Topic: What would be the ingredients for a good life?
Interviews by Stuart MacDonald

Stuart: What would be the ingredients for a good life? Is it better to have had some hard knocks in life, grown wiser and led a more realistic life than be happy without any of life's harsher experiences?

Simone: I've had happiness sometimes when there are not harsh experiences, but those happy states tend not to last very long. They are just moments. The lasting happiness that I have gained as I get older, is more from learning things that I've misunderstood about life. These generally are not very pleasant experiences. In the past, I've grabbed onto something, or not wanted to address something, or not wanted to accept the way something is. Then, when I have come to accept it, that seems to put me in a better place to engage with and enjoy my life, somehow. So, I've come to realise that my hard knocks - as much as I hate them - usually make me a happier person. I can see this, if I look back fifteen years. I don't think you can be happy without them. I do keep trying to have happiness - without life's harsher experiences - but it just does not work.

Stuart: Is the source of happiness necessarily pleasurable? Is it possible to experience displeasure and still be happy?

Simone: I keep searching for pleasure and thinking that's going to give me happiness. I guess that the more I learn about myself, the more I'm trying to find ways to be happy regardless of my external circumstances. Otherwise, I have this up and down stuff and I'm not really happy anyway, because it is dependent on what's happening outside of me. So, if I can just find the moments in life, whatever they are, that might be a way of having more lasting happiness, rather than transient happiness. The last time I can remember feeling displeasure was when I was on retreat and my knees were hurting. They were screaming with pain, which was not very pleasurable at all. I was definitely noticing the displeasure and was moving around a lot - but I still had a sense of happiness.

Stuart: Is happiness getting what we want? Is it possible to not want so much and then be accidentally happy without meeting most of our desires? How important is material comfort for happiness?

Simone: I think that material comfort is not so important, but material discomfort can be a factor. Not having really basic things, like food and shelter, can have an impact on happiness. Personally, I get caught up in thinking that happiness is getting what I want, then when I don't get what I want, I get really distressed. I think I'm going to be happy if I have a higher salary or whatever. When I'm able to step out of that and just be happy with what I have - a vase of flowers in my lounge room or coming back to really simple things - those are the times when I feel the happiest. I'm happy when I don't have expectations of the way things should be, or how I want it to turn out, or what it's going to look like, or how long it's going to last, or how I'm going to feel about it, or whatever.

Stuart: Who would you say is happier, someone who is rich and happy or someone who is poor and happy?

Simone: I think that it depends on how you feel about being rich and how you feel about being poor. Maybe it does not make any difference. If you're rich and have a lot invested in being rich, maybe you wouldn't be as happy as someone who is poor but does not really care one way or the other. But if you are poor and really miserable about being poor, that doesn't work either. The money might not make a difference either way. It has more to do with the way you feel about being rich or poor. I don't think the money has an impact, it's the way you relate to it that matters.

Garry Gadsby, Bus Driver for Children with special needs, Age 40

Stuart: What would be the ingredients for a good life? Is it better to have had some hard knocks in life, grown wiser and led a more realistic life than be happy without any of life's harsher experiences?

Garry: Personally, I've had a few hard knocks and I think that's OK. If you haven't had the hard knocks, but you've got an appreciation of things, then that's OK as well. If it comes to gaining the same understanding and care for others, then whatever it is, it is appropriate. From my own experience, I wouldn't like to have the hard knocks again, but I can appreciate the value of them. There is opportunity in those hard knocks as well. It gives you an appreciation of other people's circumstances, too. You can relate to people who have been through similar experiences. For me, the ingredients for a good life are coming across the Dharma - especially a good teacher - the opportunity to practise and life's experiences prior to all that. If I can fit that together properly and apply it, that is what will work for me.

Stuart: Is the source of happiness necessarily pleasurable? Is it possible to experience displeasure and still be happy?

Gary: The source of happiness doesn't have to be pleasurable. I think you make the most of the given situation and create opportunities. That can create a sense of happiness. I suppose it's about interpreting what 'happiness' is. Maybe happiness is more equanimity, contentment and peace. That is the happiness that I seek, as opposed to extreme situations.

Stuart: Is happiness getting what we want? Is it possible to not want so much and then be accidentally happy without meeting most of our desires? How important is material comfort for happiness?

Gary: I think you need a basic level of material support: basic food, clothes and shelter. But obviously, that it determined by your attachment to those things. As your attachment dwindles, obviously you need less and less. I think that, as long as you are caught up in excessive attachment and craving, you will see material things as objects of pleasure. For me, personally, it depends on whether I'm practising or not. If I'm not doing meditation, I find that I'm caught up in desire and attachment and I seek pleasure out of them. If you are genuinely happy, you probably won't want much anyway. I don't know whether being accidentally happy is necessarily accidental, maybe you are deserving of it because of your karma.

