The Feast of Life - 1

The Problem of Happiness

The enjoyment of life covers many things, the enjoyment of ourselves, of home life, of trees, flowers, clouds, wending rivers and falling cataracts and the myriad things in nature, the enjoyment of poetry, art, contemplation, friendship, conversation and reading, which are all some form or other of the communion spirits. These are obvious things like the enjoyment of food, a gay party or family reunion, an outing on a beautiful spring day and less obvious things like the enjoyment of poetry, art and contemplation.  I found it impossible to call all these two classes of enjoyment material and spiritual, first because I do not believe in this distinction and secondly because I am puzzled whenever I proceed to make this distinction.  How can I say, when I see a gay picnic party of men and women, old people and children, what part of their pleasures is material and what part spiritual.

Is it so easy to draw a distinction between the enjoyment of the surrounding landscape and the enjoyment of sandwich? Is it to regard the enjoyment of music which we call art, as decidedly a higher type of pleasure than the smoking of a pipe, which we call material ?  This classification between material and spiritual pleasure is therefore confusing, unintelligible and untrue for me.

The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, but just what to do with life, a life which is given his sixty / seventy years. The answer that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his week-end, than a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe.

Had there been a purpose or design in life, it should not have been so puzzling and vague and difficult to find out.

The question can be divided into two; either that of divine purpose which God has set for humanity, or that of a human purpose, a purpose that mankind should set for itself. As far as the first is concerned, I do not propose to enter into the question because everything that we think God has in mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind.  It is what we imagine to be in God’s mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a divine intelligence.

For what should be the purpose of life, everyman projects his own perception and scale of virtues / values and therefore they quarrel among themselves.  I am content to be less philosophical and more practical. I agree with Walt Whitman, he says, “I am sufficient as I am”. Theological minds are not human happiness, but human “salvation”, a tragic word.  Theological minds are so much occupied with salvation and so little with happiness, that all they can tell us about the future that these will be a vague heaven for singing hymns in white robes.  Mohammad at least painted a picture of future happiness with rich wine and juicy fruits and black-haired, beg-eyed, passionate maidens.  Unless heaven is made much more vivid and convincing, there is no reason why one should strive to go there, at the cost of neglecting earthly existence. “An egg today is better than a hen tomorrow. 

Human Happiness is Sensuous

All human happiness is biological happiness.  All human happiness is actually sensuous happiness.  Spiritualist says that true happiness is only happiness in spirit.  Now, spirit is a condition of the perfect functioning of the endocrine glands. And hence for me happiness is largely the function of endocrine glands means a matter of digestion.  A matter of movement of bowels. There are only two things one should keep in mind for ultimate wisdom, read the bible and keep ones bowels open.  If ones bowel move one is happy and if they don’t move, one is unhappy.

In today’s world, happiness is often negative, the complete absence of sorrow or ailment but happiness can also be positive and then we call it a joy.  For me the timely happy moments are, when I get up in the morning after a night of perfect sleep and sip the morning tea, sniff the morning air and there is an expansiveness in the lungs, I feel to inhale deeply and there is a fine sensation of movement around the skin and muscles of the chest making me fit for the work for the day.

I cannot distinguish between the joys of mind and the joys of flesh.  Can anyone love a woman spiritually without loving her physically?  Can any man can analyze and separate the charms of the woman he loves – things like laughter, smiles, a way of tossing her head, her attitude ? And all girls feel happier when they are well dressed.

Being made of this mortal flesh, the partition separating our flesh from our spirit is extremely thin, and the world of spirit, with its finest emotions and greatest appreciations of spiritual beauty, cannot be reached except with out senses.  There is the sense of touch, of hearing and vision.

How many of us are able to distinguish between the odours of moon and midnight, or the winter and summer, or a windy spell and a still one ?  If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in this country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly masked and lost in the general monotony of grey walls and cement pavements.

For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true happiness and only that kind of philosophy is sound and healthy.

