Happiness and misunderstood Pursuit of Happiness

I was startled to know that many dictionaries define pursuit as to “chase with hostility”.  Do we pursue happiness with hostility? I was amused by this. This led me to do a small research on happiness and pursuit of happiness. No credit has to be given to me for this article. I only aggregated the relevant data so that readers would be benefitted by the content.

The Father of psychology Sigmund Freud said “Pursuit of happiness is a doomed quest. The intention that man should be happy was not included in the plan of creation.”  J

Come on it can’t be like that. We all want happiness. We do not want to be like some French intellectuals who think that happiness is not at all interesting. J It seems they raised a controversy over an essay on happiness written by Matthie Ricard, a Buddhist Monk, sometimes called ‘happiest man in the world”. They asked him not to impose dirty work of happiness. They said, “We don’t care about being happy. We like ups and downs of life. We like suffering because it’s so good when it ceases for a while” J

I hope none of us think that way. I am sure none of us here wakes up in the morning thinking, “I want to suffer the whole day”. Consciously or not, whatever we do somehow is related to a deep, profound desire for well-being or happiness. Every man wants to be happy, but in order to be so he needs first to understand what happiness is.

If you look at literature, you will find different definitions of happiness. Some people say happiness is right now; it’s the quality of the freshness of present moment. Some say happiness is state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment. And all this led someone to say that scholars intentionally left the definition of happiness vague so that each individual could interpret it in his own way. It could be right and we all define happiness the way we find happiness.

Initially the psychologists thought happiness and unhappiness were end points of a single continuum. That made Freud say that, as one becomes less miserable, one gets happier. Only recent developments of science of happiness in the west deduce that Happiness and unhappiness are not the end points of a single continuum. When you get less miserable, you get less miserable. And that happiness is a whole other end of equation.

Our Indian spiritual definition of happiness always accommodated this fact. Just consider one definition: ‘happiness is deep sense of serenity and fulfillment, a state actually pervades and underlies all emotional states and all the joys and sorrows that come one’s way.’

Is it surprising? Can we have this kind of well-being feeling even in the midst of misery? If we give deep thought to his definition of happiness, we will realize that it is not about finding happiness but it is about feeling happiness. And that we can feel happiness in any state of mind if we change the ways we ‘pursue happiness’. 

The issue at the heart of misconception about ‘pursuit of happiness’ is that, we often focus on the pursuit of happiness as if happiness is something that we have to go out and get, an object we are supposed to get. We think that if we could gather this and that we will be happy. We say ‘everything to be happy – to have everything to be happy’. That very sentence already reveals the doom of destruction of happiness. If we miss something, it collapses. And also, when things go wrong we try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often illusory.

We can think of our pursuit of happiness to be following 'if-then model'. If I can get 40 % hike, I will be happy.  If my Boss gets heart attack, I will be happy. The ‘If’ we were focusing 10 years ago might have got fulfilled. But now we will have another set of ‘If’s for us to postpone feeling happiness.

If you call happiness equation as Happiness = (wanting what you have) divided by (having what you want) most of us here spend more of our time in the bottom half of this equation.

So what could be the right way to pursue happiness? I must admit that I do not have authority to prescribe how exactly one should go about finding happiness. I am just putting forward what I think could possibly be the right way. May be some of us would have experienced deep happiness when we relaxed beside a wonderful, serene lake. Had we thought if the color of water was bluish, we would never have experienced the same happiness. So key to happiness lies in discarding our ‘if-then’ model and accepting and enjoying the present. I am not advocating that one must not dream and have ambitions. All I am saying is that one need not postpone happiness waiting for their fulfillment.

Rabbi Hyman Schachtel in his book “The real enjoyment of Living” suggested that Happiness is not about having what you want. Instead it is about wanting what you have. I shall not speak more on this line for two reasons. 1. I have already given clue as to what could be more appropriate way. 2.  May be it is better left vague so that people find their own way to find happiness, equipped with right basics. I will leave you all with a story I came across in this pursuit of mine, which made a deep impression on me.

It is said when Dalai Lama was once in Portugal and got amused by all the big construction of buildings that was going everywhere. One evening he said “Look, you are doing all these things, but isn’t it nice, also, to build something within? “. And he said, “unless that you even if you get high-tech flat on the 100^th floor of a super-modern and comfortable building, if you are deeply unhappy within, all you are going to look for is a window from which you can jump out.”  

