The Nature of Happiness

Does happiness exist? Stupid question? Well, not at least for those who feel they are unhappy. And of course for those who believe they are happy, it may well not be a stupid question because they can offer a resounding yes to the query.

So if you're still with me, there is a difference, isn't there, between happiness as an object to be experienced and experiencing life from the perspective of happiness, no?

. I believe that I choose happiness but at times peak experiences of 'happiness' seem to just happen and at that moment no matter what I am doing occurs within that mood or mode. My concern was the over-objectification of ...happiness as something we are seeking out kind of like a thing unto itself. Or presuming that there is some one thing or kind of thing that will 'make' us happy while others will not. While it does seem to me that some things stand in the way of happiness, it doesn't seem that there are other things that will necessarily promote happiness.

I don’t know if contentment is an alternative to happiness which is better or not. It seems to raise the same questions I have about “happiness.” Of course in the living and knowing of such things on an ordinary, everyday basis, it’s not an issue. But given the occupational hazard of philosophy professor it raises certain issues. On the other hand, it wouldn’t really be a philosophical issue if it wasn’t a lived concern. I have a certain kind of resoluteness about happiness, contentment, etc. And yet, something does remain unresolved if I’m really honest with myself. It’s not that I’m searching for it, like the right answer. But it is kind of like continuing to breathe. If I don’t breathe, I don’t live. If I don’t think/write/discuss I’m not alive in the fullest most robust sense of that experience.

A friend responded to me with this: " "Seeking "happiness", I believe, is that subconscious part of our Being that longs to re-member itself with Oneness that we came from while we are here experiencing duality. A type of homesickness for our Spirit. The ego, which is the reason we feel separated from Oneness filters "happiness" as something to be gained from material things and attaches an emotional "score" to all things desired." "

So, according to the latter view, 'happiness' isn't a goal but a means or a link to Oneness and presumably something, so to speak, that transcends happiness, something like Bliss, Ananda. Happiness then would be a healthy state pointed in the right direction spiritually. Lastly I would interpret the notion that "the ego filters happiness" as a short-circuiting of happiness by treating it as a goal rather than a means. It quantifies happiness and seeks better happiness in terms of more, even though it doesn't see it as ending up being nothing more than "more" of the same but not better.

Avatar as Bodhisattva

"By virtue of emptiness everything is able to arise, but without emptiness nothing whatsoever can arise." (Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamikakarika)

"He, who at this moment, before my eyes is shining alone and clearly listening to my discourse--this man tarries nowhere; he traverses the ten directions and is freely himself in the three realms. Though he enters the transformations of every state, no one of these can divert him. In an instant of time he penetrates the realm of truth: on meeting a buddha he persuades the buddha; on meeting a patriarch he persuades the patriarch..." (Rinzai, 13th Discourse, The Record of Lin-chi)

The "directions" are space and the "three realms" are the three ecstasies of time, past, present and future. Emptiness abides beyond space and time but occurs as space-time in that space and time abide as one in it and as it.

So, as Harry Palmer contends, only from source consciousness can we create.

But do I have to understand my belief before I can believe what I believe and therefore act to realize it?

Time and Decision

"...time is constituted only in the instant of decision. ... Only in relation to decision is there past or future. The present is decision, discrimination... Before it there is not time, not even as simple flow, for even flow would imply a direction, a going toward, and thus--already--the distinction and discrimination that only decision can institute. Decision is not in time, we must therefore conclude, but time in decision." --- pp. 32-3, Dialogue with Nietzsche by Gianni Vattimo.

Would this mean then that in meditation one need not transcend time; one need only not decide, not choose either for or against in order to overcome time?

Landmark,Avatar,Satsang (Part. 2)

Satsang, the third transformational paradigm that I've experienced, is a form of spiritual discourse delivered by a Satsang teacher. It usually begins a session with a talk by the teacher and then may involve dialogue with students who volunteer questions or offer reports of their experience in "satsang." Satang literally means something like 'being in communion with truth.' The "truth" of this experience presumably shifts one's attention from a consciousness of the world to a consciousness of the prior condition of Awareness that makes consciousness of the world possible. So one becomes conscious of one's Consciousness or Awareness and, thus, "Self-conscious." It is the kind of 'awakening' in which one can glimpse the Source of the consciousness that "creates" one's relatedness to the world and the things of the world.

