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"Most folks are as happy as they make up their
minds to be."
- Abraham
Lincoln
"He who for the sake of happiness
hurts
others who also want happiness,
shall not hereafter find happiness.
He who for the sake of happiness does
not hurt others
who also want happiness,
shall hereafter find
happiness."
- Dhammapada
"My aspiration to be happy and overcome
suffering is part of my fundamental nature, as it is part of yours. If this is
so, then just as we do, all others have the right to be happy and overcome
suffering simply because they share this fundamental nature. It is on the basis
of this equality that we develop equanimity toward all. In our meditation we
must work at cultivating the attitude that "just as I myself have the desire to
be happy and overcome suffering, so do all others, and just as I have the
natural right to fulfill this aspiration, so do all others." We should repeat
this thought as we meditate and as we go about our lives, until it sinks deep
into our awareness." - Dalai Lama
"Let us then
endeavour to disperse those
clouds of ignorance, those
mists of darkness, which impede man on his journey, which obscure his progress, which
prevent his marching through life with a firm steady
grip. Let us try to inspire him with courage
- with respect for his
reason - with an inextinguishable love for truth - with a
remembrance of
Galileo Galilei - to the end
that he may learn to know himself - to know his
legitimate rights -
that he may learn to consult his experience,
and no longer be the dupe of an imagination led
astray by authority - that he may renounce the
prejudices of his childhood -
that he may learn to found his morals on his
nature, on his wants, on the real
advantage of society - that he may dare to
love himself - that he may
learn to pursue his true happiness by promoting
the happiness of others - in short, that he may no longer occupy himself
with reveries either useless or dangerous - that he
may become a virtuous, a rational being, in which
case he cannot fail to become
happy.
In short, man
should learn to know, that
happiness is simply an emanative
quality formed by reflection; that each individual ought to be the
sun of his own system, continually shedding
around him his genial rays; that these, re-acting,
will keep his own existence constantly supplied
with the requisite heat to enable him to put forth kindly
fruit.
The _happy man_ is he who
knows how to enjoy the benefits bestowed upon him
by nature: in other words, he
who thinks for himself; who
is thankful for the good he possesses; who does not
envy the welfare of others, nor sigh after
imaginary benefits always beyond his grasp. "
- Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach
bliss
contentment
cheerful;
willing
felicity; blessedness
joy; joyful satisfaction
a subjective emotional
state
the emotional state of being
happy
fortuitous elegance; unstudied
grace
good luck; good fortune; prosperity
being especially well-adapted;
felicitous
emotions
experienced when in a state of
feeling good
enjoying, showing, or marked by
pleasure, satisfaction, or
joy
enthusiastic about or
involved with to a disproportionate degree
state of well-being characterized by
emotions
ranging from contentment to intense
joy
the
possession of those circumstances or
that state of being which is attended by
enjoyment
an agreeable
feeling or condition of the soul arising from
good fortune
or propitious happening of any
category
happiness is generic, and is applied
to almost every category of
enjoyment except those of the
animal appetites;
felicity is a more formal word,
used more sparingly, in the same general sense, but
with elevated associations;
blessedness is applied to the most refined
enjoyment arising from the purest
social, benevolent,
altruistic and religious affections;
bliss denotes
still more exalted delight,
and is applied more appropriately to the
joy of the
feelings an individual expects to enjoy in heaven and communion with God
hedonic thermostat
"People are forever wrongly
predicting what will make them happy
because of
logic processing errors that
our brains make.
Many times an
individual does not want
the things that are most likely to make him
or her happy - and many of the things that he
or she does want will not make him or her happy.
Some
behavior is
motivated by impulses beyond conscious awareness that are not in our
rational, happiness maximizing interest
because of faulty logic due to incorrect
perceptions of reality.
Imagination has its
shortcomings and it is perhaps inevitable that we will incorrectly predict how
future events
will make us feel when we've never
experienced those events before.
Events that we typically
anticipate will give us joy make
us less happy than we
think; things that fill us with dread will make us
less unhappy, for less long, than we anticipate.
The
judgement we make now about our
future selves is very
likely to be incorrect because what may have caused
happiness today may not tomorrow.
We misperceive reality and build a
mistaken view of
the future on the incorrect perception.
This
happens because our attitudes, interests and emotional needs change over time.
Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first
time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with
repetition.
We are equipped with a hedonic thermostat that is
constantly resetting us back to our emotional
baseline.
"When we have an experience on
successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the
experience yields less pleasure each
time. Psychologists calls this habituation." -
Daniel Gilbert
"I
happen to like the
Buddhist
teachings, which suggest that
happiness lies not in
‘getting what we want' but in
understanding that
desire (along with its
opposite, revulsion) is in itself the
source of our unhappiness.
Happiness then becomes an
actually attainable goal, if
we can only learn to detach ourselves from our knee jerk
responses to what we have
learned to view as desirable, as well as to what
we think
we must avoid at all costs.
That new car, in
other words, is not the source of
true happiness, in this
view. Nor is the well-paid job, the
beautiful spouse, the successful career. By the same token,
happiness does not consist in
desperately attempting to insulate ourselves from
pain, hardly a
realistic goal, or staving off the wrinkles of
approaching age.
The
true, attainable
happiness is the state of
consciousness that allows
us to embrace whatever comes
our way
with equanimity. But it does take an awful lot of hard
work to get there, especially given the
pressures and expectations of a
consumer society
that trains us what to desire -
and what to re-coil from - at the
most tender age!"- Peter Clothier
"Happiness
economics is apparently a legitimate field
populated by behavioral
scientists as well as those who would
write for Forbes magazine. That people in Cuba come in second in
happiness to those in our country
attests to the fact that happiness unfolds from something
other than palatial estates,
Humvees, Rolls-Royces and designer
everything. As a psychotherapist, I
hear people wanting community more than anything in
their lives. And that's what I want more of as well. I hear single people
wanting a dating partner who will call back, show up and take a risk. I hear
adolescents wanting more fun time with dad or mom.
People definitely talk about their lack of money, but not as the chief barrier to
happiness." - Darcy Carroll
"People ask me all
the time, 'What do you learn about happiness? What's the
secret to
happiness?' Low
expectations." - Michael McBride
the myth of happiness
adapted from Jacques EllulThe need for happiness
permeates Americans with unprecedented force and preciseness.
Heretofore
blueprints for happiness were invariably based upon individual experience
involving
the exercise of mind or body and almost always, even in the case
of Epicurus,
on some sort of discipline.
These
blueprints have now been replaced by a vision of
collective material well-being:
happiness lifting all boats by the
progress of global corporate derivatives markets.
Everyone is entitled
to a 401K briming with cash; everyone has been in effect promised
it.
There is no need for anyone to make sacrifices, acquire a
broadly-based well-rounded education,
reach decisions, or assume
responsibility for the actions they set in motion.
Happiness is owed to
all and consists in a collective increase of wealth.
Happiness is exclusively material in
nature. (Pills for sale!)
Hence
something that had been only a vague dream for the masses and
a frantic
quest on the part of elites has undergone a complete transformation in modern
society.
The myth of
the ability to attain happiness through material possessions
is all that
enables the vast majority of men to regard life as worth living.
Justice,
truth, and virtue are
swallowed up in the shadow of
vanities,
effaced by the triumphant conviction that this attainment of
happiness is all that matters.
All activity must be subordinated to
this exclusive aim:
life and the future are envisaged solely from the
standpoint of happiness - happinesss based on
material wealth.
This myth is exultantly shared by the vast majority
of humankind. They have all be con-vinced.
The only difference between
communists and
corporatists lies in the choice of
means
best suited to confer upon mankind this plenitude of happiness or
heaven on earth.
The strength of the
myth is great enough to legitimize - automatically -
every crime as well as every
sacrifice.
According to the communists, if only the
corporatists are eliminated, all
men will obtain happiness and visa versa (right vs left,
Democrats vs Republicans,
institutionalized religion vs
mystic union with God,
terrorists vs
global citizens, elites vs masses, ad
infinitum).
Anyone who challenges this myth of
happiness, no matter how slightly,
is at once looked upon by all
his social associates as an enemy and branded too negative.
Do you
for a moment doubt that American civilization,
which is oriented toward the
attainment of happiness, is amply justified for that reason alone?
If
you do, you are promptly labeled "un-American."
Here is evidence of
the existence of a modern American myth
which
is invoked to classify as evil anyone who refuses to
subscribe to it.
"We all have the tendency to struggle
in our bodies and our minds. We
believe that happiness is possible only in
the future. The realization that
we have already arrived, that
we don't have to travel any
further, that we are already here, can
give us peace and joy. The conditions for our
happiness are already sufficient. We only need to allow ourselves to be
in the present moment, and we will be
able to touch them. What are we looking for to be happy?
Everything is already here. We do not
need to put an object in front of us to run after,
believing that until we get it, we cannot be happy. That object is always in
the future, and we can never catch up to it. We
are already in the Pure Land, the Kingdom of God.
We only need to wake up and realize we are already
here." - Thich Nhat Hanh
the paradox of hedonism
It is often said that we fail to attain pleasures
if we deliberately seek them. If, for whatever reason, one does
equate happiness with pleasure, then
the paradox of hedonism arises. "I realized that one's happiness
was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy
who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.
Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way. Ask yourself
whether you are happy, and you cease to be so." -
John Stuart Mills
"Happiness cannot
be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of
one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product
of one's surrender to a person other than oneself." - Viktor Frankl
"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry
past it." - Søren Kierkegaard
"Happiness is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it will
avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about
your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your
lap." - William Bennett
"I should not, however, infer from this that the
pursuit of pleasure is necessarily self-defeating and futile; but merely that
the principle of Egoistic Hedonism, when applied with a due knowledge of
the laws of human nature, is practically
self-limiting; i.e., that a rational method of attaining the end at which it
aims requires that we should to some extent put it out of sight and not
directly aim at it." - Henry Sidgwick
The country of Bhutan, the last
surviving refuge of traditional Himalayan
Buddhist culture, uses Gross National
Happiness (GNH) is an attempt to
define quality of life in more holistic and
psychological terms than Gross
National Product(GNP).
The term, Gross National
Happiness, was coined by Bhutan's
King Jigme Singye Wangchuck in 1972. It signaled his commitment to building an
economy that would serve Bhutan's unique
culture based on Buddhist spiritual values. The four
pillars of Gross National Happiness are the promotion of
equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion
of cultural values,
conservation of the
natural
environment, and establishment of
good governance.
Gross National Happiness
is a qualitative condition that is often discussed in tandem with the Genuine
Progress Indicator which, unlike Gross National
Happiness, attempts to quantify
well-being and happiness. The two
measures agree, however, that well-being is more relevant and important than
consumption. |
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is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a new religious
ideology to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification
of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern
propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an
international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt
version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any
group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due
to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of the religion
aptly named The Truth of the Way of Life - a rational religion based on reason
which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no
church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to
develop a personal relation with God through the pursuit of the knowledge of
reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the
human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are spelled out in
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This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary
the intent here is to reduce the violence that is already occurring due to the
international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The
international corporate cartel already controls the world central banking
system, mass media worldwide, the industrial military entertainment complex of
America and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of
self-centered behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization
is based on cooperation. Cooperation does not occur at the point of a
gun.
American social mores and values have declined precipitously over
the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more
power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general
through mass media by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed
into the population through prior mass media psychological operations. The
results have been the destruction of the family and the destruction of social
structures that do not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of a
perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the
bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the
corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which
further their purposes.
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