Organic Happiness

The psychological and philosophical pursuit of happiness began 2,500 years ago with Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, and Aristotle. We can find remarkable similarities between the insights of these thinkers and the modern “Science of Happiness.”

Buddha believed that dukkha ultimately arose from ignorance and false knowledge. While dukkha is usually defined as suffering, “mental dysfunction”. In a similar vein, Huston Smith explains dukkha by using the metaphor of a shopping cart that we “try to steer from the wrong end” or bones that have gone “out of joint”. Because of such a mental misalignment, all movement, thoughts and creation that flow out can never be wholly satisfactory. In short, we can never be completely happy.

Aristotle draws on nature in order to explain human happiness. If we look at nature there are four different kinds of things that exist in the world, Mineral, Vegetative, Animal & Human each one defined by a different purpose.

What is it that makes human beings different from the rest?

Aristotle answers that our unique function is to reason by reasoning things out we attain our ends, solve our problems, and hence live a life that is qualitatively different.

Socrates believed all human beings naturally desire happiness. Which is obtainable and teachable through human effort. Happiness is directive rather than additive. Not governed by external goods, but how we use these external goods. Happiness depends on the “education of desire” whereby the soul learns how to harmonize its desires, redirecting its gaze away from physical pleasures to the love of knowledge and virtue. Virtue and Happiness are inextricably linked, such that it would be impossible to have one without the other.

Today, we seem to equate the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of success. In reality we attract abundance through positive thinking. In order to seek “true and solid happiness,” we need to learn to distinguish real happiness from the imaginary kind. Getting everything you want in life will not necessarily do that—but slogging through the messy struggle of a life can yield moments of pure happiness, and those moments will add immeasurably to your world. That, in fact, almost any track, followed in the right spirit, could be the right one. Happiness comes in small moments while you’re pursuing the big stuff. After a while, the small moments become the point.

There is nothing like perfect happiness. Furthermore, we are mortal, so don’t have forever to perfect our life. We can still make pleasure by guide. Even a short life is a very long journey & we all need provisions for the trip. We need good food, good stories, and people to share them with. We need a sense of proportion and a sense of the absurd.

We need to have as good a time as we can, because, otherwise, what’s the point?