I experienced Satsang first with Yukio Hasegawa who was given the name of "Ramana" by his teacher in India, H.W.L. Poonja, who was a direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi. Yukio, now known as Ramana-ji, began his teaching a few years before I met him and experienced his Satsang in May of 1999. In the first 10 minutes of his Satsang I experienced a dramatic 'awakening' experience which was like an epiphany of feeling and insight into pure Self-Awareness. The concomitant experience was one of the feeling of self-love, self-forgiveness and joyful love of others absolutely unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life. I was 52 at that time.

Satsang is rooted in the traditional Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. It affirms the existence of Self as absolute divine source of all being and as the essence of being itself. Self is the whole of the real, the divine and the appearance of such in the individual, i.e., Atman. Ramana Maharshi's version of this is also called jnana yoga, or, the yoga of knowledge. The spiritual "practice" is called "vichara" or 'self-inquiry.' It is identical to Satsang although vichara is also something one practices by oneself. Vichara is simply an orientation and comportment of oneself toward oneself and one's experience in the world as the question: "Who am I?" This question is not repeated like a mantra but is always present as a mode of being in the external world. It is the vehicle that moves one toward the immanent reality of self as pure Self-Awareness.

Satsang is not concerned to translate one's having achieved or rested in Source consciousness into any projects or possibilities in the world. It is not explicitly interested in "planetary enlightenment" as in Avatar nor in the material instantiation of Self in worldly projects as in Landmark Education. Satsang seems more purely spiritual though more 'idealistic' in a sense. But it's not that there is any radical separation betweeen the Awareness of Satsang and one's consciousness in the world. It is just more "indifferent" to how one lives one's life, although it claims that if there is ever going to be anything like world peace and prosperity or planetary enlightenment it does presuppose enlightened consciousness.

Landmark, Avatar, Satsang: A Comparison (Part 1)

Being experienced in Landmark, Avatar and Satsang, I thought I might do a little comparison. Not that I've mastered these systems or paths. Nevertheless I believe I have enough experience to do some thinking about their relative merits.

There does seem to be a complementarity to these paradigms. In fact I suppose they could be seen as essentially the same, just with a different emphasis. Of course there is a different tone and procedure to these experiences. Landmark could be somewhat forceful if not aggressive at times. Avatar seems to be a softer, slower pace aligned much more with the progression of each individual's rhythm. In Avatar there is more individual attention paid to the student. Landmark is more "logocentric" as we say in the philosophy world, that is more guided by cognitive directives to produce an insight and breakthrough, though not necessarily in that order. Avatar is guided, if I might coin an awkward concept, "affecto-centrically." [Sorry about that!] That is, Avatar is an affective process of feeling one's way toward and through insight and breakthroughs.

However, one big philosophical difference is that Landmark maintains that there is no real or true self, somewhat as in Buddhism. Avatar maintains the existence of "source awareness," which is much like Hinduism's "witness consciousness," or "Atman."

In a Landmark seminar which I just completed last night, the seminar leader said that the Self could be created each time that the "automaticity" of one's "it- consciousness" or robotic consciousness is distinguished and frees up space to create the self of possiblity and free, authentic action in the world. Avatar was much more subtle. On the seventh day of the Master's Course I experienced a clearing within myself that seemed to place me in a relaxed and free state in the world and amongst people but without the kind of ecstatic "removal" that the Landmark experience seemed to produce. Both experiences were empowering and re-orienting to my sense of self and to what became possible in my life. Avatar actually produced release of some physical tension I had carried all my life. To be specific, I had been a "teeth-grinder" all my life and always carried significant tension and pain in my left jaw muscles. A few days after the Avatar workshop, I realized the tension and pain was about 95% gone. To me this was minor miracle. As of now I would say about 10% of the tension has returned and yet I remain about 85% pain and tension free.

Interestingly enough both Landmark and Avatar gave me insight and breakthroughs around my seriousness, fearfulness and anxiety. Even though the various breakthroughs were dramatic or ecstatic, I now see each of them as a step toward further if not ultimate or final breakthrough.

One, if not "thee" big insight in Landmark comes, as I recall, on the third day of the Forum, their flagship course, when one realizes that the world is empty and meaningless and it's empty and meaningless that it's empty and meaningless. It can be a relatively earthshaking insight and breakthrough. For me it was dramatically, giggly "lightening" if not enlightening. It enabled me to "feel" the freedom of such an insight. I achieved a kind of 'clarity' in being in the world. How this changed my life was by allowing me to drop the virtual morbid seriousness that governed how I was being in my teaching and in my relationships. In short it helped me to begin to dismantle and drop the "seriousness" which has been a big defense mechanism against my fear and my "child," so to speak. It, in short, saved my career since during the first 4 years of full time college teaching I believe I was failing miserably. I was a basket case in classroom; I was authoritarian and not enjoying it in the least. After Landmark I was a different person in the classroom. I lightened up totally, began to enjoy and have fun in the classroom, and dropped the authoritarian demeanor and method. If it were not for the Landmark Forum I believe I would have left the teaching profession a failure. Today, 22 years later, I am a successful professor. It is not uncommon for students to report that my courses have changed their lives. Just a few days ago a student told me that my Introductory course was the "best thing that ever happened to him in his life." (To be continued)

