Arthur Schopenhauer on happiness.2

16 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Happiness, Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, Uncategorized

Tags

Arthur Schopenhauer, Buddhism, Happiness, Hinduism, MacBeth, poem, Poetry, Renunciation, Shakespeare Sonnet, Sonnet 73, The Tempest

Schopenhauer explains the heart of his philosophy is to “disown” life and this renunciation is the ultimate basis for his instruction on happiness:

He who has taken to heart the teaching of my philosophy–who knows, therefore, that our whole existence is something which had better not have been, and that to disown and disclaim it is the highest wisdom–he will have no great expectations from anything or any condition in life: he will spend passion upon nothing in the world, nor lament over-much if he fails in any of his undertakings.

There are various ways to understand Schopenhauer at this point. He admittedly derived a great deal of this his thinking on this point from Eastern religion, particularly Buddhism. I wish to be careful here, because my knowledge of Buddhism and Hinduism is limited. However, a few citations may help explicate some of the background on his instruction in happiness at this point. For those who would like to take a dive into his relationship to Buddhism, here is an essay from Peter Abelsen, Philosophy East&West Volume 43, Number 2, April 1993. 255-278, entitled, “Schopenhauer and Buddhism” http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/Articles/Schopenhauer%20and%20Buddhism_PEW_Abelsen_1993.pdf

Here are some quick citations which provide a quick background to the topic:

With the self unattached to the external contacts he discovers happiness in the Self; with the self engaged in the meditation of Brahman he attains to the endless happiness. Bhagavad-Gita 5.21

Kesava Kasmiri’s Commentary on this verse states:

If a person is inclined to attachment to sensual pleasures they will never have the opportunity to experience the transcendental bliss of the realisation of the Brahman or the spiritual substratum pervading all existence. But a question may be raised what happiness can a person derive from life if they have introverted their senses and are averted to sense objects. Lord Krishna states the compound words sukham-aksayam meaning unlimited happiness is what such persons attains for with disconnection to the senses and objects of the senses a natural detachment arises which frees one from worldly desires allowing one to focus within on the eternal atma or eternal soul where one tastes boundless joy and experiences unlimited bliss. In the moksadharma section of the Mahabharata it states that: The pleasures of the senses in this world and the joys of heavenly pleasures cannot be compared to even 1/16th part of the pleasure one derives from renouncing the desire for material sense gratification. This is the essential component that paves the way for perceiving the Brahman or spiritual substratum pervading all existence, atma tattva or realisation of the soul and moksa or liberation from the material existence and cognition of the ultimate truth of the Supreme Being.

The concept of renunciation is central to Buddhism. Schopenhauer’s connection between happiness and renunciation is articulated within Buddhism as for instance in this essay, “Renunciation and Happiness”:

When we understand this, we can start to glimpse that renunciation is not a matter of doing something or having to create something, or getting rid of something or exterminating something in life. Rather it is moving towards non-contention, a sense of rest and relaxation—not having constantly to try and manipulate and control and evade and maneuver any more. We are able to open in a fearless way and relax into the experience of the moment, whatever its quality may be. In opening to receive life, we still engage in the conventional level of reality—the social level of moral values, indentities, mother and father, livelihood and mortgages. If we grasp these things and expect complete fulfillment from them, we will always be disappointed. But if we see our life as an opportunity to understand Dhamma—the way things are—that is renunciation. This letting go is very freeing. Whatever comes to us is Dhamma, and there is a joy in being in contact with Truth, whatever its particular flavor.

Renunciation can sound like passivity, a “door mat” philosophy, but actually it is the opposite. True response-ability—the ability to respond wisely and compassionately to life—naturally arises in the non-attached mind. There can be both activity and letting go.

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/renunciation-the-high-happiness/ I would be curious to know whether the precise concept of “happiness” was connected to the concept of renunciation prior to extensive Western contacts. Schopenhauer obviously is drawing a connection between renunciation and happiness. What I do not know is whether Schopenhauer is first in tying the two concepts together. Certainly there is a connection between tranquility and renunciation which pre-exists Western interaction; but whether this tranquility and “happiness” was drawn I simply do not know.

