I asked the Old Sage about Joy. "Tell me what brings happiness, what makes life worth living? How does one find happiness? What does one strive for ?" ...

 Well, the Old Sage had a slight smile on his face as he responded. "Those are the 'timeless questions', ones asked by each generation. I think I even asked them once. My Teacher responded with the same words I shall respond to you with, the words of Chuang Tzu. Chuang Tzu is the Old One, from which we get most of our details about Lao Tzu.  What is interesting about Chuang Tzu is that he is a "Where the rubber meets the road" kind of guy. He is not concerned with words and formulas 'about' reality, but with the direct existential grasp of reality itself ! (of course, in the words of that Taoist Scholar Alan Watts : "Reality is only a Rorschach inkblot, you know !") Chuang Tzu's teaching of the "Way" is simplicity, he goes for humility, self-effacement, silence, and in general he has a refusal to take seriously the aggressiveness, the ambition, the push and the self-importance which seemingly must be displayed in order to get along in society, then or even today. With Chuang Tzu it is so simple..."allow me to extemporize what Chuang Tzu calls Perfect Joy : 

Is there to be found on earth a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? 

Is there some way to make life fully worth living, or is this impossible? If there is such a way, how do you go about finding it?  What  should be the goal in which your activity comes to rest?  What should you accept?  What should you refuse to accept?  What should you love?  What should you hate?  HHHMMMmmmnnnn.

 "What the world values is money, reputation, long life, achievement;  what it counts as joy is health and comfort of body, good food, fine clothes, beautiful things to look at, pleasant music to listen to.   What it condemns is lack of money, a low social rank, a reputation for being no good, and an early death.  What it considers misfortune is bodily discomfort and labor, no chance to get your fill of good food, not having good clothes to wear, having no way to amuse or delight the eye, no pleasant music to listen to.  If people find that they are deprived of these things, they go into a panic or fall into despair.  They are so concerned for their life that their anxiety makes life unbearable, even when they have the things they think they want.  Their very concern for enjoyment makes them unhappy. 

"The rich make life intolerable, driving themselves in order to get more and more money which they cannot really use.  In so doing they are alienated from themselves, and exhaust themselves in their own service as though they were slaves of others.   The ambitious run day and night in pursuit of honors, constantly in anguish about the success of their plans, dreading the miscalculation that may wreck everything.  Thus they are alienated from themselves, exhausting their real life in service of the shadow created by their insatiable hope.  

"The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow.   The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute.  What bitterness!  He lives for what is always out of reach!  His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.   What about the self-sacrificing officials and scholars?  They are honored by the world because they are good, upright, self-sacrificing men.   Yet their good character does not preserve them from unhappiness, nor even from ruin, disgrace, and death.   I wonder, in that case, if their 'goodness' is really so good after all!  Is it perhaps a source of unhappiness?  Suppose you admit they are happy.  But is it a happy thing to have a character and a career that lead to one's own eventual destruction?  On the other hand, can you call them 'unhappy' if, in sacrificing themselves, they save the lives and fortunes of others?   Take the case of the minister who conscientiously and uprightly opposes an unjust decision of his king!  Some say, 'Tell the truth, and if the King will not listen, let him do what he likes.  You have no further obligation.'   On the other hand, Tux Shu continued to resist the unjust policy of his sovereign.  He was consequently destroyed.  But if he had not stood up for what he believed to be right, his name would not be held in honor.    So there is the question, 'Shall the course he took be called good if, at the same time, it was fatal to him?' ( In his book "The Art of Spirit", author Robert Henri penned these words : "What does it matter if by standing for the thing you really believe in, fighting for it, giving to others the reasons you have used in your own conviction, making no weak concessions, you fail. Such failure is success!")

"I cannot tell if what the world considers 'happiness' is happiness or not.  All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction.  All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness.   For my part, I cannot accept their standards, whether of happiness or unhappiness.  I ask myself if after all ,their concept of happiness has any meaning whatever.   My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it. My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness: and this, in the minds of most people, is the worst possible course.

"I will hold to the saying that: 'Perfect joy is to be without joy.  Perfect praise is to be without praise.' If you ask 'what ought to be done' and 'what ought not to be done' on earth in order to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have an answer.  There is no way of determining such things.   Yet at the same time, if I cease striving for happiness, the 'right' and the 'wrong' at once become apparent all by themselves.   Contentment and well-being at once become possible the moment you cease to act with them in view, and if you practice non-doing  you will have both happiness and well-being.

"Here is how I sum it up:     Heaven does nothing: its non-doing is its serenity.     Earth does nothing: its non-doing is its rest.  From the union of these two non-doings all actions proceed,     All things are made. How vast, how invisible this coming-to-be!  There is no way to explaint it!  All beings in their perfections are born of non-doing.  Hence it is said:  'Heaven and earth do nothing  yet there is nothing they do not do.'  

Where is the man who can attain to this non-doing?"      

                                                       From "The Way of Chuang Tzu"                                                                     (Via Thomas Merton )   

Plans are concoctions to attain that which we cannot keep, and that pass so quickly away. Ask anyone left with the Creditcard bill after the great-time/diversion is forgotten... Who, may I ask were the last three winners of the Nobel Peace prize; and who won the Olympic Gold Medal in the Decathlon at the last two Olympics. ? Who was voted most likely to succeed in High School or College...and were/are they ?

My favorite picture is of the "Laughing Monk"; laughing at the multitudes who seek fame and success, all at the cost of Now !

I never heard of anybody on their deathbed saying "I wish I had spent more time at the office!" "People do not go to the Hospital with relaxation attacks" says BK Frantzis, my Chi Gung/Meditation Teacher.  

I hear tell that if you chase a Butterfly, you can do so all day, and it will avoid you; but sit, relaxing under a tree, and it will alite on your shoulder.  Remember, it was Chuang Tzu who asked " am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man, or a man dreaming I am a butterfly?"  

What brings true happiness and contentment and peace...I wonder...

  Shen Sung