Certainty and Security

Isn't it the belief that there is such a thing as 'certainty' in our lives that leads to the feeling of insecurity and the felt need or desire for security? Seeking certainty is avoiding experience, that is, the very experience of living into the future. The belief in certainty could come from a variety of sources not the least of which would be schooling that requires we provide the one right answer. Also, religions which turn the practice of faith into the dogmatic conformity to creeds and religious formulas are equally responsible for creating the need for certainty. Moreover cultural conditioning in needing to be right and the refusal or fear to be wrong are also sources of the obsession with certainty and security.

When failure in achieving such reassurance through certainty builds up, then its not uncommon for a person to despair and descend into confusion or pathological doubt. This seems to be the precondition for needing security and further certainties, each of which is likely to become more simplistic and therefore dangerous.

Life as Mystery

If the whole of life were not looked at as a problem or a series of problems but as a mystery, wouldn't it make a difference? But can we look at the mystery or abide in the mystery without it being turned into a problem, especially by the philosophers? If thinking can be allowed to be an act of appreciation or simply abiding in the experience, then the mystery doesn't have to be turned into a problem. Thinking about life as problems reduces thinking to calculative reasoning. But beholding the mystery enables the kind of appreciation- or better, wonder- that allows thought to heal, create and love.

Infinity's Moment

In time there is only one direction. In the moment, beyond time, there are infinite directions and an endless openness that is always present. Yet, unlike time, one never needs to move.

Lasting Enlightenment

Whether the experience of Enlightenment, or, experiencing from the source of enlightened being, "lasts," is a question, concern or consideration only from the standpoint of temporal being. If one transcends time, the question doesn't arise. To experience what one creates, and to be creating as and creating what one experiences is "being in the moment." This constitutes non-temporal presence, the being of 'being here now.'

Evil

Gandhi once said that the only evil in the world is that running around in our own hearts. He then added that that is exactly where the battle against evil should be fought.

While meditating today and experiencing how my mind was wholly in control of my failed attempt to meditate this occurred to me: what could be more evil if not the source of evil than the minds hegemony over my ability to focus, relax, act or think clearly and purposefully. What could be more evil than this conditioned domination of oneself by one's self from within by one's own mind.

Possibly it is even more insidious than that. When we actually believe that most of the thoughts of the mind are essentially one's own we are at least twice removed from our own being, our own freedom and our own presence to the real. That is, we really in such a state can't think authentically and we can't feel about what is happening in the reality of the moment.

Most insidiously when I resign to abiding in mind I can't abide in the loving soulfulness of the Self. In short I make myself vulnerable to the illusion of the windmills that I choose then to fight. When I do fight that fight, I bet a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt.

The Forgetting of Air

Americans don't breath. Thus, the forgetting of air. My title is stolen from a book of the same name by Luce Irigaray. She critiques the thought of Martin Heiddeger and the Western metaphysical tradition. But closer to home Ramana-ji has been talking about the primacy of "space" as it interprets the notion of "consciousness" or "self" in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta, especially as understood in the work of Ramana Maharshi.

Consciousness, Ramanaji says, is space become aware of itself. Insofar as space is the place of air, its substance, so to speak, what we possibly have forgotten is the space of air, the place of air. But most importantly, it is the opening to that space in breathing that mediates between space and air. The chest itself expands in space when breathing. It takes in air and expands into space.

It is more than ironic that those of contracted consciousness also contract the chest and lungs and "fail" to breath. They are not aware of their breath except possibly when smoking or when deprived of air.

To see the space of things as opposed to the things in space is to move closer to or deeper in consciousness. The trick is not to turn space itself into another thing. It would be hard to breath in such space.

The Will of God and Gratuitous Love

Does God have a will? Possibly in the sense that his creation is foreordained as good or beautiful. But in terms of the particulars of my life, I don't think so. I don't think we can do something for God as Marianne Williamson says when she defines miracles as 'asking God what we can do for him.' Of course it doesn't make much sense to think that we can actually do something for God that God hasn't already achieved. We might well be a tool or instrument in some sense in that we are his means presumably,though not merely puppets. But if spiritually we are whole and complete and lack nothing to be spiritually realized, then we are also not tools but ends in ourselves.

