The path to a contented life

Emptiness (and other names)

Consider your first memory. Consider your first non-memory. Consider Emptiness of memory. Before birth, even after birth and before much conceptualisation was going on in your head, there was a world of things and people, but you had no idea.

Consider your mind after death.

The universe has qualities, we assign it qualities, before and after life, we know of none.



Unlikely existences

It is unlikely that a human is born happy, lives each moment in happiness and dies happy.

It is unlikely that a human is born sad, lives each moment in sadness and dies sad - having never seen any happiness.

Happiness and sadness define one another and exist as the crests and troughs of waves. They cannot exist independently.

The peak of the happiness wave relies on the seed of the trough drawing upon it. Sadness is known to exist only because a concept of happiness exists within it.



Common Existences - and its apparent parts

The common existence is to ride from happy to sad, and while doing so, to wish for happiness to last and for sadness to pass by quickly.




Conflict

When desire and reality clash, there is conflict. The want for happiness in times of sadness, the wish to be somewhere else other than here.



Resolution

Boil everything down to the bare facts: Life is born of emptiness and so is full and wondrous. Within this wonder are humans who, like all life, attempt to avoid pain and to seek happiness. Happiness and sadness are interdependent so cannot exist alone, one is known by the seed of the other being present. The acts of grasping onto happiness and rejecting sadness, create conflict. So, resolution is plain and clear, just somehow difficult to accept.




Life in this mode

Please note that, for example, cooking, drinking wine, and dancing to music, will seem like happiness and may well be. You’re distracting yourself though. Happiness is there in this moment if you are truly in the moment. Human though, your mind will soon wander. This moment will only be happiness if you can maintain the distractions. This method may give happiness, and such fun is not to be avoided, you must see though, that it is not a recipe for lasting happiness as it cannot be maintained.


Lost in the act of reading, you do not know of an alternate act, so you’re content.

Reading while considering what you could or should be doing as an alternative, you’re in conflict and sad.


Cooking, chopping, smelling the ingredients, you’re content.

Cooking, listening to the TV, living out an imaginary argument with your coworker, you’re in conflict and sad.


Sitting, breathing, letting your heart beat, feeling one hand touch the other, you’re content.

Sitting, wondering if you should be elsewhere, you’re in conflict and sad.




Each step in more detail

You don’t need to read this, you know first hand the truth of this as you live it. Here though we can see how others get it wrong, and learn from them as we are the same. There are no special humans, we all have the same basic traits. We seek pleasure and we seek to avoid pain.


Imagine in your own way, pulling upwards above yourself, your home, your town, your country, the ocean, the atmosphere, the planet. Down there on earth are billions of humans. You spend nearly every thought on why your life is such a way, how to prevent bad things and how to gain some comfort. Each other human does the same. We take the extremes first: The few very rich, and the vast number of very poor. The very poor are stuck facing their concern, often to get enough food, or to manage pain or loss. Their seeking and rejecting are plain to see and easy to understand. The rich are always busy. Perhaps busy doing nothing, but truly never nothing - they are funding a constant stream of distractions, distracting from sadness and attempting to extend happiness. Both parties and in truth all the billions of humans down there on earth are performing the same act. You too, you’re not remotely special or different.


Grab the most poor person and the most rich and swap their minds. The rich person will instantly suffer, the poor person (now living through the rich person's body) will be temporarily happy, and perhaps a little shocked. The poor person (living in the rich body) will be able to satisfy many needs, mainly to eat, perhaps seek medical attention, perhaps live out a fantasy or two. Then, they will feel the seed of sadness taking root. They will begin to reject that seed of sadness and seek for the next distraction that will perpetuate happiness.


The newly rich (previously poor) person seeks their next happy moment in fear that the seed of sadness will grow too much.

The newly poor (previously rich) person rejects their sadness and seeks for happiness.


Each other person on the planet does the same, though less extreme. Most average people have enough to get by, they have more today than the wealthy of years gone by. They have adequate resources to be content, but they still seek something elsewhere. Each lifeform with sense organs and some ability to select a future does the same. Plants turn to face the sunlight.


One of the most commonly shared fantasies is to be rich enough to buy enough distractions to ride the crest of the wave, to be near to the top of the happiness wave and never come down. The drive is the constant knowledge of the wave trough drawing you towards it.


Richness is of course relative. If everyone was rich, then no one would be rich. By looking into the lives of the very rich, we can see that they still seek to do, to act, to distract themselves from sadness. If asked to imagine a perfectly happy being, we do not truthfully picture a rich person, but a simple content person. True happiness is in wisdom, in being content with here and now and simply knowing that change is unavoidable.


If a sad person, say someone you love, comes to you with a story of sadness, how do you help, and what is it that brings about happiness? You help by distracting them, or providing an alternate perspective. They are happy when they have accepted or moved forward from their situation. You are never able to alter the past for them, or change the way they feel in the moment they present themselves to you, you seek to alter the next nearest moment you can. With simple problems, perhaps the next moment is nearby, with hard problems the next moment is far away, but we must arrive there.



Why read on?

The fact of the matter was stated on page one, and you agreed with it. It is one of those things so simple that we say “of course it is true” but until we feel it deeply, or recognise several times as it happens directly to us, that we don’t accept it as both true and with no alternative. We read on as we insist there is an alternative. We read on as we want to be endlessly happy. We are, for now, quite silly. It is absurd, selfish, quite normal and quite laughable.


You could well throw this book aside for two quite good and quite opposite reasons. You may throw it aside as it is not offering you a magical recipe to everlasting happiness. You could throw it aside as you’ve suddenly and deeply felt the truth of the matter. You may read on with a dogged determination that, though you sort of get the point, you want a better, less painful version of it.



Brilliantly, by persisting, you’re opening up to the bones of the matter. You’re demanding to see the deeper mechanisms and by doing so, you will see, in fact, this is true.


We are born from emptiness and return to it. Like all life, we avoid pain and seek pleasure. By wanting for an alternative to the present moment, we give rise to conflict. We are smart enough to know the resolution to this.


Assuming you’re still here, you’re just unsatisfied with this fact. Thus, proving it to be true. And now upset and more driven than ever to disprove it.


By attempting to disprove it, you will prove it. And you’ll circle a few times, perhaps many, with each lap, proving it further.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao