What Is Happiness?

This note summarizes a few points from “What Is Happiness? A Monk’s Guide to a Happy Life” by Ven. Pomnyun Sunim.

Ven. Pomnyun Sunim is a South Korean Seon monk who left home at sixteen intending to be a scientist. He founded the Jungto Society, ran a four-year stretch teaching maths part-time to keep his first Dharma centre open, and since 1996 has worked on North Korean famine relief and on the Dalit villages at Dungeshwari in India. The book is assembled from his Dharma Q&A sessions, so almost every chapter is somebody’s actual question with his actual answer. That format is the book’s real strength — nothing is abstract, because somebody in the room had the problem.

There are many threads in this book that have already turned up in

• The Courage to be Ordinary
• The Courage to be Disliked
• The Courage to be Happy
• Mattering
• Let Your Life Speak
• How a Little Becomes a Lot

I am sure there are a ton of other books out there that cover some of these ideas, or variants of them. Which is to say that the problems most of these books cover are universal, and it pays to see the patterns various authors propose for them.

Why Doesn’t Life Go According to Plan?

The first part of the book talks about some of the reasons we are attached to the way we want our future lives to pan out, an attachment that gives rise to most of the suffering.

We have expectations of ourselves that are way beyond what the true self can deliver, and when expectations meet reality, inevitably we are unable to handle the outcome and suffering follows.

The book opens with a monk who left home to seek enlightenment, moved deep into the mountains to practice undisturbed, fell ill, was told to drink milk daily, bought goats to save the walk to the village, hired a goatherd to mind the goats, needed money to pay the goatherd, married so his wife would do the chores, and ended up with children and a living to scrape — the original goal gone. Each step was the sensible fix for the step before it. That is the shape of the trap.

Most of the times when we see a problem, we go in for an immediate fix and do not bother to think about whether the immediate short-term easy fix is indeed the right way to go. A pause and revisiting the main reason for the problem in the first place, and the reason for us experiencing the feeling, is a great opportunity to listen to our true self. Maybe the problem is pointing to a closed door, in the words of Let Your Life Speak , and hence it is the right thing to listen to and enter in to any of the doors that would have opened up. By immediately jumping to fix the issue, we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity that life presents us to listen to it. The author’s own version of this: you always have two options — live by the situation you now find yourself in, or return to the path the moment you realise you have deviated from it.

There is always a time-lag between cause and effect: the author provides a great example of the lag between the shortest day of the year at the winter solstice and the coldest day, to show that our actions take time to bear fruit. Our impatience and our fixation on immediate results go against the basic nature of how the world works. Hence whenever we come across an unpleasant outcome, we may mis-attribute its cause. It could be the result of past karma coming to fruition now. Similarly, when we put in some effort, it does take a while before you can see the results, and we must have the patience to wait it out.

We should also examine the greed that we might have in terms of getting results, vis-a-vis the effort that we have put in. We might be expecting spectacular results for meagre efforts: this could be a result of many self driven factors or environmental factors. Life offers us many opportunities to listen to this tendency of ours and be aware of them. By acknowledging that our efforts are not commensurate with the desired result, we can peacefully revisit our skills, our assumptions, learn from others and keep doing the task again. This attitude is far better than berating ourselves with criticism, self-pity, or having an unpleasant outlook about the people around us. Neither serves any purpose.

The author gives this distinction a name. Greed is putting in 30 percent of the effort and wanting the result that only 100 percent would earn; when it fails it blames the system. Aspiration is the child learning to ride a bike — it expects to fall, examines the obstacle, adapts and tries again, and feels no despair even if it eventually gives up. Letting go of greed is not giving up on achievement. It is swapping greed for aspiration.

A nice analogy given by the author is the pile of rotten rubbish. Holding on to past injuries, past regrets, past anger is like holding a pile of rotten rubbish. Someone offending us is like a stranger handing us a pile of rotten rubbish. If it were real rubbish, we would refuse it or throw it away. In real life though, we hold on to it tightly, even rummaging through its contents, for the rest of our lives. Letting it go is the way to be. This one is from the preface, and it is the image the whole book hangs off.

There is a companion image for the same idea. A man screams that the firebrand in his left hand is burning him. Told to let go, he asks how. He is not asking because he does not know how — he is asking because he does not want to. So he is told to move it to the other hand. His face brightens. Soon the right hand burns too. Shifting a problem from hand to hand buys momentary relief and lets you keep the attachment; only dropping it ends the burning.