It seems the spiritual life is as much a matter of receiving as giving. Marianne seems to shift the emphasis to giving in “Return to Love.” Historically that's undoubtedly a great move either politically or psychologically if not spiritually. But the reciprocity of spirit seems to require giving as well as receiving. But what one receives may not happen as a simple matter of getting what is given from without by, say, an autonomous act of God whether responding to prayer or as reward of some sort.

Giving might be understood in a different way by analogy to the practice of interpretation. Hans Georg Gadamer argues in his ‘philosophical hermeneutics’ that in the creative or productive act of interpretation one does not exhaust the meaning of a text. In the act of interpretation one encounter a surplus of meaning which cannot be exhausted by the very nature of language itself. But Gadamer goes further in that the being that can be understood is not made less in producing its meaning but in fact becomes greater. It is not reduced to its meaning but in fact the meaning of its being grows and expands. One experiences an abundance of being and the possibility of creative interpretation becomes more.

In like manner when one gives of oneself, i.e., finds the will and resources to share and provide if not simply abide with the Other, then in fact one’s own being becomes more and greater. One finds access to one’s own gift as it returns in the abundance of the Love which one has given. One is not depleted or feeling empty in having given but one is renewed in seeing that contrary to the giving being a loss it is seen to come from an inexhaustible source.

The miracle lay in seeing that only when Love gives itself away does it realize that it is created out of nothing or out of everything. One’s loving enables the beloved to know love again and his/her being is again new. Love comes into being when one gives it away, especially when one realizes that no explicit attempt on the part of the other to equitably reciprocate is required.

In fact one can’t give love in the sense of giving it away. It’s expression is its expansion and manifestation as infinite. Love is not given but gifted and it is a gift which one has made, or better, made to happen. But this is not a doing but a letting go of all effort to do good or get love from the Other. Love is the most effortless when one sees that this is at the heart of one’s Life.

Robert Adam's On Consciousness

Robert Adams, disciple of Ramana Maharshi, says that the mind is not what gets or is enlightened. Nothing is liberated as such except Consciousness as Absolute Awareness. But this needs to be understood and experienced as a Living Awareness. That is Adams' "Consciousness" is Life itself always aware of itself, i.e., when it abides in pure transcendence of being. Such consciousness is interpreted as Love or Knowledge. Possibly it is Joy that transcends both of these modalities. To be Free would mean being able to rejoice in the face of our Love and our Hate, our Knowledge and our Ignorance or errors. Of course this would be acceptable in that such joy would permit seeing through the identification with one-sided feelings even if it is Love. Joy is not mere pleasure nor the absence of pain. It is living fully in Life's capacity to transcend all one-sided manifestations of apparent Freedom and rejoice in its victory over Death. That is, if Death is conquered, then one is not "embalmed" in modes of experience that short-circuit our Eternality.

Waking Up

It must be consciousness itself that wakes up. If it weren't that, then somnambulism would not be possible. Consciousness as lucid dreaming must be analogous to "waking consciousness" waking up in the buddhistic sense. In a dream I am aware of the event occurring but it's happening to me. I'm not aware that I am aware of the conscious event. If I were to 'wake up' in my dream, i.e., become "lucid" in the sense of 'lucid dreaming' I can then have the dream rather than it's having or "doing" me. If I 'wake up' in waking consciousness, then is the case that I have a life and life does not have me? If I do not wake up in my waking consciousness, does this mean that my life is just a dream, in a sense no more real than the sleeping dream or, at least, no more in my control than the non-lucid sleeping dream?

Reading "Return to Love": A Reflection

I've been reading Marianne Williamson's Return to Love. Quite good. Simple. Refreshing and much wiser than I expected it to be. For me such a "return" is certainly on the 'to do list.' From now on it will be permanently on the list. In fact it's the only thing on the list.

I'm moving out of the romanticized, idealized egoistic love relationship that was my marriage. Kate and I are changing and growing into a new relationship. We are parents now and that changes everything. It's not the cause of our change, movement or transformation. Just a condition. But, oh dear God, what a wonderfully challenging and blessed condition.

Love remains elusive; yet I know that I love. Yet I never feel fully present. Especially to love. And yet again to my boys I am present fully in love, not that I couldn't express it more or better or more wisely. If I can't love them completely and fully, I'm not human or love doesn't exist.