(Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times)
["God"? See Brahma. Contemplation? Anussati. Happiness? Sukha].
What is happiness? How does one get a grip on this most elusive, intractable, and perhaps unanswerable of questions?
I teach philosophy for a living, so let me begin with a philosophical answer. For the philosophers of antiquity, notably Aristotle, it was assumed that the goal of the philosophical life — the good life, moreover — was happiness. The latter could be defined as the bios theoretikos, the solitary life of contemplation.
Today, few people would seem to subscribe to this view. Our lives are filled with the endless distractions of cell phones, car alarms, commuter woes, and the traffic in Bangalore. [Life is like an off-center wheel, dukkha]. The rhythm of modern life is punctuated by beeps, bleeps, and a generalized attention deficit disorder.
But is the idea of happiness as an experience of contemplation really so ridiculous? Might there not be something in it? More>>
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