Stuart: Who would you say is happier, someone who is rich and happy or someone who is poor and happy?

Gary: If they are both genuinely happy, the causes of their happiness are perhaps the same. So, they are equal in that respect. It depends on whether the source of happiness for the person who has money, is the money. Then it is not really true happiness. Whereas if the man who is poor is happy and that is genuine, I would say that person is richer, because he has no attachment to the material source.

'Frank Gains', Prisoner, Age 38

Stuart: What would be the ingredients for a good life? Is it better to have had some hard knocks in life, grown wiser and led a more realistic life than be happy without any of life's harsher experiences?

'Frank:' As far as living life with hard knocks goes, I cannot say whether this is better or not. It would certainly be nice to live through life without having to suffer these inconveniences. However, one could also say that it is precisely these knocks and bruises that give life its vigour. At the end of the day, we must ask ourselves what we wish to achieve in our lives. Do we seek the experience of life or do we seek the experience of being alive? I am of the firm opinion that life is constantly presenting us with the opportunity of coming to realise what it is to be alive. Just when we think it's all over, there comes an opportunity to turn it all around. Life has an uncanny way of unfolding its threads and presenting us with a glimpse of another way of going about living in order to overcome the perception of our own limitations. In the overall scheme of things, life has nothing to do with being good or bad - it just is - the call for us human beings is to come to accept this and get on with living it. This has been my own experience in prison, where I have found a freedom that goes beyond expression.

Stuart: Is the source of happiness necessarily pleasurable? Is it possible to experience displeasure and still be happy?

'Frank:' That is a difficult question to answer. Yes, it is true that happiness may blossom out of pleasure and indeed this is a common occurrence for people all over the world. However, the happiness that comes out of pleasure may also be rather fickle at times. There is a deeper happiness that comes out of overcoming adversity, of living through an ordeal and surviving it. Perhaps it is then that we come to really appreciate the simple pleasures in life.

My thoughts turn to the troubadours and the marvellous experiences that these twelfth century poet-heroes pointed to, in their descriptions in The Melancholy Heart. These people discovered a much deeper and more profound pleasure that blossoms out of sadness, out of loss. They understood the more subtle momentum of love and this is what they wrote about - at great risk to their own lives, mind you. That is why I call them poet-heroes. They capture the sweet sadness that is born of melancholy, at the end of which one finds the seeds of new beginnings. From a single experience of love, the human heart learns about its capacity to turn outward in compassion to all life with all its trauma. I would agree with the latter part of your question. It is very possible indeed to experience displeasure and still be happy.

Stuart: Is happiness getting what we want? Is it possible to not want so much and then be accidentally happy without meeting most of our desires? How important is material comfort for happiness?

'Frank:' Getting what we want does not fulfil our need to be happy at all. Getting what we want simply satisfies our possessive nature momentarily. I say momentarily, for as soon as we get what we have sought after, the satisfaction soon passes and we look toward the next thing that we might acquire. This kind of search for happiness has been proven time and time again to be nothing more than a delusion of the mind. Material comfort is certainly nice on the one hand, however the attachment to material comfort brings with it much suffering. One can never satisfy or fulfil the needs of attachment; it is unfathomable and dynamic. As soon as one aspect is appeased the need for that item is lost and a new want is seeded.
True happiness comes when one is not compelled to act out of moral, ethical or social duty, when one is not compelled to act out of attachment, when one is not in want of anything. When one is able, for even just an instant, to live out of one's own nature, out of one's own centre. Once again, true happiness is not something we are able to possess; we may only enjoy it when it comes and need to let go of it as our life moves past it. Once we are able to realise where to look for it, we are able to step out into the turmoil of the world in the knowledge that we can find our way back to happiness in an instant. Be that through meditation, through an act of compassion or the ability to step momentarily through an almost splintered thought and into the stillness of our true nature.

Stuart: Who would you say is happier, someone who is rich and happy or someone who is poor and happy?

'Frank:' The fairly obvious answer to this question is, if they are both truly happy, there can be no distinction between them. Like most things we experience in life, happiness and the extent thereof is relative. To append the words 'rich' or 'poor' is merely a feeble attempt to label happiness (which cannot be labelled) and then sit in judgment of it. The bottom line is to be happy - once we reach this condition then material wealth or the lack thereof drops away; they become merely echoes of a fragmented and fading apparition.