J . M A I L

Haircut for the Soul

This afternoon I thought a bit about yesterday’s post. I thought a bit about wanting things. I thought a bit about why I want things and what those things can bring.

Now while I sit typing on a nice little computer the feeling that I want a new laptop makes no real sense. Yes, I do not currently have working laptop of my own.

**** the red brick cafe just started playing the song I am currently listening to. crazy ****

I do not have a good working laptop but I have this nice laptop my advisor lent to me that does everything I could need it to do.

I already have a media center that works well. I wouldn’t need a new media center unless I got a new tv. I do not need a tv. Yes, I currently do not own a tv, I have an old second hand computer monitor that I use as a TV but I do not have any need for a bigger better tv and should really spend less time watching tv anyways.

If I got these things how long would they bring me joy or pleasure? An hour, a day, a week. Would I be any happier owning these things…. no.

What then should I want. I started to think I should want things are bring me more self improvements. While everything is imperiment devoting time/money/effort to one’s own self seems like a better choice then devoting effort and thought to wanting things that will not make me any happier. Yoga/the gym/climbing/eating well/working on my thesis can bring me happiness by affording me the opportunity to focus my mind and body.

What I could use is a haircut. I play around with the idea of shaving my head every couple of weeks. It is cheap and easy and I never have to wait for a cut. I don’t know how it would look though. I need all the help I can get to look ok.

So today I have two questions.

1. Acknowledging that I don’t look good with long hair, it gets all curly and silly. Should I get a regular hair cut asap or buzz my head (likely using a number 3).

2. When is it ok to want new trvial things like electronics? Should I be thinking about a new media center, tv, laptop or just realize that wanting stuff is waste of my time.

A Fable and a Question

A long time ago, the son of a king of Persia was raised alongside the son of the grand vizier, and their friendship was legendary. When the prince ascended to the throne, he said to his friend: “While I attend to the affairs of the kingdom, will you please write me a history of men and the world, so that I can draw the necessary lessons from it and thus know the proper way to act.”

The king’s friend consulted with the most famous historians, the most learned scholars, and the most respected sages. Five years later he presented himself proudly at the palace.

“Sire,” he said, “here are thirty-six volumes relating the entire history of the world from creation to your accession.”

“Thirty-six volumes!” cried the king. “How will I have time to read them? I have so much work administering my kingdom and seeing to my two hundred queens. Please, friend, condense your history.”

Two years later, the friend returned to the palace with ten volumes. But the king was at war again the neighboring monarch. He was found on a mountaintop in the desert, directing the battle.

“The fate of our kingdom is being played out as we speak. Where would I find the time to read ten volumes? Abridge your history even further.”

The vizier’s son left and worked three years on a single volume that gave an accurate picture of the essence. The king was now caught up in legislating.

“How lucky you are to have the time to write quietly. While you’ve been doing that, I’ve been debating taxes and their collection. Bring me tenfold fewer pages - I’ll spend an evening mining them.”

Two years later, it was done. But when the friend returned, he found the king bedridden, in dreadful pain. The friend himself was no longer young; his wrinkled face was haloed by a mane of white hair.

“Well?” whispered the king with his dying breath. “The history of men?”

His friend gazed steadily at him and, as the king was about to die, he said:

“They suffer, Majesty.”

from the book Happiness by Matthieu Ricard

—————————————

“Although the word altruism itself was only coined in 1830 by Auguste Comet as a counterpart to egoism, it is indeed possible to be fundamentally altruistic, that is, more concerned in one’s heart with the fate of others than with one’s own.”

Who hasn’t had the conversation about whether true altruism is possible. What does true altruism even mean. If an act benefits someone else more than oneself is that act than not a true act of altruism? Must an act not benefit oneself at all to be truly altruistic. Is it possible to not benefit oneself at all? I have tended in the past to say that an entirely unselfish act is impossible but I have begun to rethink that. First off I believe altruism, by the definition written above, is possible. Secondly, I believe entirely unselfish acts are also possible. When one acts without thinking to help another being that snap action is an entirely unselfish act. When we allow time to think about the choice I believe the act can become more motivated by selfish thoughts, that said this selfishness does not to diminish the act itself, but I believe we can all think of exampled when we act without thinking, motivated by an internal imperative, to help another person. What do you think?

Happiness: Chapter 4

• If we wish to identify the external factors and mental attitudes that favour genuine happiness and those that are prejudicial to it, we must first learn to distinguish between happiness and certain conditions that may appear similar to it but are actually very different.
• The most common error is to confuse pleasure for happiness, it “… is only the shadow of happiness”. It is the direct  result of pleasurable sensual, aesthetic, or intellectual stimuli.
• The fleeting experience of pleasure is dependent upon circumstance, on a specific location or moment in time. It is unstable by nature, and the sensation it evokes soon becomes neutral or even unpleasant. Likewise, when repeated it may grow insipid or even lead to disgust.
• Pleasure is almost always linke to an activity and naturally leads to boredome by dint of being repeated.
• Pleasure is an individual experience, most often centered on the self, which is why it can easily descend into selfishness and sometimes conflict with the well-being of others.
• Authentic happines is not linked to an activity; it is a state of being,  profound emotinal blance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions.
• There is no direct relationship between pleasure and happiness.
• The difference between joy and happiness is more subtle.
• “Living it up” has become the leitmotif of modern man - a compulsive hyperactivity without any downtown, no gap of unscheduled time, lest we end up alone with ourselves.
• it seems naive to believe that such a feverish search of intense experience can lead to a lasting enriched quality of life.
• If we do take the time to explore our inner world, it’s in the form of daydreams and imagination, dwelling on the the past or fantasizing endlessly about the future.

