There’s nothing wrong with being unhappy.

My Philosophy Bookshelf(bottom) (Photo credit: jddunn)

I had a late night talk with some people the other day and they seemed astonished at the idea I was not blissfully happy with my life. Off the top of my head I had said I was about 60% – 40%, by which I was trying to say that I was generally more unhappy than happy.  In reflection this was probably wrong. Really I’m 30% – 30% with the 40 being “meh” – that’s neither good nor bad for those unfamiliar with the lingo.
Anyway, a large part of the rest of the night was spent “robustly” discussing the idea: One side saying that you can make yourself happy, by mindfulness and what not. The other side (me) saying that you have what you feel what you feel and that just because you pretend to be happy, doesn’t make it true. Interestingly enough it was a good argument at times with plenty of stomping about and offense – ironically enough this kind of thing makes me happy, so maybe 31%.
After it all, I still think the same thing, although I’m happy to have my mind changed. Here’s what I think:
1)      You feel what you feel and you cannot make yourself happy.
2)      There is nothing wrong with being unhappy.

Not sure if I should explain this, because I more interested in what others’ think, but I suppose I should just for clarity.
You feel what you feel and you cannot make yourself happy.
Is there such a thing as free will? It’s a big questions and I’m just going to skim around the edges, because I’m lazy today. What I want to say though is that even if there is such a thing as free will and choice, our ability to use it is very limited. I am who I am because of things that happened millions of years before I was born. Many of my feelings and thoughts come from a biological origin that I will never be able to alter – unless I can meet Dr Who and change the course of sun or something. Others come from my experiences – especially as a child: If I had watched “My little pony” more that I watched “He-man” maybe my life would be very different today. I’m also constantly affected by the behavior of my surrounding environment: if I don’t get the right things to eat and drink I get sleepy, cranky and become more of pain in the ass than usual.
In the end, after all this, what I end up feeling is really not up to me.
There is nothing wrong with being unhappy.
Oddly enough, the people who I was talking to seemed to be saying to use mindfulness as a way of being happy. Yet it seemed to miss the point in mindfulness. For me mindfulness is about experiencing what is there already, not hiding from it. If I feel unhappy then I should just be unhappy, if I feel happy, or angry, or horney, that’s okay. It’s the judging happiness as a good/bad thing that’s the problem.
I’ll throw in the over used arrow story here. A guy gets shot by and arrow and there is pain. He can’t stop that, it is what it is. But he can avoid more pain, by not judging the pain as a bad thing. The Buddha tells a more elaborate version, but I think that’s the point.
And unhappiness can be a good thing and it’s natural. Sure you don’t want to be stuck in it your whole life, but you don’t want to be suck in any emotion permanently – there is nothing more annoying than a person who is always happy; usually they’re idiots. However, being unhappy can be good motivator, it can help bring about change and can tell you when something is wrong.

There’s more I could say on these things, but I’ll leave it to people to join the dots. Agree or disagree, I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Related articles

• Does Trying to Be Happy Make Us Unhappy? (psychologytoday.com)
• The girl who believes that happiness is an end.. (butterflyweeds.wordpress.com)
• Finding Happiness In Life (liveinthepresentmoment.wordpress.com)

Can we create anymore?

The Glass Bead Game (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of my favorite books is “The Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse.  I can only really describe it as cultural science fiction. The people in the future don’t really create culture anymore, they just manipulate it put it together using the bead game. It’s not a terrible future, but there is something sad about it.  In many ways it seems like this the way that things are going.

I was looking for a film to watch the other day and all I could really find were remakes of older films. It’s not even just remakes, now it’s remakes of remakes.”Spiderman” is good example. Having just finishing remaking the film with Toby Maguire, they’ve started again remaking the remakes with a new actor.

It’s not just straight remakes either. There are plenty of books and stories that are little more than retellings of the same tale with a different name.  I think I remember Steven King pointing out that authors like Terry Brooks are not really making their own new work, they’re just trying to rewrite the works of Tolkien that they love.

It does make me wonder, are we gradually losing the ability to create? Will we be left with only the glass bead game?

Related articles

• The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse (moalquraishi.wordpress.com)
• Defending the remaking trend in Hollywood (mikekeskeys.wordpress.com)

