“O’ happiness darling, spare me a thought”
Happiness in the Japanese culture
Starting our exploration from the country of the rising sun.
Japan has a happy Constitution, Article 13 of which states, “(People’s) right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness shall, to the extent that it does not interfere with the public welfare, be the supreme consideration in legislation and other government affairs.”
The notion of “Happiness” also has a joyous mythological origin, in the pleasurable sexual congress of two beautiful young virgin deities, Izanagi and Izanami, who meet and court like shy teenagers and spawn the myriad Japanese islands. A rollicking set indeed are Japan’s gods and goddesses. Amaterasu Omikami, the sun goddess, retreats briefly into a cave, plunging the world into darkness — but it’s just a passing sulk. Hearing merry laughter, she peeks outside to see what’s going on and finds the deities enjoying a lewd dance performed by one of their number. How can she stay angry in such company? She has shone brightly ever since.
Beautifully knit creed that cherishes the very concept of happiness for which it dazzles even the Gods. However, trying to clarify this term may pose a bit of a problem since we’re not fully capable of untangling its mysteries and revealing its face. So What is happiness? We seem to know it when we feel it, but a definition is elusive. Is happiness boisterousness? Gaiety? Quiet contentment? Resignation? Religious awakening? Freedom? Security? Prosperity? Love? Sex? A feudal lord’s favor? Death in battle?
‘Nothing but Dews’
Buddhism came to Japan from India via Korea and China circa A.D. 500, bringing with it a taste of dust and ash. “This world” is empty, say Buddhists; happiness is illusory; cherry blossoms, achingly beautiful, bloom only to fall.
“We go, we stay, alike of this world of dew, We should not let it have such a hold upon us.”
Of course we shouldn’t. “The shining Genji,” hero of court lady Murasaki Shikibu’s 11th-century classic “Tale of Genji,” is quite right. But beauty, besides being beautiful, is a snare and a delusion. Women, wine, music, poetry, the mist, the moon, the flowers of spring, the leaves of autumn — their treacherous beauty binds us to “this world of dew.” We forget that it is dew and cling to it as though it were real; meanwhile, the only real happiness — “leaving the world” by taking religious vows and becoming a monk or a nun — passes us by.
It passed Genji by. Magnificently handsome, preternaturally gifted in all the arts, inexhaustible and irresistibly attractive as a lover — happy, one would think, if anyone was — he remained in “this world” to the end, his sorrow deepening with the passing years.
‘I Shall Descend Like A Fallen Star’
Another fundamental aspect of happiness in this magnificent culture, is that of the warrior’s.
“Dear parents: Please congratulate me. I have been given a splendid opportunity to die. This is my last day . . . I shall fall like a blossom from a radiant cherry tree.”
The kamikaze (divine wind) suicide pilots of the dying days of World War II wrote the final chapter of Japan’s bewildering, age-long courtship of death. The story is rooted deep in the misty past but acquires form with the emergence of bushido, the way of the warrior. Many are those that expressed their rejection of the nobility of the sacrifice for the sake of a greater cause but how well they would have understood a warrior-poet of a forgotten age, a kamikaze pilot of the Seven Lives Unit who, boarding his suicide plane, in the ecstasy of impending death on the very threshold of life at age 22, wrote, “If only we might fall / like the cherry blossoms in the spring — / so pure and radiant!”
The combatant’s philosophy of happiness is also deeply noted in the samurai’s life values. The great 14th-century guerrilla warrior Kusunoki Masashige, having unsuccessfully defended a lost cause and about to disembowel himself in the ritual samurai manner known as seppuku, or harakiri, professed only one regret: that he had only one life to sacrifice for the Emperor. He wanted seven, he said, and “seven lives” became a prominent slogan among the kamikaze pilots half a millennium later. For them as for him, the greatest mortal happiness lay in sacrificing one’s life for the divine Emperor.
Far from putting an end to one’s life serving one’s ideals and morals, one can observe the manifestation of happiness in totally different lights. One of which the life of a samurai filled with wisdom of a long-forgotten age for a samurai, ideally, was supposed to smile only three times in his life — when he was born, when he married and when he had his first son. We may doubt whether he alone among mortals was born smiling. That leaves two smiles. The samurai’s happiness, it would seem, was the happiness of being above happiness. This concludes the felicity that spurs from the bliss of living, loving & the creation of life since to some happiness means not being trapped by worldly values but finding a transcendental serenity apart from the world, but to others it’s the very notion of living …
Another crucial point one might consider is the fact that the novelist Junichiro Tanizaki (1886–1965) wrote after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 destroyed much of Tokyo and killed 100,000 people, “I felt a surge of happiness which I could not keep down. ‘Tokyo will be better for this!’ I said to myself.” Maybe happiness is not always nice, maybe that’s why graver spirits are perennially suspicious of it.
And so, joy and sorrow may not be oxymoronic terms, that might be just our own penchant to separate and categorize things, to create both the glorified, noble and very-sought side, then the wicked, wretched one … But if we look further, if we gaze far beyong good and evil we might find something even greater than what our deep-rooted beliefs are built upon and find the fragile aspect of our fantasies and complex imaginations that need vile deeds to find themselves among the unlimited fabric of the universe.
Happiness And The Dragon
As any invaluable treasure, happiness too shall be a final destination guarded by an almighty deity, the final boss one may say making it the one true wish but one that’s seemingly impossible to flourish.
In the stories we tell our children before going to bed, or even the ones we enjoy while camping, they too are full of heroic yet arduous deeds dreaming of happiness that never fades : an audacious hero receives the call to embark on a journey and heeds the call of his people, slays the dragon and marries the gorgeous princess and then live happily ever after… He claimed it, his happiness that is … a happiness nailed after crossing the wide lands, gaining experience, going through hardships and trials to finally fight bravely a live-or-die battle with the dark side… So even in our wildest imaginations we cannot picture something as grotesque as happiness to be easily attainable, and commonly achieved. Only those courageous enough to face the challenge are worthy of the guidance it entails and the reward we all crave. Achieving it may be hard, but not impossible for the dark side never prospers and the world doesn’t come to an end, we don’t travel across the world and fight to our hearts content, we may and will face adversities, losing invaluable things we hold dear but we shall never stand still, always marching forward. To adapt is to survive and to survive is the greatest of pleasures since there is always a happy moment, it may not be a straight forward path, but in turns and steeps it resides “ For winter comes and winter goes and summer comes behind it”.
This may also be eminent through various epochal works of art… Kyu Sakamoto, in his iconic song “I look Up when I walk “, he repeatedly utters the words “Happiness lies beyond the clouds, happiness lies above the sky”, metaphorically picturing Happiness as a flower on a high peak that we all should aspire it but none shall pluck it or attain it, the holiest of symbols, the greater goal but the most strenuous and formidable of a quest.
Happiness in western philosophy: The genius Of Nietzsche And the Race To Happiness
Satisfaction Should Not Be Your End Goal
The idea that happiness-maximization regarding Happiness is the criterion one should use in deciding what to do and how to act has probably been the most popular ethical view throughout history.
In opposition, Nietzsche insists that happiness should not be your goal.
For example, in his magnum opus — Thus Spoke Zarathustra — his protagonist declares:
“Do I strive after happiness? [No,] I strive after my works!”
And in Twilight of the Idols, he explicitly states that:
“Man [should] not strive after happiness.”
At this point, any philosopher worth his salt asks: “But what exactly does Nietzsche mean when he says these things?”
These passages advocates the form happiness takes in Nietzsche’s ideology, which is satisfaction and contentment.
While the general view sees happiness as the highest good, Nietzsche thinks that having such feelings of satisfaction as a goal is rather a base thing. Evidentally, Nietzsche is taken to have held the stronger opinion that insofar as one is feeling satisfied, one’s life is not a success.
That’s a position worth investigating.
“Happiness is the feeling that power increases — that resistance is being overcome.” — Nietzsche
Nietzsche argued that happiness is not found by default, but is achieved as the result of hard work.
One has an unsatisfied desire, works to satisfy the desire and experiences pleasant feelings of desire-satisfaction as byproduct when the goal is reached.
And this rhythm never ends: whatever destination we reach, there is no such thing as happily ever after.
We cannot withdraw from the cycle of dissatisfaction → labor → goal-achievement and choose to simply stay happy.
Nietzsche equals attempts to do so with a “longing for a land without homeland” and states:
“I am bitterly opposed, to all teaching that look to an end, a peace, a ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’. Such modes of thoughts indicate fermenting and suffering.”
For Nietzsche, this concern for a peaceful, unconditioned happiness is an expression of flight, of weakness, because it implies that you stop wanting that some change obtains and hence are no longer willing to fight for it.
Nietzsche saw that when these feelings of happiness are your direct goal, you’ll stop doing the hard things, which causes you to end up losing your happiness in the long run: aiming at feelings of satisfaction in fact drives you away from real happiness.
Conflicted Balance : Feeling Good vs Struggling Well
There’s seems to be something right in Nietzsche’s idea that there is no happiness ever after, because, having achieved such a peaceful ‘all is well’ state of mind, we would soon find ourselves craving even more ambitious statuses higher than we ever thought.
Thus, paradoxically, to stay happy, sometimes we need to embark on something that might entail a temporary loss of happiness. We cannot opt out of the game: if we never risk losing, we’ll lose for sure. Only those who face the challenge are worthy of the guidance afforded by the countless trials and to attain the invaluable enlightenment it entails.
For Nietzsche, if we try to opt out of this fight — and just be happy with it all — we are foolishly trying to escape from the contingency that is the very essence of happiness and refusing to play this game robs our lives of challenges that render our lives fulfilling and colourful.
If feelings of satisfaction would be our guide for deciding how to act, such meaningfulness would be severly lacking and ignorance shall be our demise.
But on the other hand, Nietzsche underestimates the value of such feelings. After all, pleasant feelings play a more important role in our lives than as a mere byproduct of accomplishing something meaningful
The Untold Ingredient
Let’s pull it all together.
The secret ingredient to happiness is to risk losing it.In the long term, rejecting the possibility of unhappiness guarantees unhappiness.
If we are happy, to stay happy, we need to keep playing, to keep exposing ourselves to the possibility of losing. Serendipity is in play and through exposure may you stumble upon a brief passing state of mind.
And how do we become happy in the first place?
I’m afraid Nietzsche can’t help us here. In his posthumous writings, he confesses:
“What must I do to be happy? That I know not.”
One can witness the inability of associating a meaning to happiness, even for Nietzche, after postulationg and assertively expressing his thoughts, finds himself concerted and helpless to truly believe in his own ideals and thus, our wishful chase shall bear no fruits, and our constant endeavour to grasp what’s beyond us remains an obsession towards what truly haunts our meaningless fervour.
In the end, one can say that to each his happiness, it may vary from an individual to another, however most if not all, would agree that “astray” is precisely where happiness lay. Ruin, too, even death —
