money. Just buy.”

To which George Monbiot adds, “The more we consume, the less we feel. The richer we are and the more we consume, the more self-centred and careless of the lives of others we appear to become” (“Why we couldn’t care less about the natural world”).

A materialistic bid for happiness confirms research that shows, “Those who pursue wealth and material possessions tend to be less satisfied and experience fewer positive emotions each day… Life satisfaction—surprise, surprise—is correlated with having less materialistic values” (“The Psychology Of Materialism, And Why It’s Making You Unhappy”).

Psychologist Felicitas Heyne writes, “If you are an Idealist, life represents one continuous search for a deeper meaning: Who am I? Where am I going? What is my destiny? This already describes the most important pillar of your personal concept of happiness: The meaning of life!” (“How Idealists can find Meaning in their Lives”).

To be awake means to be fully conscious in the present moment. To be “unconscious” is to be not conscious. It is to be “without awareness, or cognition” (Dictionary.com). 

In the film, You, the Living, a psychiatrist delivers a bleak assessment of the human condition: “People demand to be happy at the same time as they are egocentric, selfish and ungenerous. I’d like to be honest and say they are quite simply mean, most of them. I’ve stopped trying to make a mean person happy. I just prescribe pills, the stronger the better.”

So, is the answer in a pill?

When Bob Dylan said, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,” he said a slurring mouthful (“Blowing In The Wind”).

Peace and contentment by Eduard von Grützner, 1897.

As an idealist, you interpret the world as if it were a person and then, as a materialist, you enjoy it. Two sides. Same coin.

Contentment is simply seeing and enjoying what is seen and enjoyed simply.

In a state of satisfaction with absolute acceptance of yourself and your situation, perfect gratitude hits you with perfect ease and contentment.

And there you are.

Here.

Enjoying.

The Point of Enjoyment

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” ~ Lewis Carroll

A point, whether of an idea, joke or tapered object, is always arrived at in the immediate. You get the point when you get the point. Even if you don’t get the point right away, when you do get it, you get it at a precise moment.

In the game of darts you get points by getting the point of your dart to stick to a point aimed at, but over and above the mechanics of the game the real point is to enjoy it.

But why? Why do we enjoy what we do?

Lawn darts were enjoyed in the 1980s: 6,700 people were treated in hospital and three children died.

Science says that enjoyment is a matter of brain chemistry. A characteristic of people with depression and mental illness is anhedonia: an inability to gain pleasure from normally pleasurable experiences.

Art by Murfish.

Brain expert Dr. Stuber PhD might say (and did), “GABA neurons located in the VTA are just microns away from dopamine and are negative regulators of dopamine function… A dysfunction in these GABA neurons might potentially underlie different aspects of neuropsychiatric illness, such as depression” (UNC Healthcare).

Psychologists treat happiness as if it’s mysterious. They recommend working on a meaningful career, spending time with friends, savoring the day and so on, but happiness doesn’t come from outside.

Assuming your GABA neurons aren’t buzz-killing dopamine release, there are as many ways to enjoy as there are people but it boils down to one thing: We enjoy what we enjoy (because we enjoy it).

It’s circular – like Donna Summer singing, “Love to love you baby.”

X is true because of Y. Y is true because of X. We dance because it’s enjoyable. It’s enjoyable because we dance. We play to have fun and have fun when we play. If we’re forced to play, it isn’t play anymore. It’s emotion first, then realization and confabulation.

“Now we dance.“

If the point of enjoyment is to enjoy, the question is: What is the meaning of true enjoyment? This was asked in Quora (a question-and-answer site) and people responded. (Note: names have been changed to protect the anonymous).

Tommy said enjoyment is, “Celebrating life, not one’s life; just life!”  Dieter said enjoyment is, “Living the moment.”

Sally listed enjoyments: “Looking at the smile of a new born baby. Eating Mango by plucking and stealing it from an orchard. Getting wet in rain without bothering about getting wet.”

Simon says, “Enjoy!”

Simon said, “Everyone has different meaning of enjoyment! They have different source of enjoyment but for me … it’s something which I do for myself!”

And there it is.

Maybe there’s a little Simon in all of us. There’s just something about one’s self that makes it special to one’s self. To you, there’s no you quite like you.

Psychologists say it’s good to love one’s self. Why, if there was no you – no you as a living organism with thoughts and feelings in an environment – there would be…what?

But vain self-importance blocks the flow of enjoyment like crimping a garden hose. When things don’t go the way we want, we’re unhappy so the trick is to loosen up and enjoy what you get (see post: Is it serious?).

We have a limited idea of who we are. Yes, we are each a bag of skin crowned by a cranium, but do we end in skin? What about air in lungs and energy from the sun in our bellies? Going into atoms we see nothing there – just energy waves. We’re energy waves. Not that this matters when you stub your toe, but a “hard” world is softened with a realization of how interconnected and diaphanous (light and insubstantial) this all is.

Philosopher Alan Watts saw interconnections, saying, “where there are no flowers there are no bees, and where there are no bees there are no flowers. They’re really one organism” (Conversation With Myself).

A dandelion seed has fine hairs allowing it to ride on the wind. The wind is, in a manner of speaking, a part of itself. Why do advertisers associate their product with love and happiness? It isn’t the product in itself that we want: it’s the feeling the product is said to impart.

What you love is what you enjoy. Enjoyment is a one step process: Express love for something and you are happy.

Author of The Element (2009), Ken Robinson, said, “To be in your element you have to love it… Being good at something is not a good enough reason to do it…It’s about finding the thing that resonates within you most fully” (see Ken Robinson video).

There’s a little verse from an ancient Hindu text called the Rig Veda that tells of the tree of life and two birds. One bird eats the tree’s fruit (some good some bad) and the other watches. They represent two aspects of ourselves. We are the bird eating – we participate in the action of life (killing and eating), experiencing joy and sorrow – but in contemplation, we are the second bird who watches. The trick is to be aware of the second bird watching the first bird participating.

You walk into a forest and suddenly you are struck by the wonder of this place. You feel the mystery of being and life itself. A cedar waxwing flies by. That such a creature should be there! That the universe should be here! That’s something that excites you to wonder. Take a deep breath and simply enjoy (see also: The Point of Enjoyment 2).

Enjoy An Insight

Ever have one of those days? Everybody does. It’s a real bummer of a day (bummer is hippie speak for misfortune). It’s one of those days when you say to yourself, “Why me?” or “Why now?”

You’re up before the sun “working in a coal mine, going down down,” and someone says, “Lord! I am soooo tired. How long can this go on?” Not that you actually work in a coal mine (unless you do). We’re talking metaphor. We all work in a coal mine of one kind or another. Even those who don’t work, work in a coal mine of a kind.

It’s on a “one of those days” day that you look for a sign that there’s more to life. Not that you’re superstitious. It’s just that when life is boring, pointless and terrible, most of us look for a sign that there’s more to it. Even those who don’t believe in miracles look for them.

But few people see signs these days and those who do are maligned. We might crave a vision but all we have is TV. It’s not because the signs aren’t there that we don’t see them.

We don’t see them because we’re either not paying attention or we lack imagination. It takes a special kind of sensitivity to subtlety for a person to see signs and put it together.

In 1989 two math professors wrote “Methods for Studying Coincidences” in which they outlined four sources for most coincidences: 1) a hidden cause, 2) the psychology of a person, including memory and perception, 3) multiplicity of endpoints, including the counting of “close” or nearly alike events as if they were identical, and 4) the law of truly large numbers – given enough events, almost any coincidence is bound to occur.

They found that most puzzling coincidences arise in the mind of the observer. Therein is the magic! That’s the answer! You alone see the sign! You create magic by tuning into it!

Coincidence?

If you pay attention and if you lighten up and if you go for silly walks now and then you will become familiar with wonderful oddities (for complete instructions see: Ministry of Silly Walks) .

Call it coincidence. Call it ironic, moronic or divine. Call it just one of those things. Beyond rationalization, confabulation and logical explanation, there are times when weird things happen and you are in a perfect position to see them (see earlier post: “Enjoy What Is And Take What Comes“).

The Slant.

Let’s say you’re on your way to get your blood tested. As you peddle past a pretty storybook house with a fountain, you’re reminded of fairy-land pictures you’ve seen. The thought occurs to you that you and everyone you know will soon be dead.

It sounds gloomy, but at this moment it isn’t. Knowing that everything you know and have ever known will soon be gone has a way of putting things in perspective (see earlier post “Enjoy A Bad Day“).

What’s the worse case scenario in any situation? You could die. But you know that’s going to happen anyway so, as Dire Straits put it, “Why worry?”

No sooner do you have this realization when you see a sign. But it isn’t the sign that catches your attention. It’s the sign spinner. Stopped at a streetlight, you watch the sign spinner. Suddenly life doesn’t seem so bad.

And you hear music coming from somewhere. It’s Tommy James and the Shondells singing Draggin’ the Line which goes: “Makin’ a livin’ the old, hard way. Takin’ and givin’ my day by day. / I dig snow and rain and the bright sunshine…/ My dog Sam eats purple flowers.
Ain’t got much, but what we got’s ours… / I feel fine!”

What you thought was going to be “one of those days” changes into something beautiful when you open yourself to connection and possibility.

Jump forward: now you’re in a lab cubicle waiting for a nurse to take your blood. You’re listening to the Moody Blues sing “Tuesday Afternoon” and you think, “That’s funny. It is a Tuesday afternoon!”

The nurse comes in and prepares the syringe. You avert your eyes and on the wall you see a picture of a fountain. It looks like the fountain you saw earlier by the storybook house that reminded you of pictures that you once saw of a fairyland of love. They say that fountains symbolize joy and peace and water is the sign of calmness. All you know is that you like water fountains.

You may look back on your life like a Dickens’ novel. Life seems planned but little accidental meetings and experiences turn out to be main features of the plot. At this minute, looking around at the world as you do, you suddenly have an insight.

You marvel at the wonder of life and in so doing, enjoy it.

Enjoyment And Enlightenment: Side By Side

In 1927 a small woman with a big heart named Lee Morse sang, “Oh, we ain’t got a barrel of money. Maybe we’re ragged and funny, but we’ll travel along, singing a song – side by side” (“Side by Side“). It’s a song about enjoying good times and bad together but it could be about enjoyment and enlightenment. They go together.

One might even say they’re one and the same.

In 1784 a small man with a big head named Immanuel Kant wrote “What Is Enlightenment?” In it he called people cowards. He said that except for a few men (and no women), most people are too lazy, immature and afraid to think for themselves. Kant believed that mature thought and reason is enlightenment. He said, “Dare to know!” is enlightenment’s motto.

Spiritual types say otherwise. They say it’s not about thought. It’s about heart and love and letting go of what you think you know. A teacher in the Zen koan tradition, Joan Sutherland, said that enlightenment is “more true than our ordinary self-oriented ways of experiencing life… Enlightenment is our true nature and our home… it’s not about being a better self but about discovering our true self” (Lion’s Roar). But most people wouldn’t know their true self from a hole in the ground.

We can’t help it.

Neuroscientist Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz said, “The brain puts things into our consciousness, but it is the active mind that makes choices about whether to listen and how to listen.” He said that our brains trick us with deceptive brain messages that come to us as mental chatter.

Schwartz said, “Deceptive brain messages are any false or inaccurate thought or any unhelpful or distracting impulse, urge or desire that takes you away from your true goals and intentions: your true self” (“It’s not me. It’s my brain”…).

When we try to improve ourselves, we can’t seem to because the one that needs improvement is the one trying to improve! Spiritual entertainer Allan Watts said that it’s the equivalent of trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and it can’t be done.

Thinkers think enlightenment is thought, feelers feel enlightenment is felt and scientists say it’s a matter of re-programming. Enlightenment sounds hard if not impossible, but it isn’t! It’s like enjoyment. It’s easy. The word enlightenment has light in it. Lighten up!

It’s like that scene in the show Breaking Bad where a tough guy who broke the law and lost everything sits watching a river and waiting to die.

Everything he tried to do was for naught. He’ll never see his beloved granddaughter again but just before dying, he finds peace. He simply enjoys watching the river and is enlightened (the Breaking Bad river scene).

Hermann looking dapper.

It’s not just that the river is tranquil, soothing, and the best place to chill beer. Rivers are wellsprings of ancient wisdom (in a good way). In Siddhartha (1922), Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) uses a river to represent existence and time. Through a river Siddhartha is enlightened: “You’ve heard it laugh,” he said. “But you haven’t heard everything. Let’s listen, you’ll hear more…

“They listened. Softly sounded the river, singing in many voices. Siddhartha looked into the water, and images appeared to him in the moving water: his father appeared, lonely, mourning for his son; he himself appeared, lonely, he also being tied with the bondage of yearning to his distant son; his son appeared, lonely as well… The river sang with a voice of suffering, longingly it sang, longingly, it flowed towards its goal, lamentingly its voice sang. 

“‘Do you hear?’ Vasudeva’s mute gaze asked.

“Siddhartha nodded” (chapter 11).

Rational thinking may be necessary for day-to-day responsibilities, but sometimes, in an odd moment of awareness, when you realize that doing something won’t help you and not doing something will also not help you (like the old man in the Breaking Bad scene), you are in the zone of enlightenment. You step out of “the quicksand of time” (Moody Blues). You watch. You listen.