Notes, Shakespeare Sonnet 12

04 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Shakespeare, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Golden Bough, poem, Poetry, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Sonnet, Shakespeare Sonnet 12, Sonnet 12

1] When I do count the clock that tells the time

[2] And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,

[3] When I behold the violet past prime

[4] And sable curls all silvered o’er with white;

[5] When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

[6] Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

[7] And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves

[8] Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;

[9] Then of thy beauty do I question make

[10] That thou among the wastes of time must go,

[11] Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

[12] And die as fast as they see others grow;

[13] And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defense

[14] Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

First Stanza

[1] When I do count the clock that tells the time

[2] And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,

[3] When I behold the violet past prime

[4] And sable curls all silvered o’er with white;

The matter of change, of mutability has been a theme of poets: although it is not a theme I see taken up much of late. The issue is one of change: how do we account for change? What does change mean? What can we do about change?

I don’t believe this theme has the same resonance of late, because we do not believe in any permanence. We are nominalist: there are no universals, no nature. Things are what they call them.

This has a cost: nothing can change, because nothing is something truly. This or that is only as much as I call it by name.

The matter of mutability is a question of why the particular fades from the essence, from the permanent form. That does not trouble us as it would have troubled a careful observer of Shakespeare’s time.

And so when he sees change: the clock face move, the night comes on, black hair turn white, he forces him to contemplate death (stanza three).

The phrase “hideous night” is a striking phrase: why hideous? It is only hideous as the best fades off to danger and death.

Second Stanza

[5] When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

[6] Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

[7] And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves

[8] Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;

This is not quite a move to “nature”, but rather to living things. The first stanza concerns time, this concerns most particularly plants. It’s the end of Eden.

Trees become bare of leaves; and summer fields turn to a “white and bristly beard”.

It is an interesting image: summer is being borne out on a bier. This bearing summer out on a bier, no longer green by now with a “white and bristly beard” would have struck Shakespeare’s first readers more directly. The Golden Bough, by Frazer, provides numerous examples of folk festivals involving bringing in summer and taking out summer by means of some vegetation for the purpose of maintaining fertility.

These images become the basis for an encouragement of the object of the poem to himself be fertile.

Shakespeare takes the inherent purpose of the ancient rituals and uses them as a basis for encouraging the fertility of one.

Third Stanza

[9] Then of thy beauty do I question make

[10] That thou among the wastes of time must go,

[11] Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

[12] And die as fast as they see others grow;

Death comes around constantly in this world. There is no manner of surviving return of winter but some new fertility.

I know that you will not last the winter: nothing does. There is only one answer to the winter, spring.

You, my friend will “among the wastes of time [] go”. Everything which is sweet and beautiful will be lost: that which is beautiful today will “die”. There is only one solution, new life (since the current life will not persist).

Couplet

[13] And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defense

[14] Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

The only thing which survives the winter is a new birth in Spring. There is nothing which survives the death of a man except a child.

Time comes like the “scythe” of harvest in autumn, to be followed by winter. Only the spring crop will survive the harvest and winter.

Shakespeare Sonnet 9, Notes

27 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Shakespeare, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

poem, Poet, Poetry, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Sonnet, Shakespeare Sonnet 9

womanweep

(Weeping Woman, Pablo Picasso)

Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye

That thou consum’st thyself in single life?

Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,

The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;

The world will be thy widow and still weep

That thou no form of thee hast left behind,

When every private widow well may keep,

By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind.

Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend

Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;

But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,

And, kept unused, the user so destroys it.

No love toward others in that bosom sits

That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.

Introduction

This poem continues the theme of the previous sonnets; namely, an encouragement to marry and have children. The return to the theme is here taken my means to two related metaphors. First, Shakespeare raises a potential objection: If you will not marry because you do not want to leave a widow who will weep at your death, you are wrong. Even if you do not leave a particular woman as your widow, you will leave the world as a widow. Moreover, even if you leave a widow, when you leave a child behind you leave a consolation for the widow. But if you die without children, you leave no solace to others.

Therefore, your objection does not really flow from a love of others. Instead, this waste of beauty, beauty which does not reproduce is really selfishness rather than selflessness.

First Stanza

[1] Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye

[2] That thou consum’st thyself in single life?

[3] Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,

[4] The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;

Is it really because you are afraid to leave a widow, that you are refusing to marry and have children? No.

Wet a widow: a useful example of alliteration: the repetition of the w’s draws the two words together in a single concept.

Raising the issue of selfishness, notice “thou consum’st thyself in single life”. You are devouring yourself by being single.

Issueless: without issue, without a child.

Hap: happenstance, luck.

Makeless: without a mