Happiness and the Art of Being (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Happiness and the Art of Being (2012)

happinessofbeing.com

100 pointsluu71 comments

I've been exploring these thoughts. I think the more we are lost in our own thoughts, thinking about the "I", the more unhappy we become. Every emotion stems from the "I". When we let go of the "I", the ego, things calm down. So ultimately, to become happy, I think you could try to train your mind to let go of your ego. This is a hard thing to do, but not impossible. Psychadelics, and meditation help.

This is not a mind trick either, it's the ultimate truth? There's no me & you. In 150 years, every human being alive today is going to die. We are all going to dissolve into the same thing. So, I can argue that, with time being the difference, you and I are the same!

There's no us vs them. It's just us.

It also fits in line with "doing something for others"[1]. The more we concern ourselves with others, the better we feel. Because we lose ourselves.

I think it also fits in line with if you can get in "flow" states while doing some activity. If it is what you can concern yourself with. The end result is the same - you lose yourself in it, and feel calm.

The comment[2] below raises a good question -- I used to think the same. That happiness is overrated, and we should rather go after suffering. But there's a flaw in that thinking. Suffering is not a necessary condition to do something useful. One can recognise a lack of something, work towards fulfilling a desire, and still be happy.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30787818

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30788318

By the way, could someone please write about these terms? "non-dual self-knowledge", "duality, multiplicity and relativity". I googled but I don't quite understand them.

One part of it is figuring out who you are and acting accordingly.

However, a persistent problem I face with any approach to pursuing happiness is how to get my body to perform the things that would make me happy instead of the things some unconscious part of me chooses to direct it to do; those things are rarely the same.

I quite literally and frequently feel like I have no or extremely limited conscious control over my actions, and to make myself do something I want to do that the unconscious executor strongly disagrees with due to anxiety or ADHD or whatever, I have to set things up so that there is literally no other option. That's pretty difficult to do, and quite stressful.

I'm also someone who needs to be constantly doing things because when I'm not distracted, my brain tends to start generating thoughts that lead to severe emotional pain; again, something I don't have much control over.

I think this is true for everyone? But not to the extent you describe I think.

Man, this topic is hard. First off, how do you figure out who you are. What shapes up that? Is it a constant? Maybe we delude ourselves with a wrong image, and then we have these emotions that drive our behaviour, our actions which don't align with that image.

I think simpler is, letting go of the rigid definition of "who you are", not even concern ourselves with defining it. Experiment with many things, and then do what you enjoy doing?

Of course, legal & moral constraints should hold :)

> However, a persistent problem I face with any approach to pursuing happiness is how to get my body to perform the things that would make me happy instead of the things some unconscious part of me chooses to direct it to do; those things are rarely the same.

I've certainly experienced what you're describing. I overeat if I don't work really hard to control myself. At one point in my life I was north of 320lbs. I eventually managed to lose half of that from very strict control of my environment and behavior that was, frankly, excruciating. The pandemic (and other life stressors before it) caused me to put more than 50lbs back on, which I've since managed to get down to only about 35 above my lowest weight, and I struggle every day trying to figure out how to come to terms with the part of myself that wants to constantly eat. It is, seemingly, a never ending battle.

I tell you this because I want you to understand where I'm coming from when I say that it is a mistake to identify 'self' as the 'rational' and 'conscious' part of your being. Evidence suggests that we are actually a lot less conscious[0] and rational[1] than we like to believe, and that instead these are merely tools used by our mind to deal with certain circumstances. Rationality is more often a tool for justifying belief or action than deciding to believe or act. Perhaps you've experienced doing or saying something and not really knowing why? Pay attention and you can feel yourself filling in the line of reasoning afterwards. In fact, if you've ever experienced arguing with yourself you might have noticed that both sides are perfectly capable of wielding rationality against the other.

Point being, part of you wants to do the thing, but clearly another part of you wants to do the things that make that difficult. You identify with one part over the other because, for some reason[2], we identify 'self' with the rational and conscious portion of our being and the desires of the part you identify as 'you' in this instance are able to use those tools to better justify themselves, but that part is not the whole being. Trust me when I tell you that treating the 'other' part of you as an enemy is not going to work out. My advice is to try coming to terms. Pay attention to what each part of you actually wants and try to find ways to satisfy them all. It isn't easy, and I'm certainly not very good at it, but the alternative nearly drove me to suicide.