When we listen to what others have to say about enlightenment, it’s like trying to see through a dirty window.

We get caught in the middle like that Stealers Wheel song that goes, “Trying to make some sense of it all. But I can see that it makes no sense at all… Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am. Stuck in the middle with you…” (Rafferty & Egan).

Who is the clown? Who is the joker? How do you know? You Kant. It’s all opinion. But when it comes to enjoyment and enlightenment it isn’t a matter of opinion. It’s direct experience. A feeling of peace and tranquility is not a matter of opinion. It is enjoyed. Like music.

In 1969 the Moody Blues sang “Watching and Waiting” with the words: “But don’t be alarmed by my fields and my forests / They’re here for only you to share / ‘Cause here there’s lots of room for doing / The things you’ve always been denied / So look and gather all you want to / There’s no one here to stop you trying.”

And there it is. No harm trying. Watch and wait. That’s all it takes. Enjoyment is enlightenment enjoying.

Where Are You? The Paradox of Happiness

A pair of docks.

Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Let us begin. “Take another sip my love and see what you will see. A fleet of golden galleons, on a crystal sea …” (Moody Blues, 1970). Let us “ride the winds of time to see where we have been” and then…we can ride the mother of all see-saws! 

Sing, “Ride My See Saw” (just for fun).

Today we enjoy the bewilderment of a long walk off the short pier of enlightenment. But few will read this and of those who do few will read with contemplation. There are just so many distractions to divide our attentions on the Internet.

Internet research.

Nicholas Carr tells us in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains that the days of deep reading and deep thinking are over. And yet, take heart, it is an irony of enjoyment that not thinking overmuch is sometimes a requirement.

Jakob Nielson of Nielson Norman Group summarized it thus, “On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% more likely” (Nielson, 2008).

Think about it.

Eye-tracking researchers say that you will scan this Web page in the shape of an F. You will skim words as you move down the left and only see 30% of the right (Nielson, 2006). Even a link to How Little Do Users Read? is enough to divide attention and break concentration.

On the Internet, you see, it’s about brevity. It is the nature of a web to entangle, but in this Web we’re both consumer and consumed.

In The Shallows Nick Carr writes, “In Google’s world, which is the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the pensive stillness of deep reading or the fuzzy indirection of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive…” (p. 172).

In observations of dwindling attention spans, machine-like thinking and disconnection from the garden, Carr points out how tools become part of us. Hold a hammer and your brain thinks it’s part of your hand. The more we use a tool, the more we mold ourselves around it.

Our brains get accustomed to typical activities. When these activities stop or new activities start it’s like our “neurons seem to ‘want’ to receive input” (p. 29). In other words, we become what our brains do.

As we extend ourselves artificially, we distance ourselves from natural functions. Like an industrialized farmer in a massive computerized machine who loses touch with the soil he serves, so too we lose touch with meaningful feelings found only in natural beauty.

It’s because of the paradox of happiness. We think that technology will make us happy, but happiness is better achieved when not pursued. Like the name of that menacing mechanic with the missing section of finger that you can’t you remember. Stop trying and out of the blue, the name comes.

“It’s Murray! The mechanic! His name is Murray!”

So too with happiness. It sneaks up on you. The trick is to enjoy living things more than the electronic crack of computer screens.

It’s like the line from John Lennon’s song Beautiful Boy except instead of life insert the word happiness: “Before you cross that busy street take my hand. Life (happiness) is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (see post Simple Enjoyment).

We’re pretty inept when it comes to making happiness-promoting choices (Eggleston, 2013). Based on our options, we overestimate how much happier we’ll be if we had more income and better technology but we underestimate the sacrifices we need to make.

If you ask, “What’s my situation? Do I enjoy the life I’m in?” The answer depends on opinion and your will and won’t power. Suppose you are in a situation and as you skim this in a distracted fashion, you want to get the point before it happens.

When you see that doing something about your situation is not going to help and not doing something is also not going to help, where are you? You’re nonplussed, as in “surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react” (Google). You are perplexed. Like a song and in bewilderment you are reduced to watching.

You enjoy the fuzzy indirection of contemplation like people of long ago.

On a warm day in 1844, novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne sat far from computers in a small clearing in Massachusetts, USA. In deep concentration he focused on the world around him like his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson recommended in his “transparent eyeball” idea where one absorbs rather than reflects what nature has on offer.