Misunderstandings of Materialism

In real human life, the mental and physical pleasures are inextricably tied up together.  Mental pleasures are real only when they are felt through the body.

The love of mankind which requires reason is no true love.  This love should be perfectly natural, as natural for the man as for the birds to flap their wings.  It should be a direct feeling springing naturally from the soul.  No one who loves the trees truly can be cruel to animals or to this fellow-men.

No one can attain knowledge without the sense of vision and touch and smell than a camera can take pictures without a lens and sensitive plate.  The difference between a clever man and a dull fellow is that the former has a set of finer lens and perceiving apparatus by which he gets a sharper image of things and retains its longer.  And to proceed from the knowledge of books to the knowledge of life, mere thinking is not enough, one has to feel ones way about to sense things as they are and get the right impression of human life and human nature.  In the matter of feeling about life and gaining experience, all our senses cooperate, and its through this cooperation of the senses, and of the heart with the head, one can have intellectual warmth.

The Importance of Living - Who Can Best Enjoy

Find Thyself.

Confucius said, “If a person does not say to himself, “What to do? What to do? Indeed I do not know what to do with such a person”.

Philosophy of the Half-and-Half.  The conflict between action and inaction ends in a compromise or contentment with a very imperfect heaven on earth.  This gives rise to wise and merry philosophy of living, eventually typified in the life of Tao, china’s greatest poet and personality.

Loss follows the pursuit and gains.

When go into the world follow its customs.

A great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child

Passion, Wisdom & Courage

The ideal character best able to enjoy life is a warm, carefree and unafraid soul. Three mature virtues of the great man are, “Wisdom, compassion, and courage”.

A passionate nature always loves women, but who loves women is not necessarily a passionate nature.  Passion holds up the bottom of the world, while genius paints its proof.  For unless we have passion, we have nothing to start out in life with at all.  It is passion that is soul of life, the lights in the stars, the lift in music and song, the joy in flowers, the plumage in birds, the charm in woman, and the life in scholarship.  It is as impossible to speak of a soul without passion as to speak of music without expression.

Man struggles with fate, gives up the battle, and the tragedy comes in the aftermath, in a flood of reminiscences, of vain regret and longing.

The passion between husband and wife as the very foundation of all normal human life.

No child is born with a cold heart, and it is only in proportion as we lose that youthful heart that we lose the inner warmth in ourselves.  In the process of learning “World experience” there is many a violence done to our original nature.

While a man with passion and sentiment may do many foolish and precipitate things, a man without passion or sentiment is a joke and a caricature.

As I look back upon my fifty years, it still makes me happy to think of when I sinned, but when I think I was stupid, I cannot forgive myself even now.

Life is harsh and man with a warm, generous and sentimental nature may be easily taken in by his cleverer fellow man.  Generous people often make mistakes by their generosity by their too generous regard of their enemies and faith in their friends.

To me wisdom and courage are same thing, for courage is born of an understanding of life.  He who completely understands life is always brave.  Wisdom that does not gives us courage is not worth having at all.

There is a wealth of humbug in this life.  Two big humbugs : fame and wealth.  Many cultured persons were able to escape the lure of wealth, but only the very greatest could escape the lure of fame.  It is easier to get rid of the desire for money then to get rid of the desire of fame.

Another great humbug, Power & Success.  Desires for success, fame and wealth are euphemistic names for the fear of failure, poverty and obscurity.  These fears dominate our lives.

A public office often demands that a man attend six dinners a week in the name of consecrate his life to the service of mankind.  Why does he not consecrate himself to a simple supper at home.  Under the spell of that humbug of fame or power, a man is soon prey to other incidental humbugs. He soon begins to want to reform society, to uplift other morality, to defend the religion, to crush vice, to map programmes for others to carryout, bloc programmes that other people have mapped out; to read before a convention a statistical report of what other people have done for him under his administration, to sit on committees explaining blue-prints of an exposition, in general, to interfere in other peoples lives.  How completely the great problems of labour, unemployment and tariff leaves the mind of a defeated politician.

