ornoth

Since ancient times, mankind has been preoccupied by a quest for “freedom”. Even in today’s somewhat enlightened society, safeguarding our “freedom” is an almost daily topic of conversation.

But I wonder how many of us have ever made the effort to formulate in words exactly what that term means to us. And if you don’t know what freedom means, how can you possibly successfully attain it?

Freedom!

For me, freedom has three main components: choice, independence, and ethics.

First is the freedom to choose between alternatives. Where a man has no choice to make, there is no freedom.

And to be truly free, that choice must be largely independent of external influence or coercion. A man who is coerced or misinformed is not able to freely choose.

And finally, “freedom” has no meaning unless a person can make decisions based upon the values and beliefs that he holds as the product of his upbringing, education, life experiences, emotional makeup, and philosophy.

As a bonus aside, I’ll assert here that a person’s values are most often a uniquely individual balance between benefit to oneself and benefit to others, where the latter category might be further subdivided into one’s “in-group/family” and “outsiders/others”, however broadly or narrowly one chooses to make that distinction.

So that’s my operative definition of personal freedom; now let’s consider whether we do a good job attaining it…

We humans like to think of ourselves as complex, multifaceted, and diverse, as the pinnacle of evolution, and imbued unique capacities of intellect, free will, discretion, morality, and freedom of choice.

How ironic then that, across all cultures and times, the overwhelming majority of human behavior can be reduced to two very simple principles:

Get more of the sensations that we perceive as pleasurable, and
Get rid of the sensations that we perceive as unpleasant.

This two-line algorithm is not only sufficient to describe almost all human behavior, but that of nearly all animal life, down the simplest amoebae and paramecia. If it’s pleasant, move toward it; if it’s unpleasant, run away from it. It’s poignantly emblematic that the Declaration of Independence, one of mankind’s most cherished documents, proclaims “the pursuit of happiness” as a vital and basic “unalienable right” of all men.

What does it say about our vaunted sense of freedom and individuality if 99% of all human thought, feelings, and behavior can be boiled down to a ludicrously simple two-line program, the exact same one used by the most tiny, primitive unicellular organisms? Where is freedom to be found in slavishly obeying that biological imperative?

Here is where the Buddhist in the audience has something to contribute.

Without judging anyone’s individual spiritual practices, I would assert that Buddhism is not fundamentally about stress relief, quiescing our thinking, blissing out, self-improvement, earning merit for future lives, extraordinary experiences, psychic abilities, or deconstructing the self. Those things may or may not happen along the way, but I think that the core goal of the Buddhist path is breaking free of our instinctual programming by first understanding that we habitually live under a false illusion of freedom, then gradually learning how to find genuine freedom by ensuring that our thoughts, speech, and actions are driven by conscious, values-driven choices, rather than never-questioned blind reactivity and maladaptive habit patterns.

Realizing that pleasure and discomfort are the central drivers of our biological programming, the principal line of inquiry for Buddhists has been cultivating a more skillful and beneficial relationship to these influences. A key tenet is the principle of dependent arising, which describes the chain of cause and effect that explains how our relationship to desire creates our experience of dissatisfaction. My distillation of it goes:

Because we are alive, we have senses.
Because we have senses, we experience contact with sensory objects.
Because we experience contact with sensory objects, we experience sensations. These sensations are immediately perceived as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral at a pre-verbal, instinctual level. Let’s call that the sensations’ “feeling tone”.
Because our perceptions produce these low-level feeling tones, we instinctually relate to the pleasant ones with desire, the unpleasant ones with aversion, and are mostly disinterested in the neutral ones.
When our desires and aversions arise, we react with craving and need, becoming entangled and increasingly attached to having things be a certain way in order for us to be happy.
Because of our attachment to things being a particular way, in a world where we control very little and where change is inevitable, we suffer when our needs and desires are not met, and even when our desires are fulfilled, we become anxious knowing that it’s only temporarily.

This is the sequence of events that leads to our experience of dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, suffering, and unhappiness.

Of course, if dependent arising were an immutable progression, it wouldn’t be of any practical value in our quest for freedom. But there’s one key step where — with sufficient mindfulness, wise intentions, and skill built up through patient practice – we can pry open a tiny window in this sequence of events and grasp our one opportunity to consciously choose a different response.

And that window of opportunity presents itself in how we relate to our sensations. It’s telling that, looking back on what I’ve written above, aside from “pleasure”, the other word that appears in both my two-statement definition of human behavior and the Buddhist principle of dependent arising is “sensations”.

A Buddhist would say that the only place where we have the opportunity to influence our unrealistic expectations is found in how we relate to our sensations. If we can see our perceptions clearly and in real-time, as well as the pleasant/unpleasant/neutral feeling tones that they evoke, we can wake up from our unexamined habit of letting those feeling tones blossom into the reactive craving and aversion that drives most of our subsequent thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. In each moment, if we can bring mindfulness to our sensations and our reactions to them, we can consciously choose to respond in a way that is less compulsive, less harmful to ourselves and others, and better informed by our values.

When it doesn’t harm ourselves or others, pleasure is a vital part of living a fulfilling life. However, our dysfunctional habit of blindly following pleasure and running away from discomfort needs to be balanced by wise intentions like purpose, mission, and ethical values that are more complex but also more advanced in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In this sense, the traditional Buddhist monastic way of life may go a bit too far in its inclination toward banishing or vilifying pleasure, rather than seeking a middle way that allows one to wisely examine, engage, practice with, and potentially master one’s relationship to pleasure and aversion.

Note that this isn’t the same as saying that “life is just suffering” or that one has to avoid pleasure and resign oneself to pain. What I’m saying is that we can learn how to relate to our desires and aversions more skillfully, rather than being mindlessly led around by them. And that is the only path to true freedom and living a fulfilling life of integrity, wisdom, and joy, and a life that is in alignment with our innermost and highest values.

Rhonda, one of my meditation teachers back in Pittsburgh, used to liken it to commuting on a familiar route. Taking the main highway might require the least mental effort, but it might not be the best, fastest, safest, or most pleasant route. The only way to know is to cultivate the ability to choose something different: something other than what comes to mind automatically.

