Here is a radically different note on happiness, by Wei Wu Wei (literally, "doing without doing"). Born as Terence Grey, an Irish aristocrat, later become a Taoist/Buddhist philosopher, his profound essays reveal a life-long quest for answers:
"Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% of everything you think, and everything you do is for your self, and there isn't one."
Between 1958 and 1974, Grey published a series of eight books under his nom de plume, Wei Wu Wei. Profound in their insights, the books indicate somebody who had extensively studied Eastern and Western thought. They suggest a man who not only knew the teachings but was adept at living them.
Although born in Ireland in 1895, he was raised in England on an estate outside Cambridge, and studied at Oxford University. He became interested in Egyptology, and in 1923 published two books on ancient Egyptian history and culture. During the 1920s and 1930s he was an arts theorist and theatrical producer. He also created radical dance-dramas, and published several arts magazines, as well as books. His cousin Ninette De Valois was a founder of the Royal Ballet, which originated from Grey's dance troupe at the Cambridge Festival Theatre, leased by him from 1926-33. He died in 1986.
This excerpt is from Ask The Awakened, 8 and is titled That I Am:
"When I have looked at a jug I have supposed that eye-subject was looking at jug-object. But eye-subject is itself an object, and one object cannot be the subject of another object. Both eye-supposed-subject and the jug are objects of I-subject. That is apparent transcendence of subject-object.
But only when we realise that, in split-mind, I-as-subject must always be itself an object while it also has its own supposed-object, do we understand that this constitutes an infinite regression, and that final transcendence is the understanding that I am not-subject, for, since in reality there are no objects, there cannot be a subject.
No-objects and no-subject constitute impersonality, the resultant of the negation of each member of every pair of opposites, or No-Entity.
Only whole mind can know this, and that is 'that I am'."
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Hong Kong University has an extensive collection of his works, which had been publicly available, although I can no longer confidently ascertain its location. The link on the sidebar may not be its site, but click on Wei Wu Wei to visit some extracts from his books.
