Reaching utmost happiness

Is there such a thing as reaching utmost happiness? Or is there not? . . . What should we be doing, what should we depend upon, what should we avoid, what should we situate ourselves in, what should we approach, what should we depart from? What should we delight in, what should we abhor? . . .

I don’t know: is there anything that is really good, or isn’t there?

Nor do I know whether what the ordinary people nowadays do, what they find their happiness in, is really happiness or not. (Zhuangzi 144-5)

Honestly, I feel too inadequate to address any of these questions with any degree of certainty. This is, however, the path that I’ve set myself on, so I will give it my best try and accept the outcomes.

But before we begin, we out to call things by their true names. I understand that there are presumptions in that, presuppositions pointed out in the very questions above—but we have no choice. We humans require names and labels in order to think about and discuss things. And so let us talk about “happiness” and its possible definitions.

What might “happiness” mean? Momentary pleasure? A bump of dopamine? How about a sense of meaning, purpose, and significance? Contentment? The thrill of victory or of attained desires? And do we measure these singly or across time? How much time? A whole lifetime or just a phase of one?

As you can see, defining happiness is not so easy. The best we can do with the questions above is split them into two emergent categories: attainment versus contentment; or, in other words, happiness with fulfilling desires versus happiness with having that which is. It is a matter of shifting the self and the world to conform to desire or of shifting desire to conform to the self and the world. The Zhuangzi delineates between these two opposing views as well:

I notice that when ordinary people consider something happiness, they all throng after it in a mad dash, so definite and certain, like they can’t stop themselves. And yet they all continue to call this happiness. But I don’t have any way to judge that to be either happiness or not happiness. . . .

As for me personally, I regard total lack, non-doing, as the real happiness. And yet this is just what ordinary people regard as the greatest suffering of all. But I say, “When you reach happiness, ‘happiness’ is totally lacking; when you reach honor, ‘honor’ is totally lacking. (145)

The translator notes that “total lack, non-doing” is a double translation to capture “nothingness” and uncontrived action (wu wei) together.

What the Zhuangzi is arguing here is that ordinary people aim at attaining external goods and status in order to be happy, but that this happiness either never arrives or doesn’t last. We know this to be true biologically. Human beings, like other animals, adapt to conditions they find themselves in, re-establishing homeostasis at whatever conditions are present. It is for this reason that the pursuit of a goal is often more enjoyable that actually acquiring the goal itself. Once it is in hand, we quickly get used to having it, and then it no longer gives us the same feelings it at first did.

Compare the transient, dopaminergically charged happiness to the Zhuangzi’s “total lack, non-doing.” In this case, we’ve traded the highs and lows of pursuit, attainment, and ultimate dissatisfaction for a more stable tranquility. When one sees this tranquility as happiness, whatever comes to pass is all the same. It is the equalizing assessment of all things. Success is good, but so too is failure, as often these things are outside of our control. After all, we are born to a particular time and place, and while we can do our best to live up to each our individual potentials, we don’t and can’t really know where the limits of those potentials are.

And that is my answer. The Utmost happiness is that sense of contentment with being itself—that is, contentment with the Course of one’s life. In a way, this kind of happiness encompasses the other, as it places the source of happiness in the pursuit as opposed to the attainment—which is where it really is even for ordinary folk. Therefore, we might say that happiness is contentment with the Way itself. If one has faith in the Way, he trusts in its manifestations. He calls them good, and ascents to the conditions of his existence. By these means, he reorients his desires to be in accord with objective reality.

Though, before we end it should be said, this kind of happiness may not be possible for everyone. As mentioned, this isn’t what ordinary people want to call happiness. In fact, it “is just what ordinary people regard as the greatest suffering of all” (145). Thus is the difference between the high and the low, between the cicada and the phoenix flying far and unfettered.

Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi; The Complete Writings, translated by Brook Ziporyn, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2020