Why do art? That’s a question which is inextricably tied to the human condition and our psychology. I know nothing about psychology and so I can do little to answer it.

But why should I do art? What is my purpose for doing it? That could give me some starting point.

My purpose is my own, as the existentialists have pointed out. I try to live my life with the purpose of ensuring everyone’s happiness, and whenever I fail at that, live it for my own happiness. I shall here take it as axiomatic that the only way to reach a truly content, unconditioned peace that I loosely term ‘happiness’ is to have ‘gnosis’, personal insight into the nature of reality, and undo the notion of self.

That’s all complicated stuff, but it basically means I need to be self-aware in order to be at peace and help others at peace. So the question becomes, how can art lend itself to my self-awareness?

I’ll answer that next time.

Are moral actions intrinsically or instrumentally good/bad?

Is murder inherently bad? Or is it because of the consequences of murder?

I don’t know, but I think in a way, it’s both.

Murder is usually bad but sometimes leads to ends that can be used to justify their means. But all things equal, I don’t want to commit murder. So both are worth consideration in ethical dilemmas.

From my Uncle Daniel’s house in North Carolina.

The title of this is most pretentious, I admit. I will inevitably sound as if I have acquired some secret to happiness that most people will never attain on their own, or that other people require my help to be happy. I assure you that despite this inevitability, it’s not my intent to make it appear this way. I simply have learned a few things from some very smart people on what happiness is and how it is achieved and I wish to pass it on. Obviously I am an amateur as well. I am only 20 years old and often do not follow much of my own guidelines. But I get better, even though it can be painfully slow at times. And these things do work, at least for me and for people I know who have done these things. Hopefully, if I share some of what I’ve learned it will help the reader, at least in some small way.

Also, forgive my tendency to write philosophically. It’s how I think and it naturally comes out this way.

Firstly, it’s important to understand what happiness is. Happiness is a contentment with being, peace within the present moment. I would wager that most of us have experienced happiness of some kind in the past, even if it was fleeting and lasted only momentarily. But whether happiness is a constancy or a mere daydream for a person, the desire for it seems a human universal.

The secret of happiness is that there is no secret: happiness appears to be the natural state of consciousness. While that may seem counter-intuitive, the reasoning used is that the mind is ‘corrupted’ by a fundamental ignorance of reality that we are born with. This ignorance, which I will go into in greater detail later, leads us to want, to desire things which are impermanent. It is because of this ignorance that we are lead to want things in order to be happy. We want to have success in life, or the love of other people, to look a certain way or be a certain way. We want to have money, power, even knowledge. It is this craving after things that leads us to unhappiness. When we experience a frustration of what we desire, it leads to pain, suffering, dissatisfaction. When we experience a satisfaction of our desires, it is paradoxically not satisfied, either because the experience wasn’t as good as we hoped it, or because it did not last. Known by ancient Greek philosophers as ‘the Hedonistic Paradox’, it would appear that no matter the outcome of one’s desire, one experiences dissatisfaction with that outcome.

So then, what is the solution to this paradox? Is it irrational to even believe there can be a solution which can lead to happiness? A proposed solution, again given by the ancient Greeks but also in societies such as classical China, is that one must moderate one’s desires and live a life of ‘virtue’, refraining from harming other people. Epicurus said that to be happy, one must have friends, freedom, and the well-examined life. Of course, while such solutions are undoubtedly a step in the right direction, they can be seen as something of a pragmatic solution, as such philosophies merely stopped people from so-called ‘over-indulgence’. They do not take into account the fact that our unhappiness may be caused by indulgence itself, not just an overdoing of it.

The fact of the matter is that, as I have said before, happiness is the natural state of consciousness. It does not need outside forces to ensure it, not drugs nor music nor success nor romance. While I cannot provide one with an overwhelming body of scientific literature on the subject (as I have yet to break into the field of psychology of happiness or look at the neuroscientific basis of happiness), it is fairly obvious from the pseudo-scientific (here not used in the pejorative sense) body of meditational literature provided by Buddhist, Hindu, Jainist, and even Western mystic traditions that this is so. But it is also something which may be observed in one’s own experience, which I shall go into in a moment.