Then she would describe her commute home on Ohio River Boulevard. She could stay on the highway, but the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation had thoughtfully placed a big traffic sign indicating (the town of) “Freedom” with an arrow indicating the off-ramp (that’s it, above). True freedom is exactly that kind of off-ramp, giving us an opportunity to get off the limited access highway of compulsive reactivity and mindless habit.

If you want to be truly free – not satisfied with the mere illusion of freedom and the suffering that it entails — you need to be able to see beyond desire and aversion, beyond reactivity and habit. Freedom means being fully awake in every single moment, willing and able to make real, meaningful choices that are informed by one’s ethical values.

The key to success is developing the skill to be awake enough in each moment to avail ourselves of that little window in the chain of dependent arising, where our perceptions of pleasure and discomfort, if unexamined, can blossom into untempered desire and aversion. If you will excuse me hyper-extending an apocryphal truth: in terms of manifesting wisdom and living an ethical life, the price of freedom is eternal mindfulness.

Or so it seems to me.

As it spread across Asia and the rest of the globe, Buddhism changed and adapted to the local cultures it encountered; however, Buddhism’s core goal—freedom from suffering—and its core method—contemplative meditation—have perforce remained constant… until recently.

Thus it’s understandable that the 20th Century Westerners who went to Asia would come back with a unique version of Buddhist practice that ought to work better for those of us brought up in the West than the original article. The hybrid Buddhism that we inherited from them had been distilled down to the essentials that would most appeal to educated middle class White people like themselves.

That meant discarding inconvenient concepts and practices such as reincarnation, myths & deities, miracles & supernatural powers, ritual & chanting, merit-making, the more esoteric states of concentration practice, karma, renunciation, non-duality, and non-self. That’s how American Buddhism became divorced from Asian, and enabled a diminished “secular meditation” with all the uncomfortable bits filed off.

Triple productivity after 4 days of meditation!!!

That decision made some sense, as several parts of devotional Buddhism are at odds with our Christian heritage or directly contradict universally-accepted scientific laws. But the stylized meditation techniques that have gained such popularity in the American mainstream have also lost sight of the actual purpose and point of meditation practice.

The most facile example of the trendy “Mindfulness Movement” is Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program. Obviously, learning tools to cope with stress is a Good Thing, but I can’t help but be saddened by how much got lost when the goal of meditation was reduced from the “eradication of the root cause of human suffering” to “just help me get through my day”.

It’s as if everyone in Asia had been inoculated with a one-time permanent cure for diabetes, but we Americans have shortsightedly continued carrying blood testing kits and syringes filled with insulin, only treating the symptoms of the chronic disease as they arise day after day.

Another painful example is how big business and professional sports have co-opted meditation as a cheap tactic for “guaranteed career success” and “enhancing peak performance”, promoted by well-heeled management consultants and wealthy athletes like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Derek Jeter.

I’ve participated in several sittings and talks run by prominent performance-oriented meditation gurus, and always felt deeply uncomfortable. Because at their core, these programs and prescriptions are diametrically opposed to what Buddhist meditation is all about. Whether it’s vanquishing your business or athletic rivals, these techniques are designed to promote selfish desires and goals which reinforce the ego.

In contrast, Buddhism guides the meditator toward the understanding that no worldly attainments can ever provide deep or lasting satisfaction; toward relinquishment of personal desires; and toward freedom from our unexamined enslavement to the insecure demands of the ego.

All too frequently, I hear proclamations from people publicly known as meditation experts that completely set my nerves on edge. In their own literal words, meditation can: lower stress levels, help you drop all distractions that may interfere with winning, enhance peak performance, aid in the reduction of how chronic pain affects the mind, help you cope with the aftermath of a disappointing performance, strengthen your drive, boost your belief in yourself and your ability, build your athletic identity, improve sleep patterns, speed recovery time, enhance endurance, aid in proper fueling, and help control oxygen.

I’m sorry George, but the Buddha had a far more important and fulfilling goal than “speeding recovery time”, “building his athletic identity”, and “controlling oxygen”.

Through tireless self-aggrandizement and promotion, many of these business and sports meditation gurus have grown rich and famous as a result of dispensing their advice. I’m going to leave that contradiction aside however, as it’s too obviously hypocritical to waste time discussing.

Attending these completely secularized meditative self-gratification programs is kind of like taking classes at a prestigious cooking school, but disregarding everything except how to microwave a frozen burrito. It’s such a waste! Buddhism has a larger mission and so much more to offer than empty self-affirmations and greed-reinforcing self-talk.

I’ve also observed that when teachers introduce meditation practices to naïve Westerners, most of the reported short-term benefit is due to peer pressure or the placebo effect. For the practitioners I’ve known, their initial months of meditation were uncomfortable and challenging before things settled down and the practice started producing its slow, gentle results. But Americans have been sold a persistent fable that meditation will produce immediate and noticeable relief; so that’s what people report, after just a few minutes alone with their unruly internal dialogue.

For all these reasons, the majority of Americans think of—and relate to—meditation as if it were just another self-improvement project: a way to be a far more powerful, unshakeable, invincible you.

While there are undeniable positive side effects of long-term meditation practice, it’s not about building up, improving, or perfecting the self; it’s about letting go of the self, and liberation from the tyranny of the ego.

And the ultimate goal of Buddhist meditation—which the Western mindfulness movement has completely forgotten—is the freedom and well-being that results from the eradication of suffering in our lives: something many self-proclaimed “meditation experts” have a vested interest in perpetuating and profiting from.

Fourth of July is a time when Americans make a big deal about our freedoms. Freedom of religion, freedom of expression. Self-rule and freedom from oppression. Freedom of movement and career choice. Freedom to stockpile and use lethal weapons on one another. You’d think America would rank pretty high as a free and happy society.

But in reality, most Americans are neither free nor happy. And the reason is clear to see, codified for posterity right there in our Declaration of “Independence”:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

[Use of “unalienable” and lack of Oxford comma/semis are Jefferson’s. -o]

Paraphrased: We think Life is an inalienable Right. We think Liberty is an inalienable Right. And we think people are best occupied in an eternal, unending pursuit of more and better “Happiness”.

I would be reiterating a familiar refrain in pointing this out: forever chasing happiness will not lead you to the Garden of Eden; it’s better understood as a real-world manifestation of the eternal punishment of Tantalus. We’ve been taught from birth that no matter how much capital ‘H’ “Happiness” we obtain, we cannot ever be satisfied. We are compelled to eternally chase an elusive vision of future fulfillment that, by definition, cannot ever be achieved.

The mindless pursuit of more and better: do you call that freedom? I call that enslavement.

We are neither free nor happy because we are constantly cultivating unfulfilled wants, unrealized desires which society compels us are necessary before we can be happy. No matter how many “freedoms” we have, our nation’s economy and our individual lives are structured around our inability to ever achieve fulfillment. And no matter how many things we achieve or buy, our “Happiness” remains as distant as ever. This eternal hamster wheel of wanting something we don’t have is the very thing that makes us unhappy.

The Four Freedoms

You think our country’s forefathers granted you enough freedoms to be truly free? You forgot about the single most important freedom of all: freedom from want.

The solution ought to be obvious to anyone who thinks rationally about it: if the pursuit of something cannot ever be achieved, then the pursuit must be abandoned.

To be truly happy, you must give up our founding fathers’ “pursuit of Happiness” and learn how to be not just okay, but happy with what you already have, and with the world as it is, complete with all its myriad problems and imperfections. The conclusion is Zen-like in its simplicity and profundity: to gain the thing you want, you have to let go of wanting that thing, and eventually abandon the very impulse of wanting itself.

Old people grok this more readily than the young. They’ve lived long enough to have acquired and achieved great things, seen how short-lived everything they worked for really was, and realized how little lasting happiness those things produced in the long run.

I can’t say I’ve freed myself from desire, but through my Buddhist meditation practice I’ve made surprising progress. By learning how to be at peace with life as it is, rather than chasing after life as it could possibly become, I’ve been happier, less worried about my status, more secure, less jealous, and more compassionate. By reducing my wants, I’ve adopted a much more a minimalist lifestyle, become more environmentally friendly as a result, and (perhaps ironically) become wealthier by wasting a much smaller percentage of my income on ephemera that ultimately prove unfulfilling.

Most important is that I’ve been “happier”. Lasting happiness cannot be achieved by pursuing it more and more intensely, but only by abandoning the chase and allowing oneself to actually *be* happy, in this and every moment, unconditionally and without disclaimer. Or the other way around: you will never *be* happy if you define happiness as something you don’t already have that you must eternally pursue.

America can only become the land of the free and the home of the brave if Americans become aware of and reject our “unalienable Right to the pursuit of Happiness”, which is just a tricky code phrase for the unending cycle of consumption and desire that keeps us enslaved to our petty wants.

One the many lessons of meditation practice is impulse control. I don’t like that itch or that knee pain, but I’m trying to stay still right now. Can I relinquish the need to scratch or to adjust my position? What happens if I try?

In meditation, the underlying motives behind such movements—even these trivial ones—are brought into conscious awareness and examined.

And for me, these examinations have led me toward an interesting idea: that the root cause of almost all our movement is dissatisfaction with life as it is, and desire for things to be otherwise.

Humans—perhaps even all living organisms—are programmed to seek out pleasure and avoid the unpleasant.

From infancy, every movement we make is either to move toward and grab something we want, or to move away from or throw away something we don’t want. All because we have been programmed to believe that we’ll have the best life experience if we get what we want and avoid what we don’t.

And to a large degree, that works pretty well for us. We gravitate toward the people, the foods, and the music we like, and do our best to avoid those we dislike. And whether we’re infants or adolescents or adults, we usually do our damnedest to get what we want, or avoid enduring what we don’t want.

This drive is so basic and unexamined that the vast majority of what we do in life is in the service of this particular concept of “making things better”. We go through life wedded to the idea that perhaps someday we will reach some magical place where we are “happy”, needing nothing more to be fulfilled.

Few people actually think about what true happiness would look like. If we were truly happy, all that infantile want-based grabbing and throwing away behavior would be unnecessary. What would it be like to be truly happy? Wouldn’t all that motion which is impelled by desire and aversion simply cease?

And that’s what I’d like to talk about now: the idea that every volitional movement we make is an expression (or a manifestation) of our dissatisfaction with the way things are.

That in itself is an interesting insight that few people ever investigate. But if one were to take that idea seriously and allow it to actually inform our decisions, it would result in a life that is structured very differently than most of us experience and pursue in modern America.

I suppose it’s becoming a familiar trope that we cannot find happiness in the never-ending quest to change our world to better suit us, and that peace can only come through internal growth, so that our happiness isn’t dependent on forcing external circumstances to be “just right”.

But what that might look like is not so obvious at first.

So that’s one hypothesis: that if we were truly happy and at peace with life as it is, all that extraneous movement would simply stop. But that’s a very linear, American way of looking at it. What if we turned the underlying cause and effect relationship on its head?

One of the more useful techniques in modern psychology is cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is often summarized as “fake it till you make it”. Patients are asked to model attributes and practice behaviors they wish to manifest—such as confidence, strength, or independence—even if they don’t necessarily feel that way internally. The idea is that maintaining the appearance of a desired effect can be part of the cause that eventually makes the effect feel “real”.

If we approached the question of happiness and movement in the same manner, we flip the idea that “happiness causes motionlessness” idea on its head, and come up with a new hypothesis: “motionlessness creates happiness”.

Preposterous, right? Sure, the idea that sitting still might make us happier sounds ludicrous to most of us at first, but it’s actually the basis of many meditation practices. The benefits of silence and physical and mental stillness underlie the Buddhist samatha practice of calming the mind, as well as most yogic and Western derivatives.

Just ask the average Joe off the street to describe what meditation is and he’ll say ”sitting still and being quiet“. Ask him what it’s supposed to accomplish, and he’ll use words like: relaxation, stillness, calmness, tranquility, and peacefulness. The idea that stillness can somehow contribute to happiness is not as alien as our instincts tell us. In fact, it’s been around for centuries.

Practicing and strengthening our ability to be motionless can lead us toward a deeper understanding that all our grabbing what we want and throwing away what we don’t cannot make us happy. And that perhaps our best route to happiness is to practice quelling the impulses that underlie all that grabbing and throwing: learning how to relate mindfully to our desires and aversions, rather than be mindlessly ruled by them.

The hard-bitten Americans in the audience will have an instinctive reaction to this. What, do we just stop moving, then? That won’t make me any happier! Do you expect us to just give up all hope of making this a better world for ourselves and our children?

