What Is Happiness?

What is happiness all about? It is the eternal question, the universal issue. And if spirituality has ever dealt with it, what does it have to say to a world that has tried wealth and found it lacking?

The Sufi tell a story that rings true in every spiritual tradition around the world:

Once upon a time, a powerful king, ruler of many domains, was in a position of such magnificence that wise men were his mere employees. And yet one day he felt himself confused and called the sages for a consultation.

He said to them: “I do not know the cause, but something impels me to seek a certain ring, one that will enable me to stabilize my state. I must have such a ring. And this ring must be one which, when I am unhappy, will make me joyful. At the same time, if I am happy and look upon it, I must be made sad.”

The wise men consulted one another. They threw themselves into deep contemplation. Finally they came to a decision as to the character of the ring that would suit their king.

The ring that they devised was one upon which was inscribed the words: THIS, TOO, WILL PASS.

It is enough to make anyone pause. What I have now, I will someday not have. What is bothering me now will end, and I will not be bothered by it in the future. So, if I can hold my world, all of it—good and bad, exciting and terrifying, exhilarating and tragic—with open hands, nothing will ever be able to destroy me. Neither having too much and wasting it, nor having too little and grasping for more, can possibly be the albatross that shadows me to the end.

Happiness comes when clinging goes. We are all misers. What we have, we try to keep. What we do not have, we die to get.

When we are doing what we like, we try to freeze in time our right to do it. Like hamsters on a wheel, we insist on running in place however much the world around us goes on changing….

Then, the Sufi tell us in the story of the king who had no need of anything, the only way to be happy is to understand that whatever is our state at the present moment, this moment is already over. There is no amount of pain, no depth of pain, no disturbance or joy or irritant or exhilaration or suffering, that can possibly last forever. To be happy we must come to understand that. “This, too, will pass.”

Tomorrow is another day made for me to shape and enjoy, hear, and endure, let go of and move on. What we do not seek to control or to avoid cannot possibly make us unhappy.

If the question is, What is happiness? the answer must be that happiness is the ability to live every day, every phase, every stage of life in the awareness that it will not be ours forever—and that is just as it should be if we are to grow and live, live and grow.

From "Welcome to the Wisdom of the World" by Joan Chittister