Hawthorne wrote of breezes, sunshine, fragrance and sound, “the gentlest sigh imaginable, yet with spiritual potency, insomuch that it seems to penetrate, with its mild ethereal coolness, through outward clay, and breathe upon the spirit itself, which shivers in gentle delight… sunshine glimmers through shadow... the fragrance of white pines… the striking of the village clock… But hark! there is the whistle of the locomotive, – the long shriek, harsh above all harshness…It tells a story of busy men, citizens from the hot street… men of business, – in short, of all unquietness; and no wonder it gives such a startling shriek, since it brings the noisy world into the midst of our slumbrous peace” (Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife: A Biography, 1885, pp. 498-503).

And so, like Nathaniel Hawthorne back in 1844, you too can enjoy focused noticing in what remains of the natural world and in so doing feel a calm and heartbreaking happiness.

REFERENCES

Carr, N. (2010). The Shallows What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York.

Eggleston, B. (2013). Paradox of Happiness. The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Blackwell Publishing.

Neilson, J. (2008). How Little Do Users Read. 

Neilson, J. (2006). F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content.

World Views, Weird Edges & Higher States of Consciousness

It’s difficult to discover anything beyond presuppositions. Presuppositions are assumptions assumed in advance. When it comes to presupposers, it is as Nobel Prize Winner (1915) Romain Rolland said, “Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.” (Above the Battle).

Ideas running contrary to assumptions are subject to argument and ridicule.

If someone says, “Yesterday I saw angels sitting in a tree!” You’d think that person is on drugs, mentally imbalanced or a romantic poet named William Blake (who also saw angels in a tree).

The presupposition is, of course, that angels don’t sit in trees.

They prefer chairs.

A presupposition can be true, partially true or totally false. Most people – knowingly or not – have assumptions relating to their world view.

A world view is how truth and reality is understood. It asks: What is reality? What is a human being? What happens when you die? How do you know what’s right and wrong?

A world view can affect one’s goals, ability to enjoy life and attitudes towards society, progress and nature. Collectively, a world view can affect the world itself.

World views are fundamental assumptions. Fundamental assumptions always have an opposite. They can never be completely proven. There are two basic world views: one is religious (spiritual) and the other isn’t (secular).

Secular juggler.

Secular types say, “There are causes for all effects!” There are (1) atheists: there is no God or gods, the universe is material, theories like the big bang explain things scientifically, death is the end, what’s right and wrong is what we decide; and (2) postmodernists: we create a social reality, there are no truths only preferences, moral values are relative so do what feels good.

Spiritual types say, “Some effects are without causes!” Spirit is more important. There are (1) pantheists (Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, new agers): everything is God, we’re all of the same stuff, divinity is us, God is an impersonal Force, Energy, Vibration, there is no sin only ignorance, we die and are reborn; and (2) theists (Christianity, Islam, Judaism): there is one eternal personal God of infinite wisdom and power who created the universe, we pray and obey and exist beyond death.

A scene from Northfork (2003).

When a believer of whatever orientation has a prepackaged model, it’s hard to experience something outside that model.

But if you can set aside assumptions and self-interests for a minute or two, you can come up from day-to-day thinking to enjoy a higher mental state that is not only blissful (perfect happiness), but peaceful (free from disturbance).

There’s something curiously unconscious about this good feeling that’s easy. First: Relax. No pressure. No worries. This is not a competition. Put yourself in a beautiful scene (real or imagined) and let yourself feel content and tranquil.

“We can never discover anything outside the brain,” said Paul MacLean.

Instead of three bears, picture three brains inside your skull like neuroscientist Paul MacLean (1913-2007) said there was.

Imagine climbing from the lowest brain, the reptilian (think: road rage!), up past the next lowest, the paleo-mammalian – paleo means older – (think: threatened mama bear with cub) to the highest brain sitting on top like a cloud.

This is the neo-mammalian brain (neo means new).

The neo-mammalian (or neocortex) is the seat of perception and imagination. Whether religious or not, the three brains theory allegorically explains why people think and do what they think and do do.

The reptilian brain is responsible for “aggression, dominance, territoriality, and ritual displays;” the paleo-mammalian (limbic system) is responsible for “motivation and emotion involved in feeding, reproductive behaviour, and parental behavior,” and the neomammalian is responsible for “language, abstraction, planning, and perception” (Triune Brain).

Lower brains are said to be instinctive. Their concern is with reproduction and dominance, sometimes necessitating deception and violence.