No, progress inevitably march on. But it’s vital to see that the things American culture has told us lead to happiness simply have not and will never work. We don’t have to give up on progress and development, but we do have to accept that despite how much the conditions of our lives have improved, we aren’t significantly happier people, nor will our children be.

There’s a very real limit to what scientific progress has done (or can do) for us and our species in our quest for happiness. It’s about time we tried something else! Your happiness is what’s at stake.

I challenge you to put serious effort into exploring these kinds of alternatives, rather than blindly believing the illusion that getting what we want will someday make us “happy”. If more people did so, not only would we be significantly happier with our lives, but it would constitute meaningful progress, too: arguably the greatest advancement in human social and ethical development in two thousand years!

Let’s meme a meme.

Time?: 14:06 EST
Can you fill this out without lying?: I try my best to never lie, so lying would be more difficult for me than being truthful.
What was the last thing you put in your mouth?: A homemade chicken quesadilla, followed by two 400 IU Vitamin D-3, washed down with 3 cups of Langers Berry Punch fruit juice cut 1:1 with water.
Have you ever kissed anyone named Scott?: Not that I recall.
Where was your profile picture taken?: On Rock Harbor Road going through the salt marsh in Orleans, Massachusetts during the 2010 Pan-Mass Challenge. Approximately (41.797871, -69.99278).
Can you play guitar hero?: I have never tried.
Name someone that made you laugh today?: Probably Inna.
How late did you stay up last night and why?: I went to bed early last night, shortly after 10pm, because I've underslept the past several days and can only make that deficit up on the front side.
If you could move somewhere else, would you?: I would retain my current residence, but I would also maintain a summer home on Cape Cod and a winter residence in the Caribbean.
Ever been kissed under fireworks?: Probably. Ailsa and Inna are the most likely culprits.
Which of your friends lives closest to you?: Probably Roopa.
Do you believe ex's can be friends?: I am friendly with nearly all of my exes, and it's highly probable that they would be friendly to one another, as well.
How do you feel about Dr Pepper?: Like any soft drink, it's terribly unhealthy for you.
When was the last time you cried really hard?: I don't recall.
Where are you right now?: Home, at desk.
Who took your profile picture?: An official Pan-Mass Challenge event photographer.
Who was the last person you took a picture of?: Aside from my cat Grady, I shot someone's handbag; I think it was Kaela's. And before that, someone's feet; that might have been Zeenat. And before that, Ranjeev.
Was yesterday better than today?: Today's pretty good, but it would be difficult to beat the day I had yesterday, which featured a major life development.
Can you live a day without TV?: I have lived over 16 years without a television. I'll go out to a pub to watch the NBA playoffs if the Celtics are in contention, but that's about it.
Are you upset about anything?: Being upset is an indicator of emotional immaturity and denial of responsibility for one's internal state.
Do you think relationships are ever really worth it?: They probably are, but I tend to prefer relationships which are easygoing and undemanding. Most relationships aren’t worth a lot of drama.
Are you a bad influence?: I wouldn't be the right person to ask.
Night out or night in?: Usually in. Out can be fun, with the right small group of people.
What items could you not go without during the day?: There aren't any particular items that I require every day.
Who was the last person you visited in the hospital?: Possibly Inna or maybe an uncle.
What does the last text message in your inbox say?: "up?????"
How do you feel about your life right now?: Generally quite satisfied at the strategic level, although the aging process is a bit of a challenge. At the tactical level, there's some tension, as I'm in the middle of a transition period.
Do you hate anyone?: I try not to.
If we were to look in your facebook inbox, what would we find?: Messages from recruiters. Spam. Anke's recipe for aloo mutter. A thank-you note.
Say you were given a drug test right now, would you pass?: Drug have never been part of my life, and I haven't touched alcohol in three years.
Ever been arrested?: No.
Has anyone ever called you perfect before?: Many times. I do my best to live up to that expectation.
What song is stuck in your head?: None. I've taken to avoiding music recently for precisely that reason. Although I did recently receive a pointer to Madness' "Night Boat to Cairo" video, and Madness is one of my two worst bands in the world for earworms (the other being Bim Skala Bim).
Someone knocks on your window at 2am, who do you want it to be?: Ed McMahon, with a very large check.
Wanna have grandkids before you’re 50?: Not in ten thousand years.
Name something you have to do tomorrow?: Test my bike out by doing a workout on the indoor trainer, since I just lowered my handlebars. Bring my bike down to the LBS for its five-year overhaul. Reserve a car for a Foxwoods trip. Register for the Old Ironsides 4th of July turnaround cruise lottery. Let the maintenance staff into the condo to test the fire alarms. Run the monthly backup and defrag jobs on my laptop.
Do you think too much or too little?: I find it unlikely that you'll be able to convince me that there is such a thing as too much thought.
Do you smile a lot?: A whole lot more than I used to, that's for sure.
Who was your last missed call on your Mobile phone?: Inna.
Is there something you always wear?: During the summer, I usually wear sandals, and I'm always wearing my cycling sandals while riding. I also usually wear my PMC wristband during the summer.
What were you doing 30 minutes ago?: Flipping the stem on my bike's handlebars, in order to lower them.
Did you have an exciting last weekend?: Not bad. Dhamma book club was good, and hanging out with Jay was good, too, although I probably shouldn't have eaten that entire calzone.
Have you ever crawled through a window?: Numerous times.
Have you ever dyed your hair?: Blue, red, blond.
Are you wearing a necklace?: No.
Are you an emotional person?: What are these emotions you speak of?
What's something that can always make you feel better?: Bike, ice cream, sunbeams, kitteh, money.
Will this weekend be a good one?: Probably. Dinner with Carla, and my Kalyana Mitta group, at minimum.
What do you want right now?: Wanting is a self-destructive behavior. The less wanting you do, the more satisfied you will find yourself.
Have you ever worn the opposite sex's clothing?: Of course.
Have you ever worked in a food place?: Several.
Does anyone know your facebook password?: No. Even *I* don't know my F*c*book password, as all my passwords are maintained by a password safe, and you have to go to special lengths to view them. And even if I did see it, it's unlikely I'd remember it, since it's a meaningless random string of several dozen characters and symbols.

Time for a grab bag of Buddhisty observations based on some recent readings, dharma talks, and workshops.