These humbugs keeps him happily busy if he is successful, and give him the illusion that he is really doing something and is therefore “Somebody”.

There is a social humbug, the humbug of fashion.  The courage to be one’s won natural self is quite a rare thing.

The two great fears, the fear of God and the fear of death.  Equally universal fear is the fear of one’s neighbors.

There are few who could wear their reputation and a high position with a smile and remain their natural selves, they are the ones who know they are acting when they are acting, who do not share the artificial illusions of rank, title, property and wealth and who accept these things with a tolerant smile.  When they come, their way, but refuse to believe that they themselves are thereby different from ordinary human beings.

It is this class of men, the truly great in spirit, who remains essentially simple in their personal lives.

Nothing show more conclusively a small mind than a little government bureaucrat suffering from illusions of his own grandeur, or a social upstart displaying her jewels, or a half-backed writer imagining himself to belong to the company of the immortals and immediately becoming a less simple and less natural human being.

We often forget that we have real life to live off stage.  And so we sweat and labour and go through life, living not for ourselves in accordance with our true instincts, but for approval of society, like “old spinsters working with their needles to make wedding dresses for other women”.

Cynicism, Folly & Camouflage

The highest idea of peace, tolerance, simplicity and contentment.  Such teachings include the wisdom of the foolish, the advantage of camouflage, the strength of weakness and the simplicity of the truly sophisticated.  At the bottom of Laoste philosophy is pacifism is the willingness to put up with temporary losses and bide one’s time, the belief that in the scheme of things, with nature operating by the law of action and reaction, no one has a permanent advantage over the others and no one is a “damn fool” all the time.

The greatest wisdom seems like stupidity.

The greatest eloquence like stuttering.

Movement overcomes cold

But staying overcomes heat

So he by his limpid calm

Puts everything right under heaven.

The natural conclusion is that there is no use for contention.  “Show me a man of violence that come to a good end, and I will take him for my teacher”. “Show me a dictator that can dispense with the services of a secret police, and I will be his follower”..

Laoste says, “When the Tao prevails not, horses are trained for battle, when the Tao prevails, horses are trained to pull dung-carts”.

The best charioteers do not rush ahead,

The best fighters do not make displays of wrath.

The greatest conqueror wins without joining issues,

The best user of men acts as though he was their inferior,

This is called the power that comes of not contending, is called the capacity of use men.

The secret being mated to heaven, to what was of old.

What is in the end to be shrink,

must first be stretched.

Whatever is to be weakened,

must being by being made strong.

What is to be overthrown,

must begin as a giver.

This is called ”dimming” one’s light.

It is thus that the soft overcomes the hard

And the weak, the strong.

“It is best to leave the fish down in the pool,

Best to leave the state’s sharpest weapons where none can see them”.

Water remains forever the symbol of the strength of the weak.  Water that greatly drips and makes a hole in a rock, and water which has the great wisdom of seeking the lowest level.

Oriental civilization represents the female principle while the occidental civilization represents the male principle.

“Never be the first in the world”.  There is a certain bird called i-erh. They fly simultaneously, they roost in the body. In advancing, none strives to be the first, in retreating; none ventures to be the last.  In eating none will be the first to begin.  It is considered proper to take the leftover of others.  Therefore, they are always at peace and outside world is unable to harm them.  They escape trouble.

Straight trees are the first felled. Sweet wells are soonest exhausted, you make a show of your knowledge in order to startle fools.  You cultivate yourselves in contract to the degradation of others.

There is the wisdom of the foolish,

The gracefulness of the slow

The subtly of stupidity,

The advantage of lying low.

Blessed are idiots, for they are the happiest people on earth.  The greatest wisdom is stupidity.  The greatest eloquence like stuttering. “Spit forth intelligence”. It is difficult to muddle headed.  It is difficult to be clever, but it is still more difficult to graduate from cleverness to muddle headedness. Don’t be too smart.  The wisest men is often one who pretends to be “damn fool”.

The gospel of ignorance and the theory of camouflage are the best weapons in the battle of life.  The popularity of fools is an undeniable fact.  The world hates the man who is too smart in his dealings with his fellow-men.

Extremely stupid and extremely loyal are the best servants.  Those we like are not those we respect for distinguished ability and those we respect for distinguished ability are not those we like, and that we like a stupid servant because he is more reliable and because in his company, we can better relax and do not have to set up a condition of defense against his presence.

Most wise men choose to marry a not too smart wife, and most wise girls choose a not too smart husband as a life companion.

Philosophy if Half-and-Half, “Middle Path”.

Those are best cynics who are half cynics. The highest type of life after all is the life of sweet reasonableness.  A well ordered life lying somewhere between the two extremes – the doctrines of the Half and Half.  It is that spirit of sweet reasonableness arriving at a perfect balance between action and inaction, shown in the ideal of a man living in half fame and semi-obscurity, half lazily active and half actively lazy, not so poor that he cannot pay his rent and no so rich that he doesn’t have to work a little or couldn’t wish to have slightly more to help his friends, who plays the piano, but only well enough for his most intimate friends to hear, and chiefly to please himself, who collects but just enough to load his mantle piece, who reads but not too hard, learns a lot but does not become a specialist. In short, it is ideal of middle class life.

Man is born between the real earth and the unreal heaven. The happiest man is he man of the middle class who has earned slight means of economic independence who has done a little, but just a little.  Slightly distinguished but not too distinguished.  Life is fairly carefree and yet not altogether carefree.

A Lover’s Life.

A curious combination of devotion to the flesh and arrogance of the spirit, of spirituality without asceticism and materialism with sensuality, in which the senses and the spirit have come to live together in harmony.  One who understands the charm of women without being coarse, who loves life heartily but loves it with restaurant, and who sees the unreality of the successes and failures of the active world, and stands somewhat aloof and detached, without being hostile to it.

Tao, in order to keep himself from being idle moved a pile of bricks from one place to another in the morning, and moved them back in the afternoon.  Humble, simple and independent, he was extremely chary of company.

The Importance of Living - On Being Wayward & Incalculable

On Being Wayward & Incalculable

Today scamp is being displaced by soldier as the highest ideal of human being.  Instead of wayward incalculable, unpredictable free individuals, we are going to have rationalized, disciplined, regimented and uniformed, patriotic coolies, so efficiently controlled and organized that a nation of hundred million people can believe in the same creed, think the same thought and like the same food.  Clearly two opposite views of human dignity are possible, the one regarding the scamp and the other regarding the soldier, as the ideal, the one behaving that a person who retain his freedom and individuality is the noblest type and the other behaving that a person who has completely lost independent judgment and surrendered all rights to private beliefs and opinions to the ruler or the state is the best and the noblest thing.

Instead of men, we have members of a class, instead of ideas and personal prejudices and idiosyncrasies, we have ideologies or class thoughts, instead of personalities, we have blind forces and instead of individuals we are masses.  We are all progressing towards the model of ants.

A doctor who prescribes an identical treatment for an identical disease in two individuals and expects an identical development may be properly classified as a social menace because he forgets the individual capacity for reacting in a different manner from others.

The Doctrine of Individual

If there are social philosophies which deny the happiness of the individual life as the final goal and aim of civilization, those philosophies are the product of a sick and unbalanced mind.

The final judgement of any particular type of culture is what type of men and women it turns out.

It is not surroundings, but our reactions towards them that count.

In all this moving panorama of human history, I see only flux and change, determined by man’s own wayward and incalculable and unpredictable choice.