P.S. Oh, it is also important to recognize that the part of your mind that predicts future happiness exaggerates a lot. There are studies that show this effect, but it is easy enough to observe on your own. Think of a time you really wanted something, to attain a possession, relationship, or goal, and how much you thought it would increase your happiness vs how much it actually did. I believe you will find that consistently it affected your happiness significantly less than you believed.

[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain...

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-39813-y

[2] My roommate, who reads a lot of stuff about societies, beliefs, cultural worldviews, and consciousness, tells me that this is a feature of modern European societies and societies derived from them and is not actually the normal human condition. I am not prepared to vouch for the veracity of that statement, though.

> Think of a time you really wanted something

I don't think I've really had any such time (or I don't remember. My memory is terrible), which is one of the things the rational part of me struggles with. I kind of just adapt to whatever situation I end up in. I guess the problem is that I don't predict future happiness so I don't have any driving force to struggle to attain it.

I've been in this situation for long enough that I don't have any way of telling what is and isn't "normal".

Non-duality means that reality is not a subject (me or I) experiencing objects but a unity (as opposed to duality) of subject and experience.

The sense you have of being a separate observer or experiencer of objects outside of yourself is an illusion or mistaken way of thinking.

Aaah :)

Basically everything is one. All objects, people, and I. All is one. Would that also be a right description of non-duality?

Btw, thanks! :)

That's the basic idea from my understanding but it's also an experience, not just a concept.

Check out Swami Sarvapriyananda on YouTube to get a good guided experience of it.

Thanks :)

Here are a couple of my attempts are non-dual. You are not an object in a outside world of objects. You are consciousness. You are the infinite field of knowing that allows all experience to be known (Rupert Spira). The objects are conceptual layers added by the mind. The mind sees a certain pattern of color and has learned that it is a chair. You cannot know the chair tho. You can only know the activity of consciousness that lie below the mind and it's concepts and you are that field of consciousness. There is no duality or multiplicity. There is only the one, the consciousness. There is a man in a bunker deep below the ground. There are wires coming in from above attached to telegraph machines. He interprets the telegraph messages and draws maps. He doesn't actually know anything about the outside world where these messages are supposedly coming from. He only knows the data and the maps he draws from it. You only know the raw conscious data; color, sound, thoughts, feelings, sensations, taste. Does a physical objects actually exist outside of you? Maybe, but we can't know for sure. We only know the simulation and the stuff the simulation is made of is consciousness. We are that consciousness. Until one takes this first step in self-realization they are still stuck in the conceptual world. That world is constructed purely of thought. Arguing in this space is futile. It's just thoughts and thoughts are changing all the time and different for everyone.

How do you define truth, and objective reality? With your argument, it means we can't ever experience the true reality -- or ever know if it even exists!

What makes you think humans are wired to experience objective truth?

Evolution is a process that builds agents capable of interacting with their environment in limited ways - specifically those ways that are beneficial for their reproduction and the maintenance of the species. If simpler (ie, subjective) degrees of truth are sufficient for humans to survive, doesn't it seem extremely unlikely that we would be given the keys to full objective truth? It can be very simply proved that even your sense data, the most direct and true-seeming aspects of our experiential reality, is subjective, rather than objective (eg, blind spots in your eyes that your brain paves over, various forms of visual and auditory illusions, phenomena like tinnitus and migraines that are responsive to feedback loops involving your attention, etc). And of course, we are as humans, subjective and biased observers of our experiential reality as well. If God himself came down on a mountain in front of 100 people, you would get 100 unique reports of how that encounter happened and what it meant.

You can come at this from a sociology of knowledge perspective - what we call "objective reality" operates more like "consensus reality" - the set of subjective truths that are widely experienced by people. In most cases, we can act as if these things are equivalent, except of course, for this type of philosophic enquiry!

I agree with you & the parent comment. I just wanted to play a little with reason :)

Where does 1 + 1 = 2 (or math) live? Is it in any way related to us, our experiences, our senses, or evolution? Is it part of objective reality or just some abstract idea?