A critical look at Indian Value system

This article is HIGHLY borrowed from a speech of NRN. My role here is only 'information/knowledge' dissemination. 

I am ready to be born a thousand times over if only, said a chauvinistically patriotic friend of mine, beating his chest, if only I am born an Indian every time. If not to that extent, I am sure all of us are proud Indians. Of course we should be. David Abraham in his The Rough Guide to India says “It is impossible not to be astonished by India. Nowhere else on Earth does humanity present itself in such a creative burst of cultures and religions, races and tongues.”  We all have umpteen reasons why we are proud to be an Indian. It could be our rich culture, history, variety and Indian Value system or Indian philosophy.

We all know how rich and unique is Indian value system and how it makes us different. But today let us take a critical look at our Value system.

What is a value system? It is the protocol for behavior that enhances the trust, confidence and commitment of the members of a community. It goes beyond the domain of legality. It translates to putting the community’s interest ahead of your own. Even Vedas say ‘Man can live individually but can survive collectively.’

Two pillars of the value system are loyalty to the family and loyalty to the community. One should not be in isolation of the other and successful societies are those which combine both harmoniously. However, Indian society has, for over a thousand years put loyalty to the family ahead of loyalty to society. We can see thousand examples of behavioral manifestations of this nature. Let us consider a few.

We Indians have tremendous loyalty to the family. Parents make sacrifices for children. At the same time children consider it their duty to take care of aged parents. We believe in ‘matru devo bhava’, ‘pitru devo bhava’. We believe in making sacrifices for our siblings. Marriage is regarded to be a sacred union. And the examples go on. And of course I am proud to be part of such a culture.

Unfortunately, our attitude towards family is not reflected in our attitude towards community. We do not think twice before littering streets and parks, though we are very fastidious in our house. Bribing is considered an art and has become a part of ‘jugaad’.  We are apathetic to community good.  We have very bad traffic sense. This list too goes on.

Apathy in addressing community matters is also very abundant. We see serious problem around us behave as if the problems do not exist or as if they belong to someone else. What could be the reason for our apathy? We were ruled by foreigners for over a thousand years. So, we have always believed that public or societal issues belong to some foreign ruler and that we have no responsibility to solve them. ‘We are what we repeatedly do’ said Aristotle. Having waited for some foreigner tell us what to do, over thousand  years, our decision makers still look to somebody else  to make their decision when there is nobody to look up to.

Intellectual arrogance is also very evident in us. We boast so much about our past though our current accomplishment is less. This does not seem to be a new phenomenon anyway.  In ‘Alberuni’s India, where the author Alberuni, a middle Eastern Traveller in India in 8^th century makes an interesting remark. He says, during his visit, most Indian pundits considered it below their dignity to even hold arguments with him. And on a few occasions when he did get a chance to discuss and made a lot of sound arguments, they asked him which Indian pundit had taught him these smart things!

One other issue is of punctuality. Our Indian Standard time seems to be always running late. Here we take coming late to meeting or gathering is a sign of importance. The higher you are in the hierarchy, the later you are supposed to come to any meeting.

We become intimate even without being friendly.  It won’t take more than 5 minutes of conversation with a new acquaintance before we are ready to ask favors from them. Rudyard Kipling once said, ‘A westerner can be friendly without being intimate while an easterner tends to be intimate without being friendly’.  

So what do we have to do now? We should first remind ourselves that arrogance breeds hypocrisy. ‘It is easy to dodge our responsibilities but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities’. If we have to make progress, we have to change our attitude, learn from people who have performed better than us and perform better than them. With regards this we have a lot to learn from so called ‘the West’.  Some of the things we have learn and improve upon are accountability of our actions, professionalism, punctuality and putting society’s interest at least at the same level as self-interest.  We have to remember that most of our fundamental problems grow out of lack of commitment to the common good. Culture is that which helps us to work for the betterment of all.

I whole heartedly do believe that we are citizens of a great country. But as Winston Churchill said, ‘Responsibility is the price of greatness.’ Let us make our country a great place to live. Let us work towards maximum welfare of maximum people.