At a recent talk, Ajahn Geoff was asked about the Buddhist concept of Right Effort: specifically, how to cultivate the discipline to perform actions you don’t want to do, but which you know will have positive results. To my surprise, he responded by outlining my longstanding belief that you must be guided by how you will feel on your deathbed about the choice you made. I’ve mentioned this guiding view of mine in blog posts from 2005 here and 2003 here.

My belief that the brahmaviharas of metta (lovingkindness) and karuna (compassion) are very similar was confirmed by Narayan at a recent CIMC workshop. The main difference is that compassion is more specifically targeted at suffering, whereas metta is a more general friendliness toward all, irrespective of the conditions of their life.

The phrases Narayan uses for compassion practice are “May I care for your [physical] pain” and “May I care for your [emotional] sorrow”. I feel that “May I” is semantically much weaker than “I do”, and “care for” is weaker and more vague than “care about”. So the phrases that speak to me most compellingly are “I care about your pain” and “I care about your sorrow”.

While on the topic of the compassion workshop, I should mention the following. Although I am currently halfway through my intended year of intensive metta practice, my current intention is to follow that up with a year of intensive karuna practice. That’ll cover the first two brahmaviharas, but I do not plan on devoting the same time and energy to the remaining brahmaviharas of equanimity and sympathetic joy.

When someone expresses dismay with the phrase “It’s not fair!”, I have always taken glee in pointing out that “Life isn’t fair, and you’re setting yourself up to be disappointed if you expect it to be”. I have recently begun to appreciate that although life indeed isn’t fair, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have compassion for those who suffer from life’s injustices, and take action to remedy them.

The two figures on the table behind the teachers’ platform at CIMC are Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion (aka Guan Yin, Chenrezig), and Manjusri, the bodhisattva of transcendent wisdom. It seems a bit odd to have them so honored in a Theravadin meditation center, but it does underscore how relaxed CIMC is about borrowing from other Buddhist lineages.

We are often so preoccupied with planning about the future or reminiscing about the past that we aren’t paying any attention to the present moment. We must be present for our minds to process the sensory input we receive in each moment. If we are absent, one might say that we are “Out of our minds”. Are you “out of your mind”?

One of the observations in the Pali Canon is that our egos exhibit certain seemingly contradictory impulses: the desire to exist, and the desire to not exist. These can be seen, of example, in the desire to “leave one’s mark on the world”, or the parental impulse to live solely for one’s offspring’s benefit, losing oneself in something other than one’s own life. The Buddha stated quite clearly that these are not helpful preoccupations. However, many Buddhists also espouse the idea of cosmic unity: the view that we are all one entity, one living expression of universe, rather than many unique and separate individuals. To me, this seems to be just another, more politically correct manifestation of the desire to not exist. Submersion in some anonymous universal being is just as much a manifestation of the ego’s desire to find oblivion as any other human activity.

One of the ways that karma works is by one action setting up the conditions that influence one’s future state. For example, if we choose not to pay back a debt, we have created the conditions that cause others to mistrust us. Thus our bad acts indeed precipitate negative reactions from others, which impinge upon our future lives.

In “Walden”, Thoreau writes about mankind’s advancement of science and contrasting lack of progress in the ethical sphere thus: “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.” Technology is a tool that multiplies our capabilities, but it’s up to man to create something meaningful with that enhanced capability, and our philosophies haven’t advanced in any meaningful sense in the past 2000 years.

One way of looking at mindfulness is being mentally and physically present and open to the beauty in each instant of life in its fullness. If there is so much beauty and joy to be experienced in this world (and I believe there is), that raises the question of how to avoid being overwhelmed by it. At any given instant, I am presented with all kinds of sensory input and myriad potential objects of attention; so if I am to appreciate any of it fully, how do I choose what part of that experience to focus my attention on? This difficulty is compounded by the Buddhist affinity for what is called “choiceless awareness”.

One of the reasons western society is so focused on acquisition as a method of seeking happiness is the very affluence we have achieved. Consider the experience of a child going through a mega-warehouse toy store. The child is presented with thousands of wonderful things that create and fortify his sense desire. But even though his parents might give him numerous toys that far exceed what children in most other cultures would have, no parent can buy everything in the store, so the overwhelming majority of that child’s experience is being repeatedly told that they cannot have what they want. This cultivates an incessant feeling of lack, which over time solidifies into a longlasting sense of dissatisfaction, with a particular focus on acquisitiveness as the solution to life’s inherent disappointments. The scenario of a child surrounded by toys—seeking happiness from material objects they cannot have—is played out throughout adulthood as we are enslaved by our compulsive desire for the newest electronic gadgets, a sleek car, a wonderful home with the nicest television and kitchen appliances, and a trophy spouse. But ultimately it is the very profusion of consumer goods available to us that makes us feel deprived, impoverished, and unloved.

Most American adults suffer from some form of self-esteem issues. As a result, our childcare and education systems have changed to place an immense emphasis on cultivating self-esteem in our children. Today’s youth have grown up in an environment where they are not criticized, they are not disciplined, and they never face emotional hurt. However, since they have rarely if ever seen one of their peers suffering and in emotional pain, they have also never learned the skill of compassion. And even if they do see another person hurting, their own lack of trauma means they haven’t developed the ability to empathize with another person. To one who has never been hurt, the sight of another person’s suffering brings up feelings of aversion and disgust and fear rather than compassion; others’ suffering becomes something that divides and separates people rather than unites them in sympathy. By putting so much effort into raising children with a strong sense of self-esteem, we have accidentally raised a generation of youth who are self-absorbed and stunningly lacking in the virtues of empathy and compassion.

Last Saturday our dharma book club discussed a book I recommended. This post captures some of that discussion, and why I chose the book I did.

When I was first asked to pick our next book, it was pretty obvious to me what my selection would be: Alan Watts’ “Wisdom of Insecurity”. Written in 1951 by a British scholar in comparative religions, it was one of the first books in English that brought Buddhism to an American audience, including the Beat Generation. More recently, it also played a pivotal role in my own movement toward Buddhism.

Back in 2002, I decided to review my existing philosophical beliefs. In high school, I’d adopted Existentialism after reading Sartre and Camus and Ionesco in French. It had appealed to me as a typically angst-ridden adolescent, but did it still serve me as I approached 40?

Coincidentally, I had just begun blogging here on LiveJournal, so as I spent the next year plowing through Nietzsche and Sartre, I was able to document many of my thoughts along the way. One of the most important of those thoughts came from the following passage in William Barrett’s 1958 book “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy”, a book I read in January of 2003.

The Self, indeed, is in Sartre’s treatment, as in Buddhism, a bubble, and a bubble has nothing at its center. But neither in Buddhism nor in Sartre is the Self riddled with negations to the end that we should, humanly speaking, collapse into the negative, into a purely passive nihilism. In Buddhism the recognition of the nothingness of ourselves is intended to lead into a striving for holiness and compassion—the recognition that in the end there is nothing that sustains us should lead us to love one another, as survivors on a life raft, at the moment they grasp that the ocean is shoreless and that no rescue ship is coming, can only have compassion on one another.

That one somewhat convoluted reference was the first I’d heard of any commonality between Buddhism and Existentialism. Apparently, although the two philosophies began with similar assumptions—that there is no paternal creator god, that there is no inherent meaning in life, and that man has no permanent essence that survives his corporeal body—Buddhism offered something that I never got from Existentialism: a positive and ethical way of living one’s life based on those assumptions. That was the seed that got me thinking about looking into Buddhism. You can read my original comments on Barrett’s book here.

Just a few days later, I found myself browsing at a local Barnes & Noble. I’d scanned the entire Buddhist section and gotten nearly to the end of the alphabet without seeing anything that called out to me. Then I saw this tiny little paperback with an eye-searing lime green spine and the words “THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY - ALAN W. WATTS”. The cover blurbs seemed to intuit exactly what I’d spent the previous year looking for, so I immediately picked it up and blew through it.

Watts was the first author I’d read who, rather than restating the existential problem and wringing his hands, provided a rational and fulfilling way to respond to those conditions, without resorting to the self-delusion of unproven faith or its opposite extreme of pessimism and despair.

Even today, I’m stunned by the serendipity and good fortune I had to happen upon that exact book, because it was the perfect gateway to all the wisdom, development, and fulfillment that has followed. You can read my original reaction to the book here.

So that’s why I selected that particular book. It has an immense amount of personal meaning for me.

As you might expect, I was a little anxious about sharing something that personal with others, even my fellow meditators. That feeling was compounded by the long wait: three months passed between when I was asked to select a book and our discussion of it!

However, it didn’t take long to get a reaction. As soon as he learned of my selection, one of the attendees emailed back: “AMAZING selection!!!!!!! I will definately [sic] be there. I cannot express how amazing this book is to read.” Okay, that’s one solid vote of confidence!

Another one came a few weeks later. Socializing after a sitting at CIMC, one of the attendees showed me her copy of the book and mentioned that she was enjoying it. That’s two!

But as she flashed the book, its amazingly ugly lime green and purple patterned cover caught the eye of the woman who had officiated at the evening’s meditation. She recognized it immediately and also effused about it, indicating that, like me, it had played a big part in her coming to Buddhism. That really made me much more confident about the selection, since she’s a longtime practitioner who is known for managing CIMC’s “sandwich retreat”.

By the time our book club discussion came around, even the woman who hosts the group made a point of letting me know that she was enjoying the book. So I was able to go into the meeting without too much self-consciousness about it.

That’s not to say that the book received unalloyed praise. Watts’ language was both commended (in his choice of metaphors and images) and critiqued (in his tangential rants and sometimes inaccessibly complex sentence structure).

Eleven people attended the meeting, and about half had read the book, which is a bit better than normal. Let me gloss over a few of the topics that came up during the discussion.

One comment that was repeatedly made was how pertinent Watts’ words are today, even sixty years after he wrote them. He wrote about consumerism and how everyone was chasing the newest, best television. It stunned us that in 2010, we’re still being sold new and supposedly much better televisions, just as was the case back in 1951! He also anticipated our need for ever more rapid and imposing forms of entertainment. He could surely have been talking about last week in this passage:

There is, then, the feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity. In the past hundred years so many long-established traditions have broken down—traditions of family and social life, of government, of the economic order, and of religious belief. As the years go by, there seem to be fewer and fewer rocks to which we can hold, fewer things which we can regard as absolutely right and true, and fixed for all time.

We spent some time talking about how religious faith can be a comfort, but once it has been pierced by skepticism, you can’t ever restore that belief. That harkens back to my own feeling that you cannot simply decide what you believe; belief is not an object to be so simply controlled, and you can do little more than discover and perhaps indirectly influence what you believe. As one attendee put it: the challenge of Watts’ book is how to stay connected with modern reality in the absence of mollifying religious faith, without being scared.

Another big theme that people pulled out was that our feelings of insecurity are the direct result of the fact that we want security. If you want something, by definition it is something that you feel you do not have now, so the more desperately we seek security, the more insecure we feel. This was likened to the concept of the “power of attraction”, where one must be careful to cultivate the vision of having what one wants, not the wanting itself, because focusing your energy on the wanting presumably reinforces your yearning and the absence of the thing you’re after.

Our discussions also circled around the Buddhist concept of conditioned behavior, and the large degree to which our actions can be reduced to a response to the situation we are in, based on patterns of behavior that have been successful for us in the past. Where this got interesting was our realization that as dharma friends, we are each providing conditioning factors for one another, and hopefully influencing one another such that we will all make wiser, compassionate, and more fulfilling decisions in the future.

Another amusing tangent had us discussing the idea that on average, your friends are more popular than you are. This is mathematically true, because we all tend to be friends with outgoing people who are already very popular.

Obviously, the discussion was much broader than those few items, but I wanted to capture those in particular, and they’ll also give you a flavor for where we went with it. Overall, the discussion stayed pretty well on-topic, and people kept returning to the book and reading key passages aloud, since Watts’ prose is eminently quotable.

In preparation for the book club, I re-read “Wisdom of Insecurity” myself last week. After three readings, almost every single page has something highlighted on it. It’s an extremely dense book in terms of the profundity of its concepts, and I feel that although it’s only a thin 150-page paperback, one could easily base a semester’s study around it.

I wanted to highlight a few things that I got from this most recent reading that I didn’t mention in the book club discussion.

Here’s a great passage, where Watts begins by commenting on our impossible and irrational desire for permanence:

For it would seem that, in man, life is in hopeless conflict with itself. To be happy, we must have what we cannot have. In man, nature has conceived desires which it is impossible to satisfy. To drink more fully of the fountain of pleasure, it has brought forth capacities which make man more susceptible to pain. It has given us the power to control the future but a little—the price of which is the frustration of knowing that we must at last go down in defeat. If we find this absurd, this is only to say that nature has conceived intelligence in us to berate itself for absurdity. Consciousness seems to be nature’s ingenious mode of self-torture.

In other words, if we’re intelligent enough to realize the futility of our plight, we must then be nature’s way of mocking itself! When I read this section about the basic absurdity of humanity’s quest for meaning, seeking pleasure, and avoiding pain, I realized that the best way to think about life is as a Zen koan. There is no answer! And any attempt to arrive at one rationally is bound to fail. Life is a paradox; accept it and move on!

Another passage:

To understand that there is no security is far more than to agree with the theory that all things change, more even than to observe the transitoriness of life. The notion of security is based on the feeling that there is something within us which is permanent, something which endures through all the days and changes of life. We are struggling to make sure of the permanence, continuity, and safety of this enduring core, this center and soul of our being which we call “I”.

What leaps out at me from this section is the absurdity (again) of feeling that one has to prop up or defend something that we’ve defined as eternal and immutable. How ridiculous! If there is some permanent “I” within us, then what need does it have for defense? If such a thing existed, it would persist irrespective of anything we did or did not do.

Watts spends a great deal of time on the importance of living the present moment fully, and not letting desired future states obscure our ability to enjoy and be fully present with what is. The difference between someone who perpetually looks for fulfillment in the future and someone who lives for the present couldn’t be more poignant than in this passage about death:

When each moment becomes an expectation life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expectation must come to an end. While there is life there is hope—and if one lives on hope, death is indeed the end. But to the undivided mind, death is another moment, complete like every moment, and cannot yield its secret unless lived to the full.

This passage shows how the fear of death is mostly rooted in the fact that it signals the end of our ability to expect a better, more pleasant future. It shows that by a simple change of mindset, we can begin to leave this fear behind. Imagine having a relationship with death that wasn’t dominated by fear!

Then there’s this little zinger. Compare the following passages:

If it is true that man is necessarily motivated by the pleasure-pain principle, there is no point whatsoever in discussing human conduct. Motivated conduct is determined conduct; it will be what it will be, no matter what anyone has to say about it. There can be no creative morality unless man has the possibility of freedom.

That citation, which says that ethics and morality make no sense if man doesn’t have the freedom to make choices, is from “Wisdom of Insecurity”. Then:

You are deluded to assume that you are reading this of your own free will. My friend, you had no choice but to read this! Will is not the action of a being; it is the end product of a process. […] Whatever you do is just a result of complex programming.

This counterpoint is from Ajahn Brahm’s book on jhana practice, “Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond”, which I reviewed here. Ajahn Brahm subscribes to the view that free will is an illusion, and that our behavior and apparent choices are indeed fully determined by present conditions and our past conditioning. I’d love to get these two in a room and ask them to debate the topic of choice. Or maybe not…

Finally, consider Watts’ description of hell:

Hell, or “everlasting damnation” is not the everlastingness of time going on forever, but of the unbroken circle, the continuity and frustration of going round and round in pursuit of something which can never be attained.

I might clarify this definition of hell as threefold, comprised of seeking for pleasure but remaining unfulfilled, running from pain but never being able to avoid it, and looking to the future for fulfillment without ever being present at that future. As such, I think this is a perfectly apt description of many people’s lives, and a good way to understand why a lot of people find themselves frustrated, angry, self-absorbed, and suffering from existential angst.

In conclusion, I have to once again say how delighted I am with “Wisdom of Insecurity”, and how heartily I recommend it to others. It’s amusing, quotable, succinct, and very deeply profound. It impresses me as much today, after seven years of Buddhist study and practice, as it did on day one.

I am truly amazed that it was written sixty years ago, by someone who was only 36 years old. It contains an amazing amount of wisdom in a very tidy little package. Well, except for the single ugliest cover ever created by man.

Ironically, one final surprise is that all that wisdom didn’t necessarily help its author. In the ’60s, long after this book was published, Alan Watts experimented with mescaline and LSD, and became something of an advocate of marijuana. He became an alcoholic, went through three marriages, and died of heart failure at 58 years of age.

But then it is the nature of all things to change, isn’t it?

I recently finished reading Ajahn Brahm’s book “Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond: A Meditator’s Handbook”. I’ve got a lot to say about it.

The book is intended to be an accessible description of the jhanas, the most advanced states of concentration practice that Buddhists cultivate.

The jhanas are also somewhat controversial. Since they involve complete dissociation with the senses, the physical body, and the concept of self, many folks question whether the jhanas are real. The center where I practice goes to some lengths to direct students away from this kind of intense concentration practice, known as samadhi. But at the same time, the jhana states are repeatedly and persistently emphasized as the path to awakening throughout the Buddhist suttas of the Pali canon, which is why I was interested in learning more about them.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the book for me is the run-up; Ajahn Brahm spends seven chapters describing the path of practice that leads to the jhanas in a very progressive, step-by-step way. It’s really the first time I’ve seen meditation described as a linear process, rather than a bunch of diverse but unrelated practices to use at your own discretion. It’s nice to see what steps occur in what sequence along the path of increasing insight and wisdom.

And he hits it all. There’s detailed descriptions of the five hindrances, the sixteen steps of mindfulness of breathing from the Anapanasati Sutta, the four foundations of mindfulness from the Satipatthana Sutta, the feelings tones (vedena), the cycle of dependent origination, and the techniques of walking practice, lovingkindness (metta), and open awareness. He doesn’t even shy away from providing a description of what enlightenment (nibbana) is like once you get there! And all of it is related to specific steps along a documented path of developing one’s practice.

Ajahn Brahm divides that path into seven major steps.

The first step is simply to focus on the present moment, letting go of all thoughts about the past and the future. Step two is silencing the mind, letting go of thinking and the perpetual inner dialog that most people live with. The third step is to narrow one’s attention to the breath, which means giving up the awareness of input from the physical body and the five senses.