The essential takeaway of this part is that life will not go according to plan for a ton of reasons. However each one of us has the power to choose the response that makes us at peace with the outcome and march on.

We suffer not because what we wish for doesn’t happen but because we believe that it should.

If we let go of our insistence on everything going our way, and deal wisely with the circumstances as they are, happiness will naturally follow.

You can be mentally healthy only when your self-image corresponds to your real self, when you understand the reality of yourself and accept it.

Habits Form Feelings

This section of the book addresses some of our feelings that we have in our daily lives that might give rise to suffering. Likes and dislikes: who doesn’t have them? We like something and we dislike something — this can range from the food we eat, the dress we wear, the way we commute, the way we work, the way we behave. It is natural for someone to have a preferred way of living and there is nothing wrong with it. The problem arises when we start viewing them as truth. As long as we are comfortable with the assumption that our likes and dislikes are a result of karmic consciousness, we tend to appreciate each one’s likes and dislikes and hence are less judgmental about it.

Another nice analogy provided to understand good and bad feelings is the smell of soybean paste stew: the same person may drool at it and feel nauseous at the smell of curry. One must remember that the stew itself is what it is. The feelings originate within us. It is not inherently wrong to have likes and dislikes, but it becomes a suffering when we are enslaved to it.

Anger is another feeling that is a common human tendency. It is natural that such feelings arise within us. Some of us bottle them up inside, some of us vent them out. The author is of the view that anger is a tool that one reaches for — the situation that gave rise to your anger is neutral. It is what it is. If you instead look at the situation as it is and examine the reason attentively, you are far less likely to reach for anger as the tool. Investigating the root of your emotion removes the fuel. Without the tinder, the spark dies. By introspecting on the anger, it is likely that you will realize there was no need for anger in the first place.

The author is blunt about what the fuse actually is: anger is the subconscious belief “I am right and they are wrong”, and there is no absolute yardstick that makes it so. Venting expands the anger outward — you lose to the other person and to yourself. Suppressing turns it inward as stress and eventual illness. Both are the same judgment; only the expression differs. Observing is the third path.

If we are suffering from regret, it is a telling sign that we are clinging to those feelings rather than looking at them, learning from them and moving on. Be it regret or anxiety, they give rise to suffering because of our refusal to let go of events in the past, or of events that might arise in the future. The author separates regret from repentance: regret is hating yourself for a mistake, and it comes from secretly thinking you are the sort of person who does not make them. Repentance is noticing the mistake, resolving not to repeat it, and moving on.

The wounds themselves turn out to be memories rather than events. A woman abandoned by her mother still weeps decades later — what makes her weep is not the abandonment but the memory of it, replayed. The brain mistakes the imagery it creates for something happening now. We lock ourselves in a dark cave and watch the same clip again. Redirecting attention to the here and now stops the projector.

The section also touches upon inferiority and superiority feelings that arise within us, and it inevitably leads to unease. The path is to realize that all beings are different. Again, an Adlerian idea here — that relationships should be horizontal and we are all walking on flat land.

The title of this part is doing real work, and it is the part I skimmed past on the first read. Feelings arise, stay, change and disappear — they have no substance, and expecting yours or anyone else’s to hold still is what hurts. Underneath the feelings are habits, which sit in the subconscious, which is why resolutions made by the conscious mind do not last three days. Habits were acquired, so they can be changed; it just takes a long time and steady effort rather than a decision.

Living with People Who Hold Different Opinions

Interpersonal relationships are bound to be discussed in a book on happiness, as we are all living in a community and most of our interactions might give rise to suffering. Adler goes on to say that all problems arise from interpersonal relationships and so does all the joy. The author goes as far as the first half — one chapter is literally titled “All Conflicts Stem from Relationships” — but he does not make the claim about joy. What he offers instead are ways to be in a community, or in a relationship, and healthily coexist rather than suffer.