I agree though, with just our senses, we can never experiences the reality - just as simply we cannot see molecules - but we know they exist? We understand the molecular machinery of the cell, though we cannot see nor experience it.

How do we understand molecules or cells? Through microscopes with our sense of vision? We haven't avoided the subjective sense problem at all! Merely refined it. We _can_ see the molecular machinery of the cell, having the ability to augment our senses with technology, and what we see must account for human subjectivity in a myriad of ways.

Math is a more interesting case, in that regard, as it is more clearly divorced from sense data in the classic sense. Though with the nondual perspective being presented here in mind, thought and logic is often lumped in closer to being a kind of sense - I don't _think_, I _experience thoughts_. I'm not settled on the point, but that framework would allow us to say "math is a function of the way human brains sense logical resolutions among axioms".

Alright I buy your point. I don't like it, but I do buy it.

I do see that ultimately everything is painted in my mind by my senses and I rely on this painting for my interpretation of the world. If I didn't have senses since birth? I wouldn't have the painting nor any understanding of the world except for, maybe, a sense of hunger and an urge of bodily secretions.

Regardless, the world continues to exist as is.

For sure :)

Our true reality is consciousness and all it's activities. Open up to all of the experience instead of just little clusters of thoughts and feelings. It's amazing and wonderful.

It's a interesting trail of thoughts I rarely see mentioned. Similarly I had the realization that when left alone, you can rapidly lose track of reality. Your emotions will influence beliefs and nobody can rebalance your mind. These beliefs can make you suffer deeply and sometimes they're completely bogus.. yet you can't easily extract yourself from this mindset, while when with others they can bring you back closer to a centered view. I kinda see social groups as balancing devices now.

It is interesting that your description isn't too far away from saying "reality is a consensus built up between entities", which is itself not too far off from Donald Hoffman[0] hypothesizes, which could possibly be framed as "reality is a protocol conscious entities use to communicate".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_D._Hoffman

Man, I've been wondering this for years .. I could never find the right terminology to discuss it. It also kinda means reality is a wave that we propagate down the lineage tree.

It indeed is!

We are merely the vessels, and the agents. Information or the accumulated knowledge is the living entity. We are just adding to it, while also passing it down.

We procreate to keep the information alive.

>Similarly I had the realization that when left alone, you can rapidly lose track of reality. Your emotions will influence beliefs and nobody can rebalance your mind. These beliefs can make you suffer deeply and sometimes they're completely bogus.. yet you can't easily extract yourself from this mindset, while when with others they can bring you back closer to a centered view. I kinda see social groups as balancing devices now.

I think I have experienced this. Also being among people constantly gives you these signals to process, which distract you from the self-talk. These external signals help you hook back into the collective thought?

I'd say yes. To the point that when I started recovering, I voluntarily went in parks to sit around people. Their lives would re-trigger other, warmer, emotions in me. In a way to counter the probability that I would go back to negative self-talk.

Emotions are a weird thing, people can talk you out of them, or reduce their impact on your reality a lot.

You could also experiment in shifting negative self-talk into positive one. Like with all changes, this won't be easy, but I believe it is doable.

Use reason, different angles, perspectives, whatever the means to shift the negative tone of the self-talk?

I tried, it didn't affect me the same way. A bit like trying to warm yourself up by rubbing your skin vs sitting under a bit of sun.

The Protestants talk about the light of God that shines within all of us; the Greek theologians talk about the World Soul; the Buddhists talk about the nature of the mind. I've always intuited my "I" as this foundation, but you've opted for a more social definition, which I find pretty fascinating.

Also, part of your post feels like a rejection of the Logos, which is probably a mistake.

Thanks. What is Logos? :)

Depending on who you talk to, what links reason with the structure of the world, a meditative principle that connects the nature of the mind with the organizing principles of physical reality, Jesus Christ, an outpouring from the Absolute or One to your essential being, etc. It's the source of lots of deep spiritual experiences.

For me, it all comes down to self-experiment!

There is no one outside of me, whom I trust to investigate the very nature of my very own being.

For me that is the beauty in the ancient science of yoga. All it is, is an experimental set-up that has to be executed by the scientist (e.g. the yogi) to validate the experimental results.

Nothing to believe, no guru to follow... Just a deep dive into that which lies beyond the chatter of the mind and the impressions of the senses.

It.is.awesome!

Are you self taught?

Do you publish somewhere?

I have been continuing my ketamine therapy and the insights revealed align with this writing from what I read in the intro.

> ... the aim of this book is to prompt each one of us to think more deeply about the reality of all that we as a seemingly limited individual consciousness experience and know ...

I find that fitting in some regard given what I experience and how much is going on in our mind all the time.

I am glad this was posted today. Perfect timing. Will be curious to see how it stands as a whole.

Another practical and time tested guide to happiness and the art of being for the rest of us:

https://i.imgur.com/lKwnHKd.jpg

That's just how happiness looks like when observed across a dissociative boundary :D

Ah yes, those are literally the only reasons anyone is happy.

So the happiest man in the world is sitting outside petting a cat in the sunshine while watching a movie.

Maybe he's eating a snack too.

Throw in fellatio and you have me sold.

> perfect, permanent and unqualified happiness

I would call that insanity.

I have this theory of mine since spending time in drug circles. The drug users spend time as well chasing "perfect, permanent and unqualified happiness". And with substances you can achieve the unqualified part. The perfect and permanent parts not really since tolerance comes into play.

Anyway, my theory is that unhappiness is absolutely necessary. Happiness means you are content with what is. And you take action when you want to change to what could be, what you want. But if you are already happy then you don't want to change anything, so you don't do anything even if you absolutely should.

There are a lot of things that tend to prove that unhappiness and its companion - the pursuit of happiness - are the most important motivators. Negative news, commercials, propaganda, populist discourse and so on.

In human life there is and will be suffering. Escaping it won't make you happy. Accepting it and finding a purpose for your suffering can make you happy but it's quite a different kind of happiness that you see in movies.

Yes, I think that the word happy and happiness are wrong words. Acceptance or contentment are better words, but are not as attractive. If you think about permanent acceptance then you can actually see it happening. It's permanent euphoria what's unachievable.

The eastern traditions encourage something called "Skilled interpretation". What's skilled interpreations? Picking causes that cause happiness, avoiding causes that lead to unhappiness. And to train the mind in such a way that if one indeed reaches a place of unhappiness, quickly rebalancing the mind to return to serenity, peace and happiness. Skilled interpreation is a continuous process to maintain serenity.

> unhappiness ... necessary

No, no, no, no, no. Deontic action is performed irregardless of contentedness. Unhappiness is not a requirement for motivation. Improvement of your suit is not impeded by the utter perfection of your armchair.

And, optimal state and false diagnostics ("I fixed the issues by having the `test()` function just `return True`") are diametrically opposite.

If the misunderstanding comes out of misunderstanding of concepts, this is why some of us insist on the importance of the awareness of language - the sheer elementary gain out it will be a "Careful with that word, Eugene".

I love being introduced to articles like this and the Kung Fu Panda one from yesterday. They seem to always show up on here just at the right time, when you need them most. Thanks!

They are always around :) you notice them when you need them?

You also notice them when they're the last thing you want to hear. When I'm content (aka bored) I find myself buying into it. When I'm having an actual hard time, I find myself mentally shouting at the screen to shut the fuck up with all this pretentious bullshit. Today I'm bored.

Pleasantly surprised to see this on HN. In the minefield of the spiritual marketplace, where you can never be sure which teachers are authentic and which aren't, Michael James is worth a look. Sometimes a little dry and repetitive, but steadfast in his message and his adoration for his teacher.

> So long as our mind is extroverted, attending to anything other than our own essential self-conscious being, we can never experience perfect, permanent and unqualified happiness

Perfect, permanent, and unqualified happiness. So in order to achieve impossible state X, we must do impossible thing Y?

no you should just "stop doing" whatever you are doing and you are already perfect.

What i understand is a slight difference. It is not about stop doing but in understanding it is getting "done through you"

yes that is also correct but the "you" is different in these two interpretations. When you understand it is getting "done through you" you also understand that there is no "you" as in person. If you consider yourself doing domething than you stop doing it and be and hopefully come to same realization.

First page on HN :) well .. well.. Timeless perspective. Got an introduction first by reading "A search in Secret India" by Paul Brunton and then on talks on Youtube (Voice of Rishis , Robert and Sarvapriyananda) , changed me in so many different ways for the better.

To piggyback: If anyone is interested in more of this line of thinking, i.e., self-enquiry, nondualism, etc, there is a wonderful series of introductory lectures on vedantist-thought by Swami Sarvapriyananda[1]. A line of thinking which, if I may add, influenced literary figures like Emerson, Tolstoy, and Yeats[2]. Above all, it reminds me of an idea I recently came across from a blog I follow: "A stronger link needs to be made between "liberation" in the revolutionary, social/political, decolonial sense, and "liberation" in the mystical, ego-dissolving, soteriological sense."

1. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBh-iYJ1Q_hQSUXzV7GtT...

2. https://swarajyamag.com/culture/ten-writers-and-their-intera...

> So long as our mind is extroverted, attending to anything other than our own essential self-conscious being, we can never experience perfect, permanent and unqualified happiness.

Meh, I think Tolstoy had it right: There is only one enduring happiness in life—to live for others.

I am not surprised that HN buys into this individualism. Here is Chris Hedges discussing how Tolstoy's insight applies the age of social media https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwnynLc2U4Q&t=1s

If you follow the thread all the way you'll discover that in this philosophy, whose roots are to be found in the mystical tradition of Hinduism - Advaita Vedanta, your essential conscious being is shared (I'm wary of the western use of "self-conscious", that is why I have omitted it). Therefore, what is really being said is that without the realization that our most intimate identity is (===, reference equality) that of everything else, happiness (defined as equanimity) cannot be achieved. It is actually the opposite of individualism.

Totally agree that this is ultimately very non-individualistic.

But there is a difference between what this teaching is at its core, and why it appeals to certain groups in the west. see McMindfulness etc

Unfortunately you might be right :)

You have misunderstood the point to the level of "Einstein and moral relativity".

Applied to the context you put (cultivation and others), it's along the lines of "perform surgery while sober vs drunk".

You misunderstood because of the imperfect summary from the commenter, and because of the un-realization that the use language implies very large amounts of interpretational space - explicitly. You have to understand those expressions through the understanding of the full discipline.

And: the context is not in the realm of "I think", it's not a philosophy: it's meant to be research.

I like the idea that happiness lies in helping others. But then I get into a loop with the following thought: if everyone just focused on helping others, no one would want to be helped (they'd all prefer helping others) and therefore it wouldn't do anyone any good.

Maybe I'm overthinking this...

You can help others and allow others to help you. In fact, in this hypothetical setup, you can help others by allowing them to help you.

...And:

the foremost favour you can do to your fellow men is to act while in proper shape.

The more you think about enlightenment, the more you are away from it.

Explicitly: it's a commentary over Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.

I think I'm quite willing to go on experiencing the ever present background levels of existential suffering if it means I can keep an extroverted mind and not have to spend all my time attending to my own essential self-conscious being.

Interestingly, his core point is that your own essential being is not self-conscious.

I think would probably make you more extroverted and more effective.

Here’s another perspective on similar teachings http://happinessbeyondthought.blogspot.com/2018/03/updating-...

"What a burden, to breathe, having learned to stand straight, to be able to read". Has the poster had the suspect that it does not work that way?

This is why some disciplines have rules of discretion. It would have grounds to think of a parallel reality in which a special flag in HN is used, hitting posts implying that "Javascript is just scripted Java". (Asking and implying have different consequences.)

https://www.kvnf.org/news/2016-03-24/satanic-pamphlets-soon-...

Can you elaborate on how you think this is relevant? Honest question. By the way, I would totally support such an initiative, but not with the goal of eventually removing all religious material, rather to avoid single perspectives.

I'm skeptical of "non-dual self knowledge". Maybe the subject-object distinction "is an illusion" but it seems like a necessary one. Would morality exist without a subject-object (or subject-subject, meaning two invdividuals) distinction? What would human behavior look like? How could we distinguish between a violent crime and a kind act? How could we make judgements? By what standard would an enlightened person who has dissolved the subject-object distinction prefer to be enlightened than not?

Our true nature, our essential being, is happiness. The transient happiness that we appear to derive from external experiences arises only from within ourselves, and is felt as a result of the temporary calming of our mind that occurs whenever any of our desires are fulfilled.

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