With this in mind, we are faced with the ‘problem of desire’; how do we overcome the tendency to associate happiness with the fulfillment of our desires, and thus stop from craving things in the first place? The answer would appear to be that we must actively train our mind to stop desiring. Now this may sound like saying we must become monks and nuns, and train every day from dawn to dusk on refraining from desiring. But that is an extreme and an absolute (which we should always remain suspicious of), and suffers from the problem that it does not strike the root of the problem. The root, as I mentioned earlier, is an innate ignorance about the way the world is. This isn’t something that some humans are born with and some aren’t; it’s a fundamental part of the human condition and the way our minds work.

The ignorance deals specifically with the impermanence of all things and causal relationships. Because things exist in causal relationships (at least they do according to how our minds are organized), they naturally arise and fall. Everything that comes into existence due to conditions will fall when those conditions have expended themselves. The impermanence of all things and their interconnected nature is not hard to see on an intellectual level, though when it gets down to a more personal level we often fail to account for it.

What relevance to happiness does this have? Its relevance can be seen when we examine the mind. When we look at the mind, we see that our thoughts and emotions are impermanent, fleeting, always in flux. So we must examine our thoughts and our feelings, concentrate on them. When we do this, we are practicing ‘meditation’, known in the Buddhist tradition by the more proper translation of ‘mental discipline’.

Meditation is a process by which one concentrates on a single object. One does not insert anything else into the picture: thoughts concerning other objects, one’s notion of self, even judgments about that object being good/bad, must all be abandoned. Meditation can be said to be a three piece process. There is the mind, ‘mindfulness’, and the object of meditation. Mindfulness can be defined as a sort of ‘bare awareness’ of an object. It is keeping one’s focus on a certain object while at the same time making no subjective decisions about the object. It is observation at its simplest level.

To practice meditation, one need simply find a certain object of meditation and attempt to concentrate on it. This can be practically anything (the only real requirement being not concentrating on something that harms oneself or others), though the most basic is focusing on the breath. Other common practices are focusing on sights (such as a tree, a painting, a chair) or sounds (nature, music). I wouldn’t necessarily recommend music for a beginner; the reason is that one may become too involved in the music, and thus lose mindfulness. However it may certainly be used, and ambient music is best suited.

When one sits down to meditate, they should find a comfortable position. The most common and useful is known as the lotus position, though I would advise against crossing one’s legs in an uncomfortable position. It is probably better to simply cross your legs in a more natural style or sit in a chair. Make sure that your back is straight and then close your eyes to concentrate on something.

You’ll be instantly surprised to find that your mind does not want to sit still. You most likely will not be able to concentrate for more than a few seconds on the object you choose. Your mind is too distracted. The metaphor often used for mindfulness is that the mind is like a young calf that is leashed up to a fence post. The fence post is the object of meditation, the rope is mindfulness, and the calf is the mind. The calf will at first try to break away from the fence post so as to run and play, and will likely succeed in breaking the rope and running off. So the rope must be reestablished in order to keep the calf in place. But if the rope is able to hold, then the calf will continue to struggle against being kept in one place until it tires down. The calf will thus settle and rest.

Rather than resisting these thoughts which come to you, focus on keeping hold of concentration. When your mind flies off, and you realize it, do not judge yourself; merely reestablish concentration on your object. Just like the calf, the mind will settle down through continued practice.

This meditation, with the focus on concentration, is known as ‘concentration meditation’. It is one of two kinds of Buddhist meditation. The other, known as ‘insight meditation’, builds itself off of the first. It attempts to understand the mind, develop wisdom that can overcome the fundamental ignorance that sustains our desires and prevents happiness. I won’t go much into this, but when one is able to see the impermanence of the activities of the mind, one is able to see beyond one’s ‘ego’, one’s sense of self. When this happens, we are able to let go of our desires, and experience the mind’s natural state of happiness.

For more on breathing meditation, here is a useful video from Howcast.

I hope that wasn’t too confusing for anyone. Feel free to send me questions, comments, criticisms, etc. about this. I have a tiny bit of experience with these things, and I can also point people in the right direction to more material and information on the subject. A great resource is to check out the website Big Think, and to search for ‘happiness’, as it has a good number of psychologists and meditation experts (be sure to listen with a critical mind, of course, as some are more knowledgeable than others).