What is Happiness and How to Achieve It?

What is Happiness and How to Achieve It?

True happiness is such a rare commodity that the whole of the world is continuously seeking it and failing to find it. All the people, who we consider to be the best in their fields, are seeking it too and failing to acquire it. The most brilliant of the scientists, the most gifted of artists, the most talented of poets and authors, the wealthiest businessmen, the most powerful rulers, the greatest achievers in any field - all of them have been striving for it all their lives and failed to have it. Why is happiness such an elusive thing? Is it that it cannot simply be achieved? Or is it that it is not where all of us have been looking for it?

真正的幸福是一种稀有的商品，全世界的人都在不断地寻找它，却总是找不到。所有我们认为在各自领域里最好的人，也都在寻求它，但都未能获得它。最杰出的科学家、最有天赋的艺术家、最有才华的诗人和作家、最富有的商人、最强大的统治者、任何领域最伟大的成功者——所有这些人都为之奋斗了一辈子，但都没有成功。为什么幸福如此难以捉摸?是它不能简单地实现吗?或者它不在我们所有人一直在寻找的地方?

If you pause to give it a thought it is very easy to see that somehow we have all been missing the point. It is either that we have all been looking for happiness at the wrong places or that it is simply not possible to achieve happiness. The answer is not very easy. But it is obvious that if the whole of the humanity has been trying to find something throughout the history and failing to acquire it then something must be very wrong about the concept we have of happiness.

如果你停下来想一想，很容易就会发现，不知怎么的，我们都没有抓住重点。要么是我们都在错误的地方寻找幸福，要么就是根本不可能获得幸福。答案并不容易。但很明显，如果整个人类在历史上都在试图寻找某种东西，却未能获得它，那么我们所拥有的幸福概念一定有错误的地方。

Let us try to delve a bit deeper. What is it that we consider happiness? This is how I see it:

Happiness is what you feel when what you want to happen happens.

And if this definition of happiness is correct then we can conclude that unhappiness is what we feel when what we want to happen does not happen.

These definitions look obvious enough but for the most of the people they are not. At least not so clearly defined in their minds. It would therefore be better if we stop to ponder over these definitions.

How can we achieve happiness?

让我们再深入研究一下。我们认为幸福是什么?以下是我的看法:

幸福是当你想要发生的事情发生时的感觉。

如果这个幸福的定义是正确的，那么我们可以得出这样的结论:不幸福就是当我们想要发生的事情没有发生时，我们的感觉。

这些定义看起来很明显，但对大多数人来说并非如此。至少在他们的头脑中没有这么明确的定义。因此，我们最好停止思考这些定义。

我们怎样才能获得幸福?

We must realize that for most of the problems, the solutions are often simple and obvious enough if one understands the problem clearly. Even more surprising is the fact that the solutions mostly lie in the problem itself. It is true in the case of happiness too.

我们必须认识到，对于大多数问题，只要我们清楚地了解问题，解决办法往往是简单而明显的。更令人惊讶的是，解决问题的方法主要在于问题本身。对于幸福来说也是如此

Let us consider the above definition carefully. The main keyword in the definition is "want". The whole trouble starts when we want something. Every moment of our lives we keep on wanting something or the other. If we could make a list of all the things we want in our lives since childhood to death, including trivial as well as very important, all the paper in the world perhaps would not be enough for this purpose. Only a small percentage of all our wishes is fulfilled in spite of all our endeavours. The percentage of wishes, which remain unfulfilled, keeps on growing with time. As a result, as we grow older, we become more and more unhappy. We grow tired of life. The blessings, which our lives and the whole existence keep showering upon us, gradually lose their charm. The frustration, of failing to fulfill most of our wishes, sets in. We start feeling weighed down. The feeling that the whole life is somehow conspiring to keep us unhappy grows. Life becomes full of miseries. We keep stumbling from one failure to another.

让我们仔细考虑一下上面的定义。定义中的主要关键字是“想要”。当我们想要什么东西的时候，麻烦就开始了。在我们的生活中，每时每刻我们都在不停地想要得到一些东西。如果我们可以列出所有我们想要的东西在我们的生活从童年到死亡，包括琐碎的和非常重要的，世界上没有什么可以达到这个目的。尽管我们竭尽全力，但我们所有的愿望只有一小部分实现了。未被实现的愿望的比例随着时间不断增长。结果，随着年龄的增长，我们变得越来越不快乐。我们对生活感到厌倦。我们的生活和整个存在不断洒落在我们身上的祝福，逐渐失去了它们的魅力。无法实现大多数愿望的挫败感油然而生。我们开始感到沉重。一种感觉是，我们的整个生活不知怎么地让我们不快乐。生活变得充满了痛苦。我们不断从一个失败跌倒另一个失败当中。

The solution, then is very obvious. We must explore the possibility of a life of no desires or minimum desires. Desire is a seed which grows fruits of unhappiness. Actually the trouble is that we demand too much. We keep on demanding incessantly. It seems that we do nothing else but keep producing desires and then keep struggling to fulfill them. The only solution to this problem is to break out of this cycle of desires and struggles. If one does not desire anything, he has no chance of getting unhappy due to failure in fulfilling his desire.

解决办法是很明显的。我们必须探索无欲望或最低欲望生活的可能性。欲望是一颗种子，它能结出不幸的果实。事实上问题是我们的要求太多了。我们不断地要求。似乎我们除了不断地制造欲望，然后不断地努力去满足它们之外，什么也没做。解决这个问题的唯一办法就是打破这种欲望和斗争的循环。如果一个人没有欲望，他就不会因为没有实现他的欲望而不快乐。

One may argue that a life of no desires will be bereft of pleasures. That it will become colourless and dull. But this premise is not true.

有人可能会说，没有欲望的生活将失去乐趣。它会变得无色无味。但这个前提不成立。