Some Thoughts On Happiness
IT’S SO SIMPLE TO BE HAPPY, BUT SO DIFFICULT TO BE SIMPLE
---- Swami Vivekananda
The answers are so simple, and right in front of us, yet we (as humans) demand that they be complex and out of reach!
– Bhakti 11/21/05
To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.
--Woody Allen
tags: spirituality, humor, philosophy
woody allen photo downloaded from: http://idata.over-blog.com
posted by Unknown at 10:54 PM
30 Comments:
Woody Allen: The expert on everything?
I just registered these sites:
http://gingrich.blogspot.com
http://condoleezarice.blogspot.com
http://justiceroberts.blogspot.com
http://elrushbo.blogspot.com
Ah the waste of spare time.
haha! i love the quotes! and i love love :) if only it was simple...which it isn`t!
Happiness is in the smile on every baby. The face of every puppy.
It's something that will consume you, lest you become unhappy.
CABE: Woody Allen: The expert on everything?
umm...I think his quote was put there to be funny...but, I could be wrong.
And, yes, I'd have to agree...dealing with those three (Roberts seems okay) people would appear to be a waste of time.
STILL FIGURING OUT: I love love, too. Love might not be simple (the kind that YOU'RE presumably talking about: I mean, you're getting married, right?), but happiness is in the letting go. At least that's been my experience.
GYROBO: Yes, happiness is on the smile of every baby--especially when he or she has gas--and every puppy. You forgot to mention on every robotic avatar, too!
That's a great quote from Woody Allen.
FOOL!
Woody Allen doesn't have the credibility to lead our great nation!
We can never experience true happiness if we have never known sadness.
Happy Mondady Bhakti :)
GYROBO: No...he doesn't, but it seems to me that the current administration is lacking a sense of morals, too. Although, Woody Allen's digression is a bit harder to swallow than anything even Bush has done; at least in my book.
MARK: :)
MILADY: I agree with you 100%. We must experience darkness in order to appreciate the light.
It's like Friedrich Nietzsche always said: "There's a sucker born every minute".
GYROBO: Are you calling me a 'sucker' little metal guy? I have a more difficult time understanding how a man could marry his own daugher--regardless of whether or not she's adopted--than I do anything Bush has done. However, I loath Bush and don't advocate anything he's ever done, either.
BTW, Nietsche was one of my favorites for years until I figured out that he was bonkers from siphilis when he wrote his most famous works!
Hey, most of history's greatest thinkers were insane. And also, most of history's worst thinkers were insane.
History itself is pretty insane.
"I loath Bush"
Remember when you chastised Cabe and me for talking politics? Hmmmm??? What's going on there, pot (or are you kettle)? Hope your glass house is insured, oh thrower of stones!
Umm... I need more pointless maxims. I hope you flock together with birds of your feather? Nope.
Oh well. Good enough.
-Alex
GYROBO: :) Thanks for making me laugh!!
ALEX: You're right. My 'loathing Bush' comment was more of a commentary on my disdain for the far right and their tactics. RE: I just left comments on Cabe's site that he deleted because he couldn't handle my point of view. This brings me back to my original rant about politics (see a couple of posts ago).
There's is NO point in discussing politics because either you're going to get shut down for holding opposing points of view or you're just preaching to the converted.
Nuff 'said. Politics are once again banned from jaibhakti, although I don't delete comments (unless they contain hate or cursing).
MINT TEA MYSTIC: Great sentiments. Thank you for visiting, and I hope to see you again!!
Mint Tea Mystic,
Me do not agree.
Little babies emanate joy and happiness unless they are in pain or discomfort. Eastern religions, develop practices to create ability of human mind achieving state of happiness when they choose to. I believe that happiness is fundamental to life. Trees would not grow if it was not fun to grow.
What you are saying sounds to me like if life was shoveling to you a lot of unpleasant crap, and you using your overactive intellect to rationalize it. :-)
Unhappiness is lack of happiness. When a baby feels happy, it is not because it remembers being unhappy ten minutes ago. Opposite seems to be true. People who experience a lot of unhappiness in their lives, find it difficult to feel fully happy if they can feel happy at all. They can find or even create things they can not be happy about.
I agree, that happiness is in human experience is attitude, and/or a habit more often than not, and acceptance is the most important part of that habit.
Excuse my shrewdness.
Bunda
BUNDA-ROBO-- you said, Eastern religions, develop practices to create ability of human mind achieving state of happiness when they choose to.
What have you been reading?? This is not my experience at all. First of all, the HUMAN MIND does not create happiness (true happiness, innate happiness), the HEART CENTER does. Furthermore, the Eastern religions that I practice and are familiar with don't have practices that create ability of human mind achieving state of happiness when they choose to. It's my experience that Eastern 'religions' show the practitioner how to transcend the mind and find the state of innate joy that IS ALWAYS PRESENT.
I agree with Min-T Mys Tic.
Life is full or wARp and wOoF.
We floatsum like flotsom and jetsum like jetsom.
What is this, The Bhakti Tea Party?
"NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!!"
BTW: Osho's Tea Book beats this one to all heck.
and, remember:
Confucius says:
Man who drinks much tea, must take much pee.
ROBOSHRUBBERY: Heroin and chocolate have the same addictive chemical. Of course, heroin differs from chocolate in many ways; however, it takes a person who is 'addicted' to chocolate an average of two weeks to stop craving it, chemically.
BTW: Bhakti has said a million times that NOTHING IS GOOD OR BAD, IT JUST IS. This summarizes my entire philosophy of life. We are actors on a stage. The actors and the stage are made of the same material (consciousness); and the mind is the filter that tries to 'make sense' of the 'play. The mind, as I've said before, is the vehicle that takes us to the Truth, to the core of our being.
All of this political nonsense of throwing words back and forth, like Cabe and I are doing, is just a part of the drama, or 'maya'. It all creates suffering, because the drama takes us farther and farther away from the Truth, the innate joy.
Meditation has been scientifically proven to release dopemines. That is why, perhaps, meditation (when done 'correctly') eases pain. First of all, deep meditation takes you away from the sensation of your body, which would obviously make you feel no pain (as does sleep. I don't recall feeling any bodily pain while sleeping).
Happiness is innate. I can tap into it no matter what state of mind I'm in. For example, this whole nonsense with Cabe: I Witness it on the periphery, but I don't take it to heart. Like I said before, it's a play. Pain (extreme bodily pain), however, is something that comes to the fore and needs to be dealt with in a more hands on way; i.e. guided meditation, or sleep!
I could go on for days.
Confucius say:
Man who fall asleep in middle of street feel run down by morning.
mINT teA mYSTIC: (nOTE: sOMETIMES i THINK IT LOOKS COOL WHEN i FORGET TO TURN OFF THE 'CAPS LOCK' KEY. dON'T YOU?
I agree 100%. I often find that when I meditate on chocolate I become extremely aware of my stomach.
Lest I digest, I thank you again for your comments. And, Ihave to ask: Are you any relation to Flatlander? Or, are your initials SK? Hhmmm...there's something fishy going on here. I recognize the 'tone' of these comments, but can't put my finger on it!
Anyway, keep commenting. This Bhakti Tea Party is fun.
Oh my gosh...did anyone catch that Freudian slip in my last comment?? I wrote "Lest I digest" instead of "Lest I digress". I wish I could say the pun was intended...
You're TOO funny, and I'm TOO tired. Confucius says:
if early bird catches worm, then Bhakti starve tomorrow.
Good nite,
Sweet Dreams,
Adios until another dia.
Hasta luego.
Good morning,
Good afternoon,
And Good nite!
:)
Bhakti,
You are being bit short with me here.
You have to forgive lay person like me not knowing exactly what part of human body creates the happiness.
You are asking me what I have been reading. I am not reading much lately if at all. My mind is clouded, and it is hard for me to concentrate. My intellect never too sharp from the start seems to be slipping away ever so slightly every day. My short term memory is very short now. It is rather scary experience. So I compensate by listening to my intuition more.
When I have read Mint Tea Mystic say that We can never be happy without unhappiness. and life without unhappiness would be just a nuetral, nonexistant blur I had to say something. It seems to me fundamentally untrue. Just wrong! And he is the infinity expert!
For me it is possible to enjoy all colours of the rainbow without having experienced black darkness. I do not think we have to go though the war to appreciate peace. No.
You have to forgive me my judgments but your expression "transcend the mind" sounds bit snobbish to me. It sounds like: my mind is better than your mind because I am able to transcend it. I am SOO Spiritual!
Like i mentioned above I do not read much, I try to read good.
Here are couple quotes from the little book I have read lately:
The purpose of spiritual practice is to fulfill our desire for happiness.
...We tend to be controlled by our mind, following it along its self-centered path. Meditation is the process whereby we gain control over the mind and guide it in a more virtuous direction. Meditation may be thought of as a technique by which we diminish the force of old thought habits and develop new ones. We thereby protect ourselves from engaging in actions of mind, word, or deed that lead to our suffering. Such meditation is to be used extensively in our spiritual practice.
This technique is not in and of itself Buddhist. Just as musicians train their hands, athletes their reflexes and techniques, linguists their ears, scholars their perceptions, so we direct our minds and hearts.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
I also watched the TV program about French-born Buddhist monk with a Ph.D. who took part in the neuroscientific study. And it showed the picture of this guy brain light up like a light-bulb from happiness during meditation.
Forgive me then for my misinterpretations of eastern religions.
In my world there are bad good and evil things. I wish though I could move to your world that allows you for such detachment. And I wish you would never experience bad or evil that would shatter your playing grounds. Not everybody is that lucky.
Bunda
Heh. Laughing at Woody. That's just so, so, Woody Allen.
Confucius also say: man who stands on toilet is high on pot!
-Alex
ZOMBIE: :) I love the way he makes the simple...well, not so simple!!
ALEX: Confucius also say man who put nude pictures on blog trying to get more clicks...er...I mean kicks.
Bunda doesn't mean to be a troll. She's been having a rough time of things lately, and sometimes her confrontational manner is just an awkward way of trying to make new friends.
Who knows the secret to happiness? I read somewhere recently (probably in the New Yorker) a writer refering to,
"those mystic sages who, aiming for something else, manage to capture happiness".
Can it be captured? Seems the best way to do so is not to try.
LOL,
F.L.
Flatlander: Thanks for visiting--I've missed you these past couple of days! :)
beautiful thoughts.
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