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One interesting finding of modern psychology is that happiness has a baseline. If someone wins the lottery or loses a leg, they deviate from the baseline temporarily but then return to the same level of happiness over time. This baseline varies from person to person, the optimist vs. the pessimist, but functions the same.
It occurs to me that change is the determining factor here. When something happens, or change even appears immanent, the reaction process kicks in - thoughts of ‘I like this’ or ‘I don’t like that’. It is the reaction not the event itself that either elates or depresses. Even remote fears of indigence and starvation are overwrought; as the dumpster diving book makes clear, one can live well subsisting on the waste of our rich society. So seldom is there a question of survival (indeed survival calls forth our resources), more often one of status and comfort.
In the past, it has seemed to me that the Buddhists had it right. If one can calm the mind, one can observe the events unruffled and untouched. Now I’m not entirely sure about this; it is quite possible to use various means to mentally and physically relax, but it seems the effect is ultimately temporary, that more and more effort is needed to maintain equilibrium. For me at least, there is still a pushing back at the experience, something I’m calming the mind against. And this seems unsustainable.
Increasingly I think that one answer is patience, to fully experience the event instead of trying to push it away. In other words, not to be the ascetic seeking out hardship, and not to flee the experience. But to live the experience and wait for understanding, to have faith that the circumstances are given for a reason. In living that experience from moment to moment, and cherishing all the moments whether ‘good’ and ‘bad’, might through cherishing comes understanding?
So the question remains, when and how should one act? In tai chi, the martial principle is to first follow with the push, understanding it, then through that understanding form a response. The Essenes would recommend giving the question to your Real Self, the inner divine, and wait for an answer. I’m not sure whether the answer is one or the other... or something else entirely. However one cannot be a billiard ball careening blindly around, whim to external forces.. of this I am fairly sure.
It occurs to me that change is the determining factor here. When something happens, or change even appears immanent, the reaction process kicks in - thoughts of ‘I like this’ or ‘I don’t like that’. It is the reaction not the event itself that either elates or depresses. Even remote fears of indigence and starvation are overwrought; as the dumpster diving book makes clear, one can live well subsisting on the waste of our rich society. So seldom is there a question of survival (indeed survival calls forth our resources), more often one of status and comfort.
In the past, it has seemed to me that the Buddhists had it right. If one can calm the mind, one can observe the events unruffled and untouched. Now I’m not entirely sure about this; it is quite possible to use various means to mentally and physically relax, but it seems the effect is ultimately temporary, that more and more effort is needed to maintain equilibrium. For me at least, there is still a pushing back at the experience, something I’m calming the mind against. And this seems unsustainable.
Increasingly I think that one answer is patience, to fully experience the event instead of trying to push it away. In other words, not to be the ascetic seeking out hardship, and not to flee the experience. But to live the experience and wait for understanding, to have faith that the circumstances are given for a reason. In living that experience from moment to moment, and cherishing all the moments whether ‘good’ and ‘bad’, might through cherishing comes understanding?
So the question remains, when and how should one act? In tai chi, the martial principle is to first follow with the push, understanding it, then through that understanding form a response. The Essenes would recommend giving the question to your Real Self, the inner divine, and wait for an answer. I’m not sure whether the answer is one or the other... or something else entirely. However one cannot be a billiard ball careening blindly around, whim to external forces.. of this I am fairly sure.
