Our zendo group (sangha) recently discussed a koan story about a lady who heard a lecture from a wise teacher about how one might find \u201ca Buddha of light\u201d in one’s mind and heart, an infinite enlightenment within one’s own body, a light that would make everything you encounter seem to glow. So, the woman takes this to heart and a few days later she has a religious experience while washing a pot. Everything started to glow for her. So she ran over and found the great teacher and told him about it. He tried to deflate her a bit by asking if the smelly pit beneath an outhouse would also glow for her. She slapped him and called him an old fart (just to play off the teacher’s eschatalogical theme, I guess). He got a laugh out of that. End of story.<\/p>\n
Turns out that all of this has something to do with happiness. Or so said the guy who wrote the book that we are studying, a Zen teacher named John Tarrant<\/a> (book entitled \u201cBring Me the Rhinoceros\u201d). Roshi Tarrant’s challenges his readers by asking \u201cAre You Afraid of Happiness?\u201d He sums it up by saying \u201cwhen you are not afraid to forget who you are, life in the kitchen or life in the office might contain huge and overwhelming happiness [assumedly, one’s life in the smelly outhouse might also qualify . . . just to push this koan’s gastro-eschatology to the limit!] . . . when you are not afraid of your own happiness, you don’t get in its way\u201d.<\/p>\n Happiness is an interesting word. The more you think about it, the less you understand it. If you try to define it, you lose it. If you try to \u201cpursue\u201d it, as the Founding Fathers gave us a right to do, you are probably in for a lot of frustration and disappointment. How do you pursue something that you really don’t know how to define? Something that appears to be defined by society, but when you get there you feel let down, as the rich and famous often tell us? Happiness is sort of a \u201ckoan\u201d in itself, just as maddening a concept as the \u201csound of one hand clapping\u201d or \u201cyour face before you were conceived\u201d. (Or the guy who always speaks lies who tells you that he always speak lies; which is another lie OK, but only because it in itself is a truth . . . or was a truth? Hmmm . . . ) <\/p>\n Tarrant basically says that happiness can find you if you stop chasing yourself, stop building up an \u201cunhealthy\u201d ego focused on your own happiness (especially if you are using those social standards of power, wealth and fame, throwing some sex, youth and beauty into the equation too). Fine; this is the old lesson of learning to let go, stop chasing your object of desire. <\/p>\n But what happens then? Would you then become permanently \u201chappy\u201d by not wanting to be happy? And even if that gambit worked, would you truly want to be happy all the time? Or is it better to have some unhappiness interspersed between bouts of happiness? And if so, is that a state of \u201ctrue happiness\u201d? I.e., does pure happiness cause or require unhappiness (but not so much as to cause neurosis, misery and depression)? Or would even a \u201cbalanced mix\u201d of happiness and unhappiness get boring? For life to be real, do we have to face the true \u201cpit of dung\u201d, the real possibility that all is black, that happiness is just a cruel illusion? (Along with Heaven, Nirvana, and \u201cEnlightenment\u201d . . . ) <\/p>\n Tarrant seems to retain his faith in \u201chappiness\u201d, with a Zen back-door approach to it. I’m not sure if being \u201cafraid of happiness\u201d is really the problem; what the hell could happiness really be, that is more the problem here. <\/p>\n You can have fun trying to think about all this too much \u2013 but you won’t be rewarded with happiness for finally achieving the right answer. Hey, that’s what koans are about (or not about). You don’t crack a koan by grokking it. You just have to live life and try to appreciate just being alive, nothing too much more. If you can dump \u201chappiness\u201d and end the pursuit thereof (without trying too hard at it), maybe it will all make more sense. <\/p>\n Well . . . one other thing about happiness that I will throw in here. And that regards the shrink industry. I’m talking about therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, ACSW’s, those people. We have a few of them in our zendo, and a lot of their fans and customers. Quite a few people I’ve spoken to think that shrinks are really necessary to address any complex personal problem. Obviously, I don’t agree. Not to say that psychological therapy is totally spurious; it certainly is necessary to identify serious disorders (schizophrenia, autism, chronic depression, etc.) and may well do some good in helping people deal cope with terrible shocks (including soldiers returning from battlefields with PTSD, children who are raped, etc.). <\/p>\n But as to the success of therapy in dealing with emotionally dysfunctional situations, in dealing with \u201cunhappiness\u201d in relationships, there I have my doubts. Shrinks may have wonderful paradigms of how the brain and mind works and how behaviors are driven; but as to changing any one person’s mind states and behavior towards more positive states, well . . . The main problem is an informational one, a question of what a shrink can really know about a person that she or he is trying to treat. (I guess that makes it a problem of epistemology, a word which I have sometimes confused with eschatology, which was serendipitously mentioned earlier!) How can a shrink really judge a patient, if she or he is relying almost entirely on what the patient says to him or her in a 50 minute session? Is that really the patient, or a picture that the patient is painting specifically for the therapist? Does a series of 50 minute interviews really tell the therapist who that patient is? <\/p>\n Psychologists and ACSW’s hardly ever do any \u201cfield research\u201d on what the patient is like in his or her day to day life. (Marital therapy is a bit more grounded in that the therapist actually sees the couple interacting; but still, interacting with the therapist in the picture, which cannot help but distort the picture). And yet, people go to shrinks and pay big money so as to tell them a story and thus have a \u201cprofessional\u201d take their story seriously. Who knows just how that story stacks up against day to day reality. <\/p>\n I’ve had some well intentioned people in my zendo tell me that I shouldn’t let a close relative of mine confide in me with regard to the problems with his \u201csignificant other\u201d (no, it’s not a gay thing; but almost as complex, actually). They told me that I should refer that relative to a therapist, and go see a therapist myself to talk about my talks with my relative. Obviously, I did not follow up. I don’t think that we would all have more \u201chappiness\u201d if I were to do that (except for the shrinks who I would be writing checks to). <\/p>\n Again, shrinks can and do help people in extreme distress, plus those with behavioral dysfunctions driven by brain imbalances (chronic or acute). But as to helping people with otherwise functional brains to find happiness in their relationships (and most importantly, in their relationship with themselves) . . . I think it’s best to admit that shrinks don’t know what happiness is any more than anyone else (and neither do Zen teachers, with all their \u201cenlightenment\u201d jive, know what it is about). Perhaps the best thing a shrink could tell someone seeking to be happy in their love life or work life or family life (or whatever life) is that to seek happiness is to guarantee that you won’t actually BE happy (unless by accident, when you’re not looking). <\/p>\n You cannot \u201cfind\u201d happiness (or \u201cenlightenment\u201d either, for that matter). If the shrink told you what I just wrote, at least you’d get a word of wisdom in return for your $100 per hour. The concept of happiness, along with other great ideas such as truth and God and beauty, is a very complex and convoluted koan (oh, and don’t forget Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, where Robert Pirsig tried to turn the word \u201cquality\u201d into a koan, at the cost of his own sanity). A good dose of humility is recommended when standing before \u201chappiness\u201d, and before deciding to \u201cpursue\u201d it \u2013 including pursuit of a \u201chealthy, happy mind\u201d with the aid of a professional psychological therapist. <\/p>\n P.S. — Again I repeat the caveat that I am speaking here mainly about disappointments and broken hearts and he-said \/ she-said’s; and not about bipolar mood swings and chronic depression and other major and self-destructive dysfunctions; for those, go see that shrink!<\/p>\n P.P.S. — And in case you wondered . . . yes, John Tarrant, the Zen happiness guy, has a doctorate in psychology and practices psychotherapy. What a surprise. And as the teacher-leader of various Zen groups, Tarrant has been accused of sexual indiscretions with his students. A Zen teacher exploiting his students? Oh wow, another huge surprise [NOT<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our zendo group (sangha) recently discussed a koan story about a lady who heard a lecture from a wise teacher about how one might find \u201ca Buddha of light\u201d in one’s mind and heart, an infinite enlightenment within one’s own body, a light that would make everything you encounter seem to glow. 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