The fourth step is simply sustaining that degree of attention on the breath for a long period of time. Gradually, the doer—the person who intervenes and causes action to occur—fades into the background, allowing the knower to come to the forefront. Rather than living in a state of reacting to stimuli or being on the verge of doing something, the practitioner rests in the state of simple awareness. These first four steps are the easiest ones, and what most meditators focus on. And that’s probably as far as most practitioners take their practice.

Step five is where concentration really takes hold, and things start getting a bit farther from our normal experience, as even the awareness of the breath itself disappears.

Step six is the manifestation of the nimitta, a vision usually described as an unstable mental image of light. It’s unstable because meditators usually respond to its manifestation with either fear or excitement, which destroy the stillness of the mind the nimitta occupies. Eventually, one can resist this inclination and manifest a stable vision. Ajahn Brahm describes the nimitta as a reflection of the knower, an image of the mind itself. This is the doorstep of the jhana states.

The jhanas are the final, seventh step. When one enters the jhanas, one is no longer letting go of some thing or any mental object, but of the person doing the thinking: the observer, the knower. The doer is completely gone. That eventually includes the dissolution of the ego and an accompanying loss of control, will, sense input, thought, decisionmaking, and time. The first-person perspective falls away in favor of a broader sense of unity.

Ajahn Brahm gives such central importance to the jhanas that he describes them as the true meaning of the final step in the Buddhist Eightfold Path: right mindfulness. He also cites an example of a man who, while in a jhana state, was so unresponsive that he was rushed to the hospital and evaluated as having no brain activity and no pulse until he came out of the meditation. See what I mean about things getting a bit esoteric?

It’s no coincidence that in each of those steps I describe the meditator as letting go of something. Ajahn Brahm asserts that the whole Buddhist path is one of renunciation, culminating in letting go of everything. That process begins with a simple practice of generosity, then giving up harmful actions and speech through the training precepts; relinquishing thought, the physical body, and the five senses; then finally banishing both the doer and the knower and any sense of a separate, eternal self.

As such, he describes the main barrier to enlightenment as attachment to the body, the five senses, one’s thoughts, and the will to act; in short, the doer and the knower. These are what block access to the jhanas. While it’s easy to believe one is free of those attachments, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Concentration practice—the jhana states—are there to get you close enough to see the ultimate reality, at which point insight practice is what brings the final understanding that there is no eternal self—nor any self at all as we conceive of it—and what the implications of that realization are.

So, as you can see, after humble, mundane beginnings, Ajahn Brahm does indeed get way out there. Yet his is the most down to earth explanation of jhana practice that I’ve come across. That doesn’t make it any easier to swallow, though.

Along the way, Ajahn Brahm drops some pretty good bombshells in his prose, too. He asserts that belief in rebirth is an absolute requirement. He believes that our actions are purely the result of the conditions that preceded them, and therefore there is no such thing as free will or choice. He asserts that one of the first experiences one has as a result of jhana practice is the ability to remember past lives. He says that celibacy comes naturally, as one gradually lets go of desire. He goes so far as to say that psychic powers often come with enlightenment. Although at the same time, he points out that it is against the Vinaya, the Buddhist monastic code, to claim any particular level of enlightenment to laypeople (and that it’s also against the rules for monks to run).

On the other hand, he also provides some great suggestions and observations, as well. These include:

He advises against the common meditation practice of mental noting of what is arising, because it puts one clearly in one’s head and reinforces the knower.
He warns about how easy it is to overestimate one’s level of attainment along the path. Such overconfidence leads to more difficulties down the road, and that focus on achievements reinforces the very ego that one is trying to overcome.
He suggests that one defer all judgment of a meditation until after the meditation period, at which point it is wise to review the session and examine what came up and what one can learn from it.
He stated that restlessness arises primarily because one is not finding enough joy in the present moment. It’s a way of avoiding being present, and his prescription is to find the joy that is happening right now.
Finally, he also suggests that meditators examine their state of mind at the start of a sitting. He indicates that advanced practitioners are perfectly wise in selecting the particular meditation technique that is best suited to address their present experience.

So in the end, I have mixed feelings about the book. The introductory chapters are incredibly useful in terms of revealing the progressive nature of practice, and relating all the individual techniques to one linear path. For that reason alone, I would suggest it to longtime meditators. But while I have great faith in Ajahn Brahm’s ability to represent the jhanic states as described in the Pali canon, I retain a healthy dose of skepticism, and I will continue to be challenged to believe and have confidence in all the aspects of jhana practice that he describes.

And I have one final thought to share. Although it wasn’t brought up by the book, I did experience one revelatory insight around the same time.

Typically, we are taught that an ethical way to live is to look at other people and realize that they are just like you, with the same kind of thoughts, emotions, hardships, and aspirations. That is, they’re not just animate objects you manipulate to obtain your desired outcomes. You are supposed to cultivate compassion and empathy by realizing that everyone else you meet is just as deep and genuine and vulnerable as you are. In short, they’re as “real” as you are.

But a Buddhist might say that’s the exact reverse of the truth. The reality is that you are just as shallow, surfacy, and impersonal as everyone else appears to be. You are just an automaton, responding mechanically or instinctually to the stimuli you encounter, even though you’re convinced you’re “real”. If you look at yourself in this way, I think you’ll be much closer to the Buddhist point of view than if you force yourself to see everyone else as deep and complex.

Interesting thoughts.

I'm crossposting this. I'd originally posted it as a reply in a friend's LJ, but I'd like to keep a copy of it here.

The more I see, the more convinced I am that happiness has little to nothing to do with life conditions, and everything to do with outlook.

Happiness equates to satisfaction, I think, and satisfaction is about not having unfulfilled desires. Desire can be alleviated in one of two ways: get what it is you want, or stop wanting it.

Unfortunately, American society has this dysfunctional concept of ambition that means "never satisfied", but few people seem to have the insight to make the very basic association that "never satisfied" also means "never happy". So many people fall into that trap of "success without joy". No matter how much they get, they can never be happy, because their empty bankrupt sucking soul needs more.

To me, that's the key to understanding why some people seem to be innately happy and most people are innately unhappy, all irrespective of their lives and possessions. The answer is so simple that it's almost underwhelming: stop being so unhappy! Or, as the Buddhist would say, stop all your grasping and happiness will just happen.

The problem is, you can't tell an unhappy person that, because they can't hear it, and no amount of giving them what they desire can ever cause their restless desire to cease.

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