When under the sway of lower brains, we’re principally concerned with our self and successes. We strike back when hit. We shift blame. We lack introspection. We rationalize behaviour in a so-called dog-eat-dog world while maintaining a flattering image of ourselves.

But in rare moments, when there are no demands put upon us, when one is quiet and comfortable, in such a peaceful interval, we are free to enter a higher mental state. When released from pride, ambition and self-justification, one looks at others not with criticism and judgement, but with a realization.

Human behaviour is driven by primitive mental pressures. People are nasty, emotional and self-interested, not out of evil, but out of hurt! In a higher mental state you see distress for what it is and not in terms of how it affects you.

“It is the artist’s business to create sunshine when the sun fails,” said Monsieur Rolland.

Romain Rolland (1866-1944) described higher intelligence as a religious feeling independent of any dogma, credo, Holy Scripture, mission statement or self salvation. It is simple and direct. It is contact. It’s a feeling of the eternal in the sense of not having limits – like an ocean (Oceanic Feeling).

Bird.

With self-interest gone, caring not for status, power or possession, boundaries are broken. We connect with things like trees, clouds, rocks, and birds. As William Blake said in Proverbs of Hell, “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees” (1789). We see visions as children until worldliness blinds us.

The trick is to set aside self-concern and go into nature wherever that is. Step out of mechanical garments. Look up from technological gadgetry and have a poetic vision. Attend to sensations in the world without thought of advantage and know there’s no difference between any two world views. As a rational witness, let your higher mind drift above and beyond the weird edges like a cloud minding not minding at all.

Melvin Sokolsky’s 1965 photo spread entitled Fly.

Enjoyment Without a Head

Imagine walking into a forest. It’s winter. There’s snow but you’re not cold. It’s silent and still and magical. As you stroll you notice how thoughts come and go, until gradually, as you pay attention to the graceful world, thinking subsides and a gentle feeling arises.

This is a path you’ve walked before. You can picture the former you walking here. And it’s a funny thing: You’ve lurched between wanting and not wanting throughout your life, but in a moment of attention like this, you don’t do either.

You see your breath in the air and ask: “Who are you?” Who but you would know? Why not look into what it’s like being you – first person, singular, present tense? “Would you want to live and die without looking at the one doing that?” asked Douglas Harding.

You see yourself as a kid looking in a mirror. Your mom said, “That’s you!” and you believed her. Again and again you see the person under glass and think, “That’s me!” You think you are as you appear in the mirror, but that’s not how you actually see. When you look out of yourself, you don’t see a head.

You see hands, feet and knees. You see objects. You see trees and rabbit droppings and pine cones. You see far and near, but try as you might, you can’t see the one seeing. Your self is like that. Your self is a concept like a reflection in a mirror.

The ancients spoke of beauty, goodness and truth. Immersed in a world of snow, grass, trees and colour, you put one foot in front of the other and care not for images, politics and economies. You see beauty. You see goodness. You know a simple truth: You’re here and glad of it.

The poet William Blake (1757-1827) wrote, “Every Eye sees differently. As the Eye, Such the Object” (Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake, p. 19). Everyone may see the same tree, but experience it differently. Blake said, “a fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees” (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell). The fool is less aware. He sees, “trees” like a million others. Meaningless. Insignificant. But a wise person lives in gusto and pays attention. A wise person’s tree is more real.

You are the space between. Before a thought comes, there is a thinker. You are the one thinking. You are consciousness itself.

Writer Douglas Harding saw philosopher Ernst Mach’s 1885 self-portrait where he closed his right eye and drew himself. While walking Harding had an insight and wrote, “What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking. A peculiar quiet, and odd kind of alert limpness or numbness, came over me.”

Harding looked at himself and realized that he couldn’t see his head. “It took me no time at all to notice this nothing, this hole where a head should have been, was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far beyond them snow-peaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world”  (On Having No Head).

In the 1960s Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band saw a similarity between poet Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) and Douglas Harding. Heron wrote a song about headlessness that begins, “When I was born I had no head. My eye was single and my body was filled with light. And the light that I was, was the light that I saw by. And the light that I saw by, was the light that I was” (song: Douglas Traherne Harding). 

In the 1600’s Traherne wrote, “You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars.” Traherne was a philosopher of enjoyment. He wrote, “Your enjoyment of the World is never right till every morning you awake in Heaven” (Centuries of Meditation). Wade (1944) writes of Traherne, “In the middle of the seventeenth century, there walked the muddy lanes of Herefordshire and the cobbled streets of London, a man who had found the secret of happiness… He became the most radiantly, most infectiously happy mortal this earth has known” (p. 2). This is the secret: It is in paying attention without thinking. Don’t be fooled by personality.

