If I am not happy in this moment, this means I am seeing happiness as: a) something that will happen in my future, or b) something that happened sometime in my past. Hence, my thoughts then are in the future and in the past, and even if there is something in my present that could be pleasant, that could lead to or add to happiness--the patina of sunlight on the skin of an orange, the cool of a breeze against my cheek--my thoughts are somewhere other than here and I will miss the experience being offered to me. And if all I do is to pursue happiness, this then becomes my reality: the pursuit of happiness, rather than happiness itself. A parable:
A businessman on a fishing vacation, seeing a fisherman lazing away, asked him if he had no work to do. The latter replied that he had already caught his day's stock of fish. The businessman was aghast. He said, "Show some enterprise. Catch some more. In fact, if I were you, I would expand the business, buy a large trawler, start exporting." "What then?" asked the fisherman. "You could make a lot of money." "What then?" "Then you could afford to relax once in a while like I am doing now." "But that's what I was doing anyway," said the fisherman. from The Science of Enlightenment by Nitin Trasi
Happiness may be found nowhere but in the present moment, and with nothing other than what is here now. It is not in the future, it is not in the past; and even if it did happen to reside in one of those places, I will never know it, because I never will be anywhere other than here in the present moment, no matter how much I may think of elsewhere.
Today I will be here and be now and find one small thing that is charming about where I may find myself.  Thongs, Studio City
All material copyright Jeff Kober |