‘Samasta jananam sukhino bhavantu’

The Habit of Reading

I was late to catch on the habit of reading. But as the saying goes, ‘Better late than never.’ I have, to some extent, covered up for the lost years, by reading very good books in last couple of years. My intention here is not to share my experiences of reading but to highlight why it is high time for Youth to revive the fading habit of reading.  

It does not take much effort to convince that book reading is no longer a pass-time activity of many. It is grave to learn that today’s children regard book reading as ‘un-cool’. Ever increasing habit of watching TV and playing games in today’s youth and children leave them with no time for reading. Though I am not an advocate of complete abandoning TV and Video Games, and very much appreciate their reach and utility, I believe today’s generation has to make time to read.

I think this problem is partly because people (especially youth and children) have not realized the experience and benefits of reading. At first consider fictions. The best thing about reading fictions is that your imagination is not captivated by any exact characterizations as in case of movies or TV serials. You can simply run wild with your mental imagination and savor the beauty of your imagined world. Who ever watched ‘Twilight’ movie after reading the novel told me that the movie was not up to the mark when compared to the novel. I felt the same when I watched the movie Godfather. Even with modern day technologies including recent 3D movies, the movies cannot have narrations as beautiful as what it can be in well-written novels. Crime plots as complex as my favorite Orhan Pamuk’s ‘My Name is Red’ can’t just be made by movies.  Video games may, to good extent, give more live experience but have their own limitations.

I do not need to much emphasize the importance of reading non-fictions. Any person with sound reasoning power should be able to appreciate it. One of the best ways to learn beyond realms of your own experiences is reading books. That’s how you can learn from other’s experiences and mistakes. One can sharpen one’s reasoning and thinking power by reading books of influential thinkers like Amartya Sen, Thomas Friedman to name only a few. I feel we are lucky to still have treatises like Sun Tzu’s ‘Art Of War’.  Let me stop here because I am sure I cannot make justice to this point.

I think one only needs to just drop into a good book stall, say like Bookworm in Bangalore, pick a random book and complete it. It will not take much time for you to appreciate my point and become ‘addicted’. I think it is my duty here to elaborate on Bookworm because its proprietor Krishna’s recommendations made me read many great books.    

To elaborate, Bookworm is situated in Shringar Complex on M.G.Road; Bangalore has one of the best collections of books in Bangalore. It has great collection of both fictions and non fictions - both used and unused, and you get very good discount unlike most other shops. You will never get disappointed with personal recommendations done to you and will surely cherish their hospitality to customers. I personally regard it to be the best bookstore in Bangalore.

My request for everyone not to buy pirated books. If you are a true fan of reading, you will appreciate my request.

All you need to do now is to visit and buy the book that catches your attention. You will slowly recognize the wonders it does to you.

Happy Reading J

Time to Reflect

So far I was of the opinion that the Mankind was getting smarter generations after generations. But after I read the chapter ‘Reason and Objectivity’ from Amartya Sen's book “The Idea of Justice”, I am no longer sure if that is true.

Here I am producing the text from that book for the benefit of all.

“ … Underlying the point may be the recognition, in some form, that many acts of nastiness are committed by people who are deluded, in one way or another, about the subject. Lack of smartness can certainly be one source of moral failing in good behavior.

……

……

Being smarter can also give us the ability to think more clearly about our goals, objectives and values. If self-interest is, ultimately, a primitive thought, clarity about the more sophisticated priorities and obligations that we would want to cherish and pursue would tend to depend on our power of reasoning. A person may have well-thought-out reasons other than the promotion of personal gain for acting in a socially decent way.

Being smarter may help the understanding not only of one’s self-interest, but also how the lives of others can be strongly affected by one’s own actions. Proponents of so-called ‘Rational Choice Theory’ have tried hard to make us accept the peculiar understanding that rational choice consists only in clever promotion of self-interest. Nevertheless, our heads have not all been colonized by that remarkably alienating belief. There is considerable resistance to that idea that it must be patently irrational – and stupid – to try to do anything for others except to the extent that doing good to others would enhance one’s own well-being.

‘

What we owe to each other’ is an important subject for intelligent reflection. That reflection can take us beyond the pursuit of a very narrow view of self-interest, and we can even find that our own well-reflected goals demand that we cross the narrow boundaries of exclusive self-seeking altogether. There can be cases in which we have reasons to restrain the exclusive pursuit of our own goals, because of following rules of decent behavior that allow room for the pursuit of goals by other people who share the world with us.”

[By now you would know why I gave the elaborate text here, even when the subject of discussion is ‘smartness’. I will allow you to ponder over underlined sentences for now. Glad to discuss the same in days to come.]

Now let us come back to the discussion of ‘smartness’. If a truly ‘smart’ person should be able to reason out the need for socially decent behavior, and the need to make room for his countrymen’s pursuit of goals, have we really become smarter compared to earlier generations? If ‘smart’ people should be reflecting on their actions and pursuits, have we become ‘smarter’ or have we become ‘thicker’?

I think, if we take current definition of smartness, we indeed have become smarter. The technological and engineering progress that we have achieved, the rise in standard of living (if not quality of life) are all testimonies for it. But the root of the issue, and a reason for all other problems, I believe, is that we are not just giving enough time to reflect. We are not just involving ourselves enough in reflection and introspective thinking. Henry Ford’s saying “A man who cannot think is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have acquired. Thinking is the hardest work any one can do-- which is probably the reason why we have so few thinkers” is still valid to great extent, when it comes to introspective thinking, even after more than 75 years.

I cannot make justice if I try to explain the importance of thinking and reflection. But it is worth pondering why some of the most influential persons in the world: Buddha, Tagore, Aristotle, Kant to name a few, were prolific thinkers. Tagore even goes onto say, in his Noble acceptance Speech that behind poems of Gitanjali lay years spent in seclusion and meditation on problems of life.

One of the biggest ironies of modern times is that people have become so busy that they do not have time for themselves (I believe a truly busy person will have time for everything). They are busy worrying about their bank balance, appeasing family, society and friends and trying to get ahead in the imaginative race they have defined for themselves. Various amusement tools including TV just take away attention in the name of relaxation. People involve themselves in various activities to such an extent that they leave themselves with no time for reflection.

I believe lot of improvement in quality of our lives can be achieved if people, whose intelligence is no way doubted, make time to reflect on their actions and pursuits. Only through reflection, introspection and reasoning people can realize the place of self-interest and the behavioral and change in outlook that is necessary. It is time to make time for reflection. It is time to reflect.


----


"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." - Confucius

The World where Knowledge is not fully Business

I recently came across Tagore’s thoughts on knowledge and knowledge sharing. 

1. “ ...............

      Where knowledge is free ;

      ...............

      ...............

      Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my Country Awake.”

                       - Taken from a poem in Gitanjali.

2. “You know the traditions of our country are never to accept any ‘material’ fee from the students in return for teaching, because we consider in India that he who has the knowledge has the responsibility to impart it to the students. It is not merely for the students to come and ask it from the master, but it is the master who must fulfill his mission of life by offering the best gift which he has to all who may need it. And thus it was that need of self-expression, of giving what had been stored in India and offering the best thing that she has in herself that made it possible and was the cause and the origin of these universities that were started in the different provinces of India. 

And I feel that what we suffer from in the present day is no other calamity but this calamity of obscurity, of seclusion, that we have missed our opportunity of offering hospitality to Humanity and asking the world to share the best things we have got. We lost our confidence in our own civilization for over a century, when we came in contact with the Western races with their material superiority over Eastern Humanity and Eastern culture, and in the educational establishments no provision was made for our own culture. And for over a century our students have been brought up in utter ignorance of the worth of their own civilization of the past. Thus we did not only lose touch of the great which lay hidden in our inheritance, but also the great honour of being able to contribute to the civilization of Humanity, to have opportunity of giving what we have and not merely begging from others, not merely borrowing culture and living like eternal schoolboys. “

                     Taken from Noble Acceptance Speech of Tagore

                     26 May 1921, Stockholm

[ I will leave it to you to ponder over underlined sentences for now. Glad to discuss them some other occasion.]

     

Though the country where ‘knowledge is free’ may sound too idealistic in this present times, I feel there are many of our practices we need to introspect.

I feel knowledge should be free and free flowing. The process of knowledge transfer, if entails cost, if involves earning a living, may be charged. But this, in no way, is the explanation for over commercialization of education in present times. 