Suffering and Unhappiness

• We incur suffering but we create unhappiness.
• Unhappiness is different than suffering. It is the way in which we experience our suffering. It is the mind that translates suffering into unhappiness.

• A change, even a tiny one, in the way we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world can significantly change our existance.
• Changing the way we experience transitory emotions leads to a change in our moods and to a lasting transformation of our way of being.

Exercise:

Distinguishing happiness from pleasure

Bring to your mind a past experience of physical pleasure, with all its intensity. Remember how you enjoyed it a first and then how it gradually  changed into a neutral feeling and maybe even waned into lassitude and lack if interest. Did it bring you a sense of inner of lasting fulfillment?

Then remember an occasion of inner joy and happiness. Recall how you felt, for example, when you made someone else really happy, or when you peacefully enjoyed the company of a loved on or the sigh of a beautiful natural scenery. Consider the lasting effect this experience had on your mind and how it still nourishes a sense of fulfillment. Compare the quality of such a state of being with that of a fleeting sensation of pleasure.

Learn to value these moements of deep well-being and aspire to find ways to develope them further.

- - - - -

I realized after reading this chapter that Ricard is right about pleasure. How many times have I said that something makes me happy when really it just gave me pleasure. Pleasure is such an external thing where as real happiness comes from within and moves outwards. In the same way that I have long been trying to removed the word need from my vocabulary I will make an effort use happiness and pleasure to fulfill their true meanings.

From the exercise it is easy for me to look back and realize that certain moments I think of as being happy in the past were in actually moments pleasure. If however some of those moment still brings me joy and renew me then I know they were moments of real happiness.

I think what really hit home for me was how footbag for me as always been a source of pleasure and not happiness. It was an activity that grew more dull as the years passed. I almost never play anymore and I realize I grew immune to the pleasures it once easily provided me.

I will hopefully write up the next chapter this afternoon. Yesterday was a really difficult day for me. I am struggling to understand how I should feel about the past and my actions. I am torn between anger, sadness, guilt all the while trying to somewhat distance myself from my emotions so that I can get a clearer picture of them.

When is it right to be angry? When is it right to feel wronged? Everyone does what they do for a reason, whether they know what that reason is or not, but when does one person’s reasons for doing something change that person as a whole? When should anyone forgive a moment of weakness? When should one not forgive repeated infractions? I struggle with wanting trying to understand things from other peoples’ point of view. I suffer when, trying to understand another person’s actions, I find myself thining less of me as I try to justify how someone else wronging me might be excusable. Things are not black and white and that is a problem. No one is entirely good and  yet no one is entirely bad. Sometimes life would be easier if people fit into these molds. At what point does ones fault make it acceptable to think less of them? At what point does someone tilt the scales from lightness into darkness?

Happiness: Chapter 3

Seeking happiness outside ourselves is like waiting for sunshine in a cave facing north. - Tibetan Saying

• If happiness were an exterior condition, it would be forever be beyond our reach. Our desires are boundless and our control over the world is limited, temporary, and, more often than not, illusory.
• We willingly spend a dozen years in school, then go on to college or professional training for several more; we work out at the gym to stay healthy; we spend a lot of time enhancing our comfort, our wealth, and our social status. We put a great deal into all this, and yet we do so little to improve the inner condition that determines the very quality of our lives.
• We spend our lives cobbling togeather makeshift solutions, trying to imagine the conditions that will make us happy. This way of living becomes the norm.
• Alan Wallace: “If you bank on achieving genuine happiness and fulfillment by finding the perfect mate, getting a great car, having a big house, the best insurance, a fine reputation, the top job - if these are your focus, wish also for good luck in life’s lottery.” When you spend your time trying to fill a leaky barrel, you neglect the methods and above all the ways of being that will allow you to find happiness within yourself.

Can We Cultivate Happiness

• If we try resolutely over the course of years to master our thoughts as they come to use, to apply appropriate antidotes to negative emotions and to nourish positive ones, our efforts will undoubtedly yield results that would have seemed unattainable at first.
• Is it better just to allow ourselves to drift? Isn’t that how we crash on the rocks?

Must We Settle for Being Ourselves?

• Some people think that in order to be really happy all we need to do is learn to love ourselves as we are. Resigning ourselves to this way of thinking while letting our impulses and tendencies run rampant is the easy way out, a compromise, even a kind of surrender.
• We should try to develop altruism, patience, humility. We hesitate and tell ourselves that these qualities will come to us naturally in the long run, or that it’s not a big deal and that we’ve gotten along just fine without them up to now. Who without determined and methodical efforts could play Mozart? It certainly can’t be done by plunk away at the keyboard with two fingers. Happiness is a skill, a manner of being, but skills must be learned.

Exercise:

Developing Attention

Sit quietly in your mediation posture and focus all your attention upon a chosen object. It can be an object in your room, your breath, or your own mind. Inevitably as you do this, your mind will wander. Each time it does, gently bring it back to the object of concentration, like a butterfly that returns again and again to the flower it feeds on. As you persevere, your concentration will become more clear and stable. If you feel sleepy, assume a straighter posture and lift your gaze slightly upward to revive your awareness. Conversely, if your mind becomes agitates, relax your posture, direct your gaze slightly downward, and let any inner tension dissolve.

-  -  -  -  -

Retyping these points from this book, beyond improving my typing skills, takes a fair bit of time. I think from now on I will try to minimize what I repeat from the book. After all if people were truly interested they would just read the book themselves.

This exercise is actually very a very difficult one. One that I used to practice more during my yoga classes, where the focus on concentration on breath is a key point of focus. However, under my new instructor I have fallen away from practicing this. It’s time to restart.