Our own worlds

Recently an acquaintance of mine who lives in Israel has been posting some rather unsavory things on facebook. I don’t take sides on the issue. It just seems such a mess of violence that I can’t see either as being “right” or “wrong”, but I don’t like the violent rhetoric coming from either side of the divide. There’s been more than once the my mouse has hovered over the remove from my timeline section before relenting.
It did make me realise how easy it has become today to remove things that we are uncomfortable with from our world and how it’s even easier to surround ourselves with ideas that we agree with. If you don’t like what someone is saying then just unfriend them. You think the television is too liberal then turn on Fox news, not Liberal enough then Jon Stewart is there. Even here on blog sites we can follow people who we on some level agree with and not follow those we don’t. It’s a dangerous situation, because it means there is no more dialogue. People can sit behind their respective walls and only allow in information that agrees with their current paradigm. They can paint the other side as a demonic or idiot enemy, that just doesn’t understand the true way. In the end, it will only lead to violence and division in society.
I’m a big fan of the “I love @#$%ing science”, posts that appear on facebook. But now and again there is a post that gives insight into the fundamentalist nature of some of the posters. It seems some would like to instate some type of Scientoracy on the world – and idea that admit I feel draw towards in some ways, but know to be absurd. But once you surround yourself with only people like yourself, these ideas start to seem normal. Likewise I’m sure there is a creationist site where they sit around tutting at people who believe only in science and want to bring in a theocracy and can’t understand for a second why anyone would think otherwise. After all everyone else that they know thinks it’s a fantastic idea. It’s the same for Labour and conservatives, democrats and republicans, Israel and Palestine. Both sides can only see insane charactures of the others. I’ve met some creationist, while I find there view on that one subject to be… well... rather strange. In other ways they seemed to normal intelligent people. And that’s the danger: if we don’t have dialogue, then we start to dehumanise people and that’s lead to all kinds of trouble in the past.
While I might be wrong, it seems that there is risk of the problem being ten fold for younger generations who have never lived without the ability to wall of others beliefs.
While I don’t agree with what she’s saying, I’m going to keep my pro-Israel acquaintance on facebook and try to understand her point of view. Likewise I hope I can expand my interaction with other people outside of my normal way of thinking. It seems one of the best ways to grow.

Mind and Heart

Someone sent me an email with a question today, thought it might be good to share the answer and see what others think:

Q: What is opinion what are the things of the mind vs the things of the heart....what is agreement, disagreement or truth if there is such a thing...

Had a think about this question today. My short answer is of course: "I don't know". I've asked my head to think about this, but that's much like asking a worker if they think their job is redundant. Still here's some thoughts anyway:

This seems to be one place where Buddhism and Hinduism seems to disagree. When I was in India I did a course on meditation - Hindu style - that seemed to be saying that we are the heart and that the mind is an illusion taking credit for decisions it had no part in and there seems to be some truth in this. I know there are time the I have reacted with out concious thought and then my thoughts have retrospectivly taken credit for it, when in truth I had just acted. Moreover there is something to that whole "bright light" being the true-self. That reaching out from that heart that seems to be channelled from somewhere deeper.

On the Buddhist side, however, it seems they are saying that we are all of them and none of them at the same time. Everything is so interconnected that it to separate one from the other would be impossible: heart influences mind and mind influences heart, to describe them as separate would be like trying to talk about the sea without context of land and air. 

While I think they are talking about the same thing in the end, my tendency is towards the later teaching. On one hand is seems more logical - which as a scientist type person I quite like, but it also seems to fit with my own experience: they seem interdependent. Furthermore I would say that they don't exist in isolation either. My mind is influenced greatly by the physical: what I eat, my sleep, exercise all have a massive effect on my mind and emotions for sure. 

On a side note, It does seem odd that a lot of people who are into things like Yoga, eastern medicine and all the rest often deny the physical as part of the self? Why is this?

Getting back to the point I would say that we have a Trinity of Body, Mind and Heart that, with a few more bits here and there possibly (the other Skhandas), makes what we consider ourselves, but stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, even that is just a small part of an even larger interconnected system that includes everything. Hence the lack of self.

However, going back to my original answer, I would again say "I don't know", I'm not even sure it's important to know. As I mentioned I'm the sciency type and I want to know the answers. But I've started to come round to the idea that with these kind of questions, answers from other peoples direct words wont help - you have to just sit and experience what is true and not worry so much about putting it into words. I think there is truth out there but we all look at through our own lenses, so what we see is not always the same thing, but truth remains unchanged.   

Chris

The two paths

Again I find myself caught in that great dilemma of life: to renounce the world and its things completely, or to run wild fanatic fervour, taking in all the pleasures that hedonistic life has to offer. I could be inspiring on either path. There is truth on both of them; perhaps one is no better than the other.

Yet there is fear there. Fear that the wrong choice has been made. Fear that this limited life is being wasted running down one road to find nothing at the end. What greater curse would there be to renounce everything of the world only at death to have found out this is all there is? Or worse, to give way to passion and discover at the end that there was some attainable, higher goal, or higher state that was missed for momentary pleasure?

Some might say that the best choice would be to walk the middle ground. Yet what a bland dull life that would seem to be: the path of the masses and not of the heroes. It would be the suburbs of life, a halfway place where the benefits and curses are neither strong nor weak and a dull colourless existence at best.

But it's here in the strange half way purgatory I always seem to end up. A shard of metal caught between two poles. A branch swinging in opposing currents. Here I am neither able to choose one nor the other and am cursed all the more for knowing there is choice that can be made.

` If only I could really know.