Chuang Tzu
(interpreted by Thomas Merton)
I cannot tell if what the world considers “happiness” is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change direction. All the while they claim to be just on the verge of attaining happiness.
For my part, I cannot accept their standards, whether of happiness or of unhappiness. I ask myself if after all their concept of happiness has any meaning whatsoever.
My opinion i sthat you never find happiness until you stop looking for it. My greatest happiness consists in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness: and this, in the minds of most people, is the worst possible course.
“Perfect joy is to be without joy.”
If you ask “what ought to be done” and “what ought not to be done” in order to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have an answer. There is no way of determining such things.
Yet at the same time, if I cease striving for happiness, the “right” and the “wrong” at once become apparent all by themselves.
Contentment and well-being at once become possible the moment you cease to act with them in view, and if you practice non-doing (action without idea), you will have both happiness and well-being.
