047 - An Episode in the Life of St. Kentish of Pentam
Happiness - Part 1
Welcome to the third letter of this third season of Bombay Daak. Previously we spoke of independence and attention. Today we look at happiness as a tool for art making. I am Maneesh, your friendly Daak dispenser.
The Story of St. Kentish at the House of Skirrim Themm
Once in Pentam, the merchant Skirrim Themm invited St. Kentish to his palatial home for a meal. Once done, he took the saint around his home and then a walk around his estate.
As they walked under the foliage of great oaks, Themm said, "St. Kentish, you are all knowing, you know that there is a heavy stone set in my feeble heart. O wise one, I worry all my dear ones will leave me, that none of my gold will keep them from departing. You saw my house — all the gilded gifts and artefacts. When I got each one of them I was filled with joy, now they mean much less. Pray, tell me saint, where can I find happiness now? How do I keep away the sadness that awaits me?"
St. Kentish smiled and looked around the vast estate. The autumn evening was setting in, the breeze was getting cooler. A leaf dropped from an ageing oak and fell at his feet.
"Skirrim, my brother," he said, "the sun rises and sets, the seasons come and go, joy and sadness are just as fleeting. You are as likely to find happiness as the next drop of rain if you seek it. See that squirrel there, digging a hole under the Oak. It knows winter is due and it goes burying its food to see the winter through. Just the same, we too must get ready to meet the arrivals of our joys and sorrows. Prepare Lord Themm, in the preparing is our living."
Joy is in the anticipation of things. Can craving for more happiness reduce our capacity to savour the small joys? What was once exciting, is no longer.
We always seek and do the things that we know bring us joy. Could it be that we place too great a burden on our happiness?
But there is an idea — to seek to do something when we feel happy instead.
Not celebrate it, but to acknowledge it, to recognise it. A way to make all joys, big or small, equally meaningful and memorable. To prepare for its departure.
I suppose art is one way to do that.
To pick a brush, or a pen, to sing or dance, cook; to make something meaningful. A ritual to know that today you felt this joy. Make your art fully capture that feeling.
To flip through these pages is to not just go back to some feeling. It is to know that these days, these moments embellished on these pages with words and pictures, even inadequate or incomplete as they may be, meant something more. That to have been there, that day, with the sights and sounds and smells … felt different. Of being in a whole other place.
— memory of a late July evening, 2018.
Why aren’t smart people happier? — The premise of this piece I read last week, seemed flawed to me. That solving problems and getting what you want is what makes us happy. And so was born St. Kentish, Pentam and Skirrim Themm. What all might we see eventually of their world.
Desire is the contract you make to be unhappy. Do I agree, not entirely. Does it make sense, fairly. St. Kentish, I guess agrees. While Kentish suggests happiness is a slice of time and can’t be pursued, there is a whole section of meditation in Buddhism called Jhana that’s an exercise in ecstasy and glee, the pali word piti. But to get there, you first need to overcome sense desire, one of the five hindrances. So Naval maybe on to something.
However, alternatively, a philosophy for good times.
I have conflated happiness, joy and pleasure here because we often do. I believe this applies equally to sadness
I suppose the rule that any advice post on the web is meant really for its author to read applies here
There may never be a part 2