• Most of us want our loved ones to behave in one way or the other based on our internal standards. Instead of acknowledging we are all different, we want them to align to our likes and dislikes. This is bound to cause suffering
• Soybean metaphor: all look the same, but when examined closely they look different. Put them beside red beans and they start looking similar again. So the fact that some things are the same or dissimilar is a subjective feeling in that sense
• Dropping the I am right, you are wrong judgment is one of the ways to bring harmony to any relationship
• A happy marriage is not built on material goods like a house, a car or status, but on the willingness to adjust and give up half of your own rights to accommodate your spouse
• No one person has everything. A knife is chosen for being sharp and then blamed for not being soft like cotton. Wanting a partner who is intelligent, gentle, high-earning, good-looking and a natural parent is shopping for a cure-all elixir
• Allowing children to make mistakes is the best way for them to learn. Providing a sanitized environment might be doing more harm than good to your children
• Dependence is the seed of resentment. Depending on someone is handing them one end of a rope and asking them to pull. Real love is giving while remaining independent
• If you approach every relationship not from a give and take perspective, but think of it as an act that gives you joy, then any form of relationship is going to give you tremendous joy. When a request comes in and you do it so that it gives joy to you, you help someone, you raise a kid, you work on helping a team — if everything you do is from the perspective of “you deriving joy”, then it does not matter what the outcome is, or whether the other person reciprocates. You are always happy

We Need to Revise the Definition of Happiness

This section of the book takes on the popular feeling of happiness prevalent among many: that success in the external world leads to happiness. The author starts off by saying that we must radically change such yardsticks of happiness that depend on a combination of internal and external factors. We might be chasing a particular benchmark because we might be running a race that our true self does not want to run. We might be wearing someone else’s mask, someone else’s dream, and running headlong without realizing that our own goal might be very different from what we are trying to accomplish.

One of the common threads between this book and previous books that talk about Adler’s philosophy is that happiness can be found right away by focusing on the now. This is repeated in so many books that it is worth giving this habit a kick in one’s life. Whatever you are doing at any point in time, if you focus only on that activity, then you are automatically transported into a being that is devoid of past regrets or future anxieties.

Also, understanding that desire is like a burning log. Every time a desire is fed, it comes back larger — walk to school once by car and walking stops being acceptable. Which is why the satisfaction never arrives: the appetite grows faster than the supply. The author splits wants into three levels. Needs — food, shelter, warmth — are a basic right, and society must guarantee them. Desires are relative wants driven by comparison, with no natural ceiling, so they have to be restrained. Greed is the excessive want that harms both self and others, and must be let go of by the individual and regulated by society. Eating when hungry is not greed; eating when full is.

The idea that we must actively consider ourselves and society is something that comes up in a lot of books. The author elaborates on Jari-ita, which means benefiting oneself is the same as benefiting others. The analogy given is that of flowers and bees: the flower gives the bee nectar, the bee carries the pollen that lets the flower bear fruit, and neither is sacrificing anything. Helping others is actually the direct path to your own personal fulfillment.

The seed and the field is a separate analogy, doing a different job. Your personal practice is the seed; society is the field. Sow good seed in gravel and 2 percent sprouts; sow it in fertile ground and 98 percent does. So happiness is never purely an inner achievement — the individual and the society are the two wheels pulling the same cart, and working on only one of them is why so much self-improvement goes nowhere.

There is also a sharp little model of why zero-sum success rots. One hunter catches one rabbit a day; two hunters working together catch three. Each has a right to one. Wanting between one and two is desire. Wanting all three is greed — and the hunter who was cleaned out simply refuses to hunt with you tomorrow. A success built on somebody else’s sacrifice is a pyramid that crumbles from the bottom.

One thread that summarizes this entire section — life is not a competition.

Practice Being Happier Today Than Yesterday

• Letting go of judgments: human conflicts arise when we impose binary right vs wrong yardsticks onto simple differences
• Insightfulness is the wisdom of seeing the whole. The blind men each touch one part of the elephant and call it a pillar, a snake, a wall — one fixed angle is bias, the totality is insight. We mistake our biases for our convictions
• For true reconciliation, the stronger or the more privileged party must take the initiative to make concessions
• Living with a “giving mindset” instantly makes you feel spiritually wealthy and grateful, regardless of your material assets
• The 80/20 rule: spend 80% of your time on personal, work and family responsibilities, and reserve the other 20% for helping others
• Expecting to become happy only after changing environments is a delusion

Principles Map

A map of the book’s five parts, and where each of them meets Adler, Palmer, Wallace and Zimmer.

Flipbook of the main ideas

Takeaway

The book is extremely well written and the main ideas can easily be understood. The trick is to internalize the principles and put them in to practice. That is the hard part. Time and effort wise, well worth a read.