Happiness and The Problem With Duality

This is the text of a talk I gave this summer in San Diego, later published in the Aquarian Theosophist. Before I started writing creatively, I wrote a bit for the Theosophists. Hope it makes you think!

Two and a half thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Socrates spoke of the dual nature of pleasure and pain, saying, “They won’t both come to us at the same time, but if we run after one of them and grasp it, we are practically compelled to grab the other; they are like two creatures attached to a single head.”

Our desire for happiness is the driving force behind most of our decisions, whether the decision is to buy a sports car, or spend the extra 39 cents to super size that combo meal. In fact, if the Declaration of Independence is to be believed, our desire for happiness is surpassed only by our will to live and need for freedom.

But are we truly happy? I think the great Socrates would respond with a resounding no. After all, if pleasure and pain are so inextricably intertwined, happiness and its negative counterpart are on at least equal footing when it comes to that same opposition. And those of us who go looking for happiness in the material and the earthly senses never find lasting pleasure because of that contradictory nature. For instance, if my father, in the throes of a midlife crisis, buys that classic Mustang he’s dreaming of, he must reconcile his temporary feeling of elation with the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when he looks in his wallet…and at the disapproving expression on my mother’s face.

While mundane, this example illustrates one of the main problems with what we call happiness—the fact that it is temporary. But if happiness is fleeting, what is it that we should pursue?

The answer is contentment. More than just a fleeting feeling, contentment is a stable state of mind; a recognition that one’s material, emotional, and spiritual needs are fulfilled. Rather than focusing on the future, it is concerned with the here and now. Paradoxically, those of us who obsessively seek joy will never find it, but emotionally and spiritually impoverish ourselves, while those who desire contentment will find it far more powerful than a brief moment of pleasure. As Plato said, “Contentment is natural wealth, happiness is artificial poverty.”

We must not, however, think of contentment as an excuse for passivity—it is more about recognizing what is needed, fulfilling that need, and deriving satisfaction from that fulfillment. Furthermore, the contented man examines all aspects of his life to ensure their balance, as this equilibrium is the very nature of contentment.

And when this equilibrium is achieved, how can we maintain it, yet grow in our fulfillment? A tale from the Hindu Upanishads gives us an answer: “A servant was walking along a path, when he chanced upon a banana peel lying in the road. ‘Ah,’ he thought, ‘but for my good karma, I might have fallen. Perchance another would not be so blessed.’ So he tossed the peel into a little stream to feed the fishes in the river below. For his humbleness and for his brotherhood, the servant was rewarded by Karma in his next life. Then a noble came upon a banana peel in his path. He said to himself, ‘Every man reaps in the future the fruits of all his acts. If I take this peel from the pathway, I shall have done a deed of merit, and be rewarded by Karma in my next life.’ He carefully removed the peel, and in his next life--was born into a lower caste.

Is it not strange that, though both the servant and the noble did almost exactly the same thing, their outcomes were so different? When we examine their motives, these different outcomes become immediately less surprising. Whereas the noble desired personal pleasure in a later life, the servant sought only to ease the lives of those around him. Pursuing this course of action will allow us to achieve greater degrees of personal and spiritual fulfillment.

Very few of us are truly like the servant, and it will take much work and thought to bring ourselves out of the self-serving notion that we must strive to be happy rather than simply satisfied. Although the line between happiness and contentment may at times seem blurred, it is of critical importance. The pursuit of happiness ultimately leads us to an earthly and material sorrow, but the path to contentment lies not in the fulfillment of what we want, but in the realization of how much we already have.