Wednesday, September 1, 2010

The Necessary Grounds For Happiness

Self inquiry. Self awareness. Self knowledge. Let's not confuse these endeavors with simple self indulgence, or with narcissism. The former are inescapable if we hope to have any depth of happiness or inner freedom. The latter are forms of escape from the Self, and so lead to, or compound ones' confusion and despair and entrapment by the insatiable demands of one's personality or ego. Liberation from these demands, to any degree, furthers one's well being and one's experience of contentment and peace.

What do you think freedom consists of? Is it the freedom to choose from 117 different kinds of bread in the supermarket? Is it the freedom to amass wealth beyond anything you or your descendants will ever be able to spend, at the inevitable expense of numberless other people, and the environment? Or is it the freedom to "express" yourself completely, even when to do so would be harmful either to yourself or to others?

In (north) America, we like to take certain kinds of freedom for granted, like the freedom to not be a slave. Or the freedom to vote for "the candidate of your choice" in what now amount to bought and paid for elections/illusions. Or the freedom to experience financial ruin because of a health related crisis. Or the freedom to choose the person we will marry (unless we happen to be gay, of course).
Naturally, these sorts of freedoms, what we might call political or social freedoms, are important and valuable, and yet we see all too clearly - don't you? - that they do not, in themselves, in any way at all guarantee, or create the grounds for, happiness.

So there must be something else involved. (Back to paragraph one). Without self knowledge, only the illusion of happiness is possible. Yes, it may be a luxurious illusion, with all the trappings of "success", of (physical)comfort, of pleasure.
And yet, again, we see repeatedly - this may be the greatest gift of the information age; the ability to see over and over again how material affluence alone fails to deliver the promise it makes - how these things don't deliver what we believe they will.

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