Seeing that I don’t really have the leisurely time to come up with my own fiction for the time being…this time around, I decided that I would just quote others in their beliefs and thoughts. This however would probably be the first part of perhaps a couple more. The Subject, mainly being on the ways and beliefs towards the pursuit of happiness, according to some highly esteemed people.
My purpose in writing this is mainly to share with others on how people have different beliefs and methods of thinking. I have always been interested in people and the way they think and how diversify and interesting thoughts can get. By knowing these thoughts, I am assuming one would be more opened and be able to reflect on their own beliefs and perhaps study themselves and their beliefs a little more.
According to the Spanish philosopher Seneca, happiness can only be achieved by having a sound mind in constant possession of its soundness; then a brave and energetic mind. Which is also gifted with the noblest form of endurance; able to deal with circumstances of the moment..Everlasting freedom and tranquility follow once we have banished all that vexes and frightens us.
Emboldened by the stoic belief that happiness is independent of mere circumstance, he accepted the ’blessings of fortune’ without embarrassment or shame, yet remained fully prepared to relinquish them a t a moment’s notice.
On a different note, Marcus Aurelius the Roman explains that happiness feels more like wrestling than dancing because it requires us to, “stand prepared and unshaken to meet what comes and what we did not foresee.”
Epicurus said, ‘Those who least needs extravagance enjoy it most. The happy man is not he who drinks when thirsty but he who has no thirst. It is not that we want food, drink and shelter (although that’s how we appear to feel) but we want not to be hungry, not to be hungry and not to be cold; we become truly happy not when we satisfy our desires but in the next moment: the moment we realize there are no desire left to satisfy.”
Lucretius a student of Epicurus, on addressing the people said, “Their ‘greatest joy’ was to stand aloof in a quiet citadel, stoutly fortified by the teaching of the wise, and to gaze down from that elevation on others wandering aimlessly in a vain search for the way of life, pitting their wits against one with unstinted effort to scale the pinnacles of wealth and power of joyless hearts of men! O minds without visions.”
Cicero on Epicurus who have claimed to become insensitive to pain while having memories of conversation with close friends said, “No memory however ecstatic can prevent anyone from feeling pain. A man exposed to unbearable heat does not comfort himself by remembering that he once took a cool bath.”
This from one of the Indian kitabs entitled, Yoga: path to happiness
“An old Indian story tells of Viveka, a new born prince, whose enemies in the royal household put him into a basket and sent it floating down the river. The infant was rescued from death by a peasant couple who raised him as their own. (This is the story of Mosses but with the social classes reversed.) Unaware of his true birth, Viveka nonetheless suspected that he had come from somewhere else, because his true mother, true family and true home all appeared to him in dreams. On his sixteenth birthday he left to search for them. After journeying for more than seven years, he found his way back to his true home. When he reached the royal palace, where his family had waited so long for his return, he discovered that the king his father, had died. Viveka knew that he was now king, yet struggled to find his kingly nature; raised in a world of poverty and hardship, he knew only how to be a peasant, overtime, and under the patient guidance of his teachers, Viveka cast off his comfortable yet mistaken identity and embraced the strange new reality of the person that, unbeknown to himself, he had been all along.
Of course, Viveka is not a real person, and there never was a peasant who, by some outrageous good fortune, turned out to be a prince. Viveka cannot be real because he is something more than real: he is an archetype, a revealing pattern for the course of human life. In this pattern of separation and reunion we might recognize, perhaps to our astonishment that we ourselves feel divorced from our true nature and long to be reunited with it. Viveka’s mythical search through the jungles of north india is the symbol of our actual search for our true but hidden self, yet waiting for us to find it, waiting for us to come home.”
I’ll end with this paragraph derived from Ramakrishna
“Man is always restless; always moving from place to place…fact that he is dissatisfied with his finite nature shows that it is not his natural condition. The fact that he has infinite ambition, that he has insatiable hunger for more and more, proves that he is infinite by nature.”
Feel free to come up with your own opinions and probably agree on the quotes you find agreeable. Thank you.