Leaving education aside, what I am seriously concerned is with ‘knowledge holding’. Before actually discussing about it, let us consider some noble work done for easing knowledge transfer in modern times.

Google has done commendable work in its quest to make information organized and accessible. Though I am not certain of their commercial and obscure motives, I seriously like its mission statement - "To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.". Wikipedia, encyclopedia etc are equally great examples. 

Coming to commercialization of knowledge, there are many aspects to it.

I think it is correct to charge for the expertise which definitely would have involved years of labour and hard work. 

What can hamper the progress of Mankind both spiritually and economically is purposeful, parochial ‘knowledge holding’. It is not uncommon to come across the situation where a party holds knowledge or information just because of selfish motives, even when there would be no cost involved in knowledge transfer.

I recently was denied access to what could have been very useful information to me from a person who knew me well from years, and was sure I did not have deceitful intention in requesting the information. Though the information was not of much use to the  person in scenario, it could have saved me a lot of efforts.

(Unfortunate to say, I too had helped the person a bit in same project.)

The root reason for this ‘knowledge holding’ is I believe is lack of clear understanding of life and life’s real purpose. To quote Steve Jobs, “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”. The only thing that remains after your death is the difference you have made to the World, for which free know knowledge transfer is very vital. Even our educated class need to realize that they have to broaden their goals beyond their self-interest. They need to realize that “giving what they have is great honour of being able to contribute to the civilization of Humanity.”

Charity is not the only way to ‘give’. Let us discuss charity, profit the real purpose of a business separately. Knowledge transfer is surely one of the methods of ‘giving’.

Let us pledge not to hold information and knowledge. Let us do our best to impart to others, what we know. It can start with as simple a step as ‘the discussion’. Lets have a World where Knowledge is not fully Business.

Can difference be really made?

Why do we bother about GDP growth when we Indians lack basic civic sense?. Before trying to outgrow all other countries in terms of growth there are a few basic 'sense' we have to develop. One among them is traffic sense, which I believe is part of basic tenet 'value other's time too'. Let us discuss about traffic sense here. Glad to discuss with you 'value other's time too' some other day.

I recently had the 'privilege' of getting caught in a traffic jam. But this is not a rare privilege to Bangaloreans. A biker happened to run into a car, where I felt there was no big damage of any sort done. But the car driver was adamant to remove his car off the road. He wanted police inspection done on that exact spot. The tussle went for more than 30 minutes blocking the way all the way. Traffic piled up for more than 4kms. The car driver did not bother a bit about so many stranded ones.

It was not the worst I saw. After waiting patiently for more than 30 minutes, when I finally could move, I saw a jam in the opposite lane too. An impatient car driver, in his attempt to get out of the jam, was trying to enter his opposite lane (my lane) having removed off large chunks of lane separator made of cement bricks!!! Isn't it the heights of dishonor to the State?

Why have we lost all the powers of reasoning? Why can't we reason out that everyone patiently waiting in their lane is the best way to solve a jam? Why can't we think that we will be aggravating the problem by trying to enter the wrong lane?

I can only recall following lines of Tagore.


“ …………….

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

………………

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, Let My Country Awake.”

-                                                                                                                 - Tagore

Is it that everyone has to be precise in time in delivering their call of duty of saving the World from impending catastrophe?  Best way to manage time is to start early. Isn't it?

Sometimes I wonder if difference can really be made to India. May be they who go 'elsewhere' to work to make 'riches' are wiser people. It's too early in life to make that decision.

Call Of Duty

We need a few more people whose pursuit is not just financial security. We need a few more people who can put society's interest before self-interest. We need people who think beyond buying a car and a house. We need visionaries who spread the thought that the real call of duty is to make the World a better place. We need people whose plans are beyond getting rich by currency transaction. We need people whose conscience is not buried under the clamor of family,relatives and society. We need dreamers who can imagine happiness in every soul on the earth. We need able men who not only can take care of their family and parents but also can make difference to lives of less-privileged. It is only by making difference to others that you make real difference to yourself.   

Only such men live true life fulfilling the call of duty. Only they leave a real legacy and never be forgotten. It is their circle of influence the biggest.