Advice from Yang Chun

I was delving into the Taoist texts on the Sacred Texts website yesterday (Sacred Texts/Taoism) when I read the following section of text which appears in Ch. 4, The ideal life, of Yang Chun's Garden of Pleasure (translated by Anton Forke (1912):

"... enjoy life and take one's ease, for those who know how to enjoy life are not poor, and he that lives at ease requires no riches."

This text set me to thinking. We make a great deal about the pursuit of happiness (although no one seems to be able to give a uniform description of what this actually means) in our modern world; for our American friends it is actually enshrined in their Declaration of Independence as unalienable rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.

But then I thought, if you chase/pursue something do you always catch it? Perhaps this pursuit of happiness is a bit like that mirage in the desert of an oasis; we can see it but we never seem to arrive. The phrase the 'pursuit of happiness' seems to imply that 'happiness' is 'out there', that it is outside of ourselves and that we require something extra in our lives before we can call ourselves happy. But happiness is fleeting - it is not something that we can have all the time; we have to have the downs so that we can recognise the ups. As the TTC says (Ch. 2):

"Recognise beauty and ugliness is born.
Recognise good and evil is born.

Is and Isn't produce each other.

Hard depends on easy,
Long is tested by short,
High is determined by low,
Sound is harmonised by voice,
After is followed by before."

So perhaps we need to recognise that our 'pursuit' of happiness should be an internal one; that we already have everything we need to be able to enjoy life, regardless of whether we are financially successful or not.

Finally, I will leave you with the poem, entitled Leisure, by William Henry Davies:

"What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare."

Perhaps we should all take the time to stand and stare - maybe we would enjoy life more and, who knows, find happiness right here.

Tag Taoism happiness Yang Chu