Carolina QuotesHappiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Aldous Huxley Connected to the Carolinas
Source
"Religion and Time" in C. Isherwood (ed.) Vedanta for the Western World (1945)
- year
- 1945
Cite this record
“Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happin…” Aldous Huxley. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-A2214E7E60. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/a2214e7e60
More from Aldous Huxley
The Beatific Vision, Sat Chit Ananda, Being-Awareness-Bliss — for the first time I understood, not on the verbal level, not by inchoate hints or at a distance, but precisely and completely what those prodigious syllables referred to. And then I remembered a passage I had read in one of Suzuki's essays. “What is the Dharma-Body of the Buddha?” ('“the Dharma-Body of the Buddha” is another way of saying Mind, Suchness, the Void, the Godhead.) The question is asked in a Zen monastery by an earnest and bewildered novice. And with the prompt irrelevance of one of the Marx Brothers, the Master answers, “The hedge at the bottom of the garden.” “And the man who realizes this truth,” the novice dubiously inquires, “what, may I ask, is he?” Groucho gives him a whack over the shoulders with his staff and answers, “A golden-haired lion.”
I used to think I had no will to power. Now I perceive that I vented it on thoughts, rather than people. Conquering an unknown province of knowledge. Getting the better of a problem. Forcing ideas to associate or come apart. Bullying recalcitrant words to assume a certain pattern. All the fun of being a dictator without any risks and responsibilities.
Somebody ought to make a historical study of the relations between theology and corporal punishment in childhood. I have a theory that, wherever little boys and girls are systematically flagellated, the victims grow up to think of God as — 'Wholly Other'... A people's theology reflects the state of its children's bottoms. Look at the Hebrews — enthusiastic child-beaters. And so were all good Christians in the Age of Faith. Hence Jehovah, hence Original Sin and the infinitely offended Father of Roman and Protestant orthodoxy. Whereas among Buddhists and Hindus education has always been nonviolent. No laceration of little buttocks — therefore Tat tvam asi, thou art That, mind from Mind is not divided. ... Major premise: God is Wholly Other. Minor premise: man is totally depraved. Conclusion: Do to your children's bottoms what was done to yours, what your Heavenly Father has been doing to the collective bottom of humanity ever since the Fall: whip, whip, whip!