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A fundamental concern (perhaps the fundamental concern) for most people in our modern, secular, commercial, social-cultural ethos is the quest for personal happiness and self-fulfillment. What is the relationship between desire and true happiness? We know that we desire things, people, accomplishments, etc., and usually assume that if we attain these objects of desire it will bring us happiness….But is this the way life really works?
The founding figure of western philosophy in ancient Greece, Plato, thought that desire (as “eros”) directs us toward things or states of affairs that we want to have (say, wanting a relationship with the person you love, or becoming champion of your bowling league, or wanting the new car that you’ve always liked) and, upon achieving them, we then become happy—to varying extents. The only problem, he thought, is that we are confused about what we think we desire (these ephemeral, worldly pleasures) as opposed to what we truly desire (which is wisdom and knowledge of life’s ultimate Truth and meaning). So only when we attain this true object of desire, will we finally be content with what we’ve attained and really be happy. Plato’s late-modern critic Friedreich Nietzsche disagreed and thought that we can never stop desiring, even when we attain what we desire (so even when we marry the perfect partner we still want more for the relationship, or when we win the bowling championship we then want to improve our bowling average every year, or when we get that car we then want to ‘accessorize’ it, improve its performance, or eventually buy a newer flashier model). This situation is alright, Nietzsche felt (or inevitable at any rate, since relentless desire is the product of the primordial “will to power” that ultimately drives every human idea and aspiration), and is even a positive psychological motivator, so long as we can manage to remain happy while also remaining under its spell.
In ancient India, the Buddha claimed that what Nietzsche recommends is an impossibility: Desire is irreconcilable with true happiness, so the problem is desiring anything in the first place. Desire, he pointed out, is the state mind in which we are unhappy with what we have, or we are unhappy without what we think we need to become happy. Desire makes us unhappy, and our unhappiness makes us desire to be happy, and this keeps us unhappy: resulting in an endless feedback-loop of discontent. The Japanese Zen Buddhist tradition elaborates further that even the desire not to desire leaves us trapped in a state of perpetual desire, and hence, unhappiness. So long as we desire anything in order to be happy, or even just desire happiness itself, we are condemned to be unhappy. The same is true of love: the desire for who or what we love separates us from the very person or thing that we love, because it always involves wanting them (or their situation) to be different than they are now (more in love with us, with us forever, feeling differently about us than they do, belonging to us because they don’t belong to us now, being a better or happier or healthier person than they are now, etc.) and this desire for them to be some state other than that which in which they are, also means that we can’t love them unconditionally as they are. Our desire to attain complete happiness through love keeps both love and happiness perpetually out-of-reach.
One cogent and interesting solution to this dilemma comes to us from, of all places, Ancient Aztec civilization of pre-Columbian Mexico. According to Sebastian Purcell, a scholar in Mesoamerican literature, for the Aztecs:
“The answer is that we should strive to lead a rooted, or worthwhile life. The word the Aztecs used is neltiliztli. It literally means ‘rootedness’, but also ‘truth’ and ‘goodness’ more broadly. They believed that the true life was the good one, the highest humans could aim for in our deliberate actions… A life led in this way would harmonize body, mind, social purpose and harmony with nature. Such a life, for the Aztecs, amounted to a kind of careful dance, one that took account of the treacherous terrain of the slippery earth, and in which pleasure was little more than an incidental feature ….Aztec philosophy encourages us to question this received ‘Western’ wisdom about the good life – and to seriously consider the sobering notion that doing something worthwhile is more important than enjoying it.”
This philosophy confounds what we in the commercial, materialistic, and self-obsessed milieu of the modern west consider essential to life’s purpose: happiness and self-fulfillment in the form of perpetual pleasure. As Aztec scriptures tell us,
‘Even though we may offer the Giver of life
Emeralds and fine ointments,
With the offering of necklaces you are invoked,
With the strength of the eagle, of the tiger,
It may be that on earth no one speaks the truth.’
For the Aztecs, life’s purpose is not to do what makes you happy, or ‘follow your bliss’ in the superficial sort of way often celebrated in current popular culture. It’s not that the pursuit of pleasure is wrong—It’s just irrelevant to what’s ultimately important. Your life’s purpose is to listen to what the universe is telling you to do and follow that path without regard to your own happiness, or even the consequences that it leads to. This is both a very selfless and very selfish goal: Selfless in the sense that your focus is not on your own personal fulfillment but instead on the fulfillment of whatever destiny life has called on you to follow. Selfish in the sense that this path involves being true to who you are in the deepest sense, no matter what anyone or anything else wants you to be.
This is the state of mind that Stoic philosophers celebrated as “autarkeia”, that Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson meant by “Self-Reliance”, what the Existentialists meant by “authenticity”, and it is certainly what Krishna’s instructions to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita were all about: ”Set thy heart upon thy work” Krishna advises, “Work not for its reward, but never cease to do thy work…Who everywhere is free from all ties, who neither rejoices nor sorrows if fortune is good or ill, his is serene wisdom.” Indeed, according to Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, most empirical studies demonstrate that people don’t even want a life of perpetual happiness, although they may spend most of their time, energy and money chasing it. Pleasurable events and experiences are not, in fact, what yield deep and enduring satisfaction with one’s life. Instead, a commitment to long-term creative goals and achievements of character—the attainment of which may well involve a good deal of personal suffering and self-sacrifice—are what usually make life meaningful and worthwhile.
Thus, says Aztec spirituality, our one duty in life is to discover and become the true, authentic Self who we were meant to be. By following this self-directed path selflessly, we effortlessly become who we most genuinely are. By finding and remaining true to this Self, without regard for happiness, we paradoxically discover what genuine happiness really is. In this way, the Aztec scriptures celebrate the life that remains both selfishly and selflessly true to its ultimate destiny.
Wise words, and apparently the Aztecs knew best …..although it doesn’t seem to have worked-out for them as well as they might have wanted….someone should have informed the Conquistadors.
