The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a happiness quotation from the Dhammapada.

I’m working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, a memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture about how to be happy--from Aristotle to Martin Seligman to Thoreau to Oprah. On this daily blog, I recount my adventures as I grapple with the challenge of being happier. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will hit the shelves in December 2009 (Harper).

Twelve Personal Commandments

Four Splendid Truths

First: To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
Second: One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
Third: The days are long, but the years are short. (click the link to see my one-minute movie)
Fourth: You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.

What Started Me Thinking

"Whoever is happy will make others happy, too." Mark Twain.
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
“A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
“Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
“Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
Sartre: "Hell is other people."
Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

This Saturday: a happiness quotation from the Dhammapada.

“Set your heart on doing good. Do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy. A fool is happy until his mischief turns against him. And a good man may suffer until his goodness flowers.” --The Dhammapada.

I'd read this quotation many times and never remarked on it much, but lately I can't get it out of my head. That's one reason I like to keep reviewing my treasure trove of quotations; sometimes, it takes years before I really start to appreciate a particular passgae.

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Pick the Brain has an intriguing post on the nature of happiness. Ah, an inexhaustible subject!

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Posted January 26, 2008

Comments

Good quotation. Here's one of my favorites:

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I think of this one whenever I feel the need to "let it go".

Posted by: Alex C. | January 27, 2008 at 12:10 AM

I love this quote! In fact, I stole it from you and put it at the top of my blog so I could read it every day for a while. :) I just found your blog and am enjoying being challenged by your ponderings and research. Thank you!

Posted by: Pamela | January 28, 2008 at 12:29 PM

What a great quote. I've read some modern Buddhist writing - the Dali Lama's books, for instance - but haven't tackled any of the 'original' texts yet.

Posted by: Helen | January 28, 2008 at 03:27 PM

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Gretchen Rubin is a best-selling writer whose new book, The Happiness Project, is an account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. On this blog, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.