You are like the surprised squirrel silently watching you watch him.

If this squirrel were a person, you would feel self-conscious and probably look away, but when you’re headless, you don’t worry. Both you and the face you see, don’t see their own face. It’s just a you looking back at another you. 

You are a tightrope walker. The path you walk (in or out of forests) is the rope you’re on. You walk between thought and attention. The trick is to enjoy both. You are the world seeing. You are not a thing. You are not your appearance. You are seeing itself. You are capacity. This year is dedicated to paying attention without distracted thinking. Wherever you go, there you are. You are the world to yourself. You are the one experiencing.

Trust experience and enjoy it.

References

Wade, G. (1944). Thomas Traherne: A Critical Biography. Princeton University Press/Oxford University Press.

 

Attention & Imagination

On a cold winter’s night long ago an old man sits happy by a fire. He enjoys warming himself after a difficult day and realizes with surprise how fantastic he feels.

The wine, the food, the fire – it’s all better than good! It’s like he’s imagining it all. It’s so perfect! The cold world with its trees, its stars and its coyotes is as it should be and so is the old man who is seized by an almost intolerable happiness!

The old man has had his share of loss and despair, but none of that matters now in this moment of enjoyment. “What a mystery it is,” he thinks, “that it should be in our power to look or not look at what strikes us as horrible or alluring. Weak fool that I am, I can steer my own mind!”

As he pours wine for he and his friend, the old man realizes that the whole struggle he’s had has always been between himself and the pressure of his experience to enjoy or not enjoy life. That is the battle we all wage, but now he knows that there is no need for such a struggle to prevent him from enjoying life because he can enjoy the struggle itself!

“I will enjoy!” says the old man.

“Here! Here!” calls his friend. “Supper is almost ready!”

The old man feels giddy as he merges without moving. To move would be to break the spell of this still transcendence. He feels Rameau’s opera Les Indes Galantes inside and sings, “Peaceful forests. May a vain desire never trouble our hearts here…. Let us enjoy our refuges. Let us enjoy peaceful things! Ah! Can one be happy when you wish for other things?”

“No! Of course not!” calls his friend. “Just a second. I’ll get water.”

The old man who earlier saw without seeing now disappears in seeing! He no longer is in a room with a friend and a fire as a cold wind blows outside. He is the room! He is his friend! He is the fire! He is the cold wind that blows up to the stars! The old man has broken free! In this act of imagination he feels no separation.

Through happy attention to present enjoyment (knowing full-well he is only temporary), the old man has broken the boundary between his mental and physical self and everyone and everything else! In this togetherness he feels selfless beauty and ecstasy.

He’s awakened from a dream he didn’t know he was having. He thought he knew reality, but he didn’t. As he sips delicious and breathes in the scene, he thinks, “Sublime! Awe! Beauty! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” To whom he thanks, he doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter. Words of gratitude pop out naturally.

Nothing hurts. Nothing disturbs. He smells the smoke and hears the stew simmer. He feels the weight of his beautiful hat on his head. He touches his shirt with gnarled fingers and feels nothing but love for all that is and was.

Even though the old man died hundreds of years ago in a pre-industrial age his experience isn’t one of a kind. Where there is beauty, nature, good food and drink, where there is a friend and love and warmth, there is enjoyment.

Some things never change.

Throughout history people have described the awe inspiring experience of breaking their individualized ego-bounds. It’s the basis of all good religion and poetry.

Poet John Keats (1795-1821) called it “the empathic entrance into essence.” He writes in Endymion (1818), “Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks, our ready minds to fellowship divine. A fellowship with essence; till we shine.”

What the old man felt long ago is the same source of enjoyment that anyone, anywhere, at anytime can feel. This is the eternal moment that’s always there.

Each of us perceives an outside world from within the bubble of ourselves. We see through “a glass darkly.” When happy, we see happy. When sad, we see sad. When self-absorbed, we don’t see at all. Terror is as much us as is love.

Without imagination and attention our senses are filtered through self-thought. Every “thing” is a “think.” Thought can distract us from the enjoyment of living in the same way that looking down texting on an iPhone as we walk can take us unknowingly into the path of an oncoming truck!

Look up! There is no hurry. Enjoy!

In the The Little Prince Antoine de Saint Exupéry wrote, “Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye” (p. 48).

The trick is to see with your heart for imagination and intuition is the heart of enjoyment. Imagine a beautiful world. Imagine a beautiful you. Imagine and it is true!

Imagine that you are at one with the world and you are.

John W. O’Brien, Old Man Grey, 1852.

Nonordinary Enjoyment

After scuba diving, Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV (aka Blackman Francis or Frank Black) from the band the Pixies was inspired to write, “With your feet on the air and your head on the ground. Try this trick and spin it. Yeah. Your head’ll collapse, but there’s nothing in it. And then you’ll ask yourself: Where is my mind?”

He’s not literally looking for his mind. One doesn’t lose one’s mind like one loses one’s keys (see post: A New Way of Looking).

While he was scuba diving Black probably did lose his mind, not to madness, but to a beautiful feeling when there’s nothing in it but the beauty of being in the beauty of what’s all around. When inner talk runs between wanting and not-wanting, and liking and disliking is stopped—particularly in a natural setting—we can feel aware of beauty in the outside world and enjoy it like nothing else. 

Stilling the inner monologue has been talked about by artists, poets, artisans and all those who lose themselves in creating, by athletes who lose themselves in playing, by mothers, fathers, lovers and friends who lose themselves in loving, by meditators who lose themselves in breathing, by comrades in camaraderie, by martial artists in the zone, by co-workers and soldiers, by mystics and bakers – by anyone who suddenly feels aware of the world with a shock of boundless love and the enjoyment of being.

If your mind is always busy, angry, depressed or confused, if you are always trying to achieve goals and better health, you won’t enjoy living because you are always somewhere else. You’re living for for a future perfection that never comes. If life doesn’t feel quite right, it never will. Life is never quite right because it cannot be what you like. It’s only when you allow yourself to relax that you relax and in so doing, enjoy life in its unfolding.

There may be future goals, hazards, struggles and sorrows but each seeker of happiness should know that we don’t want happiness later. We want it now. Happiness isn’t at the  top of the hill.

We want a path to happiness right now but we only find good reason to be satisfied on that path by being satisfied. Feel satisfied and you are. That’s it. Tell yourself and you will listen. It’s an unconscious thing. You don’t love because, as in, “for some reason.” You love because you do.

When thoughts of self-gain subside one’s mind is extended from brain and body to world all around. Ego-brain and ego-mouth are Trumped by love and forced to be quiet. Everyone is just another you. It’s a merging. Scientists and mystics call this an altered states of consciousness. You can see it happen in brain scans. 

The Pixies 1988 version of “Where is my mind?” is in the movie Fight Club. Other versions of the song include Maxence Cyrin’s (set to scenes from The Mysterious Lady, a silent film from 1928 starring Greta Garbo), the band Placebo‘s and Sunday Girl’s version in the show Mr. Robot.

It’s a song that gets around.

Enjoyment can be conscious – as in, you consciously choose to read this – or unconscious – as in, you feel something without knowing why.

Feelings are real.

Most people think their mind is in their brain. Some say that “the mind is a function of the brain” in the same way that seeing is a function of eyes and hearing is a function of ears (The Automatic Mind). Others say the mind is your personality, but personality is in the eye of a third-person and mind is a first-person thing.

The mind is what it feels like to be you. When that mind—the feeling of being you—is blown away, “you,” as in your individual feeling of consciousness receives sensory information from the environment around you, you are shifted from a self-perception to utter contentment and a good solid floating feeling.

Float on that dandelion seed of imagination and enjoy the sensation.

In the British Journal of Psychiatry Susan Greenfield (2002) wrote, “Now consider ‘losing the mind’ or ‘blowing the mind’. Because we are still conscious when these often much-sought-after events occur, I would suggest that it is wrong to conflate ‘mind’ with ‘consciousness’. Just think a little more about being ‘out of your mind’. In such situations, the individual no longer is accessing personalised cognitive perspectives, the world no longer has a personalised meaning and instead one is the passive recipient of incoming sensory information” (Mind, Brain and Consciousness).

You don’t need a rave to enjoy. You don’t need anything. When mental chatter about wanting and not-wanting are silent, you become enjoyment itself. You shift to lamp mode. You glow.

When you enjoy, you become as a poet.

And what is a poet? A poet is a person speaking to people. A poet adopts the very language of people. All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerfully good feelings (adapted from Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads).

Medicine for an unhappy mind is not just sensory awareness of outward beauty, but in states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty.

With practice of character, self-awareness and attention to your senses in your surroundings, a sense of beauty and love – a fantastically happy feeling – can happen anywhere, any time. Even right now. Why not?

You’re here aren’t you?