Glad to see that Flow is advocating - at least implicitly - the downing of multiple pints of ale as one means of gaining "happiness". At least this is one "technique" I would be able to follow - if so inclined - to its conclusion.....................Nevertheless, whatever sides of the brain are involved, I tend to side with Chuang Tzu (if only because it excuses me from any strenuous effort) who has said......
"My greatest happiness consists in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness. If you ask 'what ought to be done' and 'what ought not to be done' on earth to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have a fixed and predetermined answer to suit every case.............."
As Thomas Merton has said, "the way of conscious striving is fundamentally a way of self-aggrandizement".
Anyway, speaking of Merton - as I often do! - I was thinking of posting the following on the "Thomas Merton" thread now on-going. Perhaps it is more appropriate here, for anyone interested....
From his journals dated December 1964......
"Lay in bed and realized what I was: I was happy. Said the strange word 'happiness' and realized that it was there, not as an 'it' or object. It simply was. And I was that. And this morning, coming down, seeing the multitude of stars above the bare branches of the wood, I was suddenly hit, as it were, with the whole package of the meaning of everything: that the immense mercy of God was upon me, that the Lord in infinite kindness had looked down on me and given me this vocation out of love, and that he had always intended this, and how foolish and trivial had been all my fears and desperation. And no matter what anyone else might do or say about it, however they might judge or evaluate it, all is irrelevent in the reality of my vocation to solitude, even though I am not a typical hermit. Quite the contrary, perhaps. In the light of this simple fact of God's love and the form it has taken in the mystery of my life, classifications are ludicrous.............The only response is to go out from yourself with all that one is, which is nothing, and pour out that nothingness in gratitude that God is who He is. All speech is impertinent; it destroys the simplicity of that nothing before God by making it seem as if it had been 'something'......."
Also perhaps a chance to give another favorite quote of mine, by Eckhart, that seems to relate - in part - to the theme of "happiness" and its pursuit ( or non-pursuit)....."They can truly enjoy the feast who would just as willingly fast"