Those who desired to order their national life would first regulate their home life.  Those who desired to regulate their home life would first cultivate their personal lives would first set their heart right.  Those who desired to set their hearts right, would first make their wills sincere.  Those who desired to make their wills sincere would first arrive at understanding.  Understanding comes from exploration of knowledge of things.

When the knowledge of things is gained, then understanding is reached, then the will is sincere. When the will is sincere, then the heart is set right.  When the heart is set right, then the personal life is cultivated.  When the personal life is cultivated, then the home is regulated.  When the home life is regulated, then the national life is orderly and when the national life is orderly then the world is at peace.

From the Emperor down to the common man, the cultivation of personal life is the foundation of all.

It is impossible that when the foundation is disorderly, the super structure can be orderly. There has never been a tree whose trunk is slender and whose top branches are heavy and strong.  There is a cause and a sequence in things and a beginning and end in human beings affairs.  To know the order of precedence is to have the beginning of wisdom.

The Importance of Living - On Dreams & Sense of Humor

On Dreams

I have never seen a truly sad face in animals except in the chimpanzee.

It is characteristic of humans to have a sad, vague and wistful longing for an ideal. Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom with imagination.  All of us have the desire to get out of an old nut, and all of us wish to be something else, and all of use dream.

The world is quite like an restaurant where everybody thinks the food next table has ordered so much more inviting and delicious than his own.

In the matter of desirability, “wives are better if they are others’, while writing is always better of it is ours own.” Everybody wants to be somebody so long that somebody is not himself.

This human trait is undoubtly due to power of imagination and our capacity for dreaming. The greater the imagination power of man, the more perpetually he is dissatisfied. That is why an imaginative child is always a more difficult child; he is more often sad and morose like monkey than happy and contended like a cow.  Divorce is most common among the idealists and the more imaginative people than among the unimaginative.  The vision of a desirable ideal like companion has an irresistible force which the less imaginative and less idealistic never feel.

Dreams descend from the world of idle visions and enter the world of reality and become a real force in our life.  Dreams have a way of concealing themselves and leave us no peace until they are translated into reality, like seeds germinating underground, sure to sprout in their search for the sunlight.  Dreams are wry real things.

The blue bird always attracts the romanticists fancy.

On the Humour / Sense of Humour

To me the worst comments on dictatorship is that presidents of democracies can laugh while dictators always look so serious with protruding jaw, a determined chin and pouched lower lip, as if they are doing something terribly important and the world could not be saved, except by them.

The best thing I have ever read about Hitler is that he is completely natural in private.

For who have started war for us? The ambitious, the able, the clever, the scheming, the cautious, the sagacious, the haughty, the over patriotic, the people inspired   to “serve” mankind, people who have a “career” to carve and an “impression” to make on the world, who expect and hope to look down the ages from the eyes of bronze figure sitting on a bronze horse in some square.  Curiously, the able, the clever and the ambitious and haughty are at the same time most cowardly and middle headed believing in the courage and depth and subtlety of the humorists with their greater sweep of mind can envisage large things.

A diplomat who does not whisper in a low voice and look properly scared and intimidated and correct and cautious is no diplomat at all.

Our life is too complex, our scholarship too serious, our philosophy too somber and our thought too involved.  This seriousness and this involved complexity of our thoughts and scholarships make the present world such an unhappy one today.

Man has become the slave of his ideas, thoughts, ambitions and social systems that are his own product.  Mankind over burdened with this load of ideas and ambitions and social systems, seems unable to rise above them.

He who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them.

Simplicity paradoxically is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.  It seems to me simplicity is about the most difficult thing to achieve in scholarship and writing.

No learned scholar can present his specialized knowledge in simple human terms until he has digested that knowledge himself and brought it into relations with this observation of life.

Simplicity presupposes digestion and maturity.  As we grow older, our thoughts become clearer, ideas take on most definite shapes and long trains of thought gradually shape themselves into a convenient formula which suggests itself and we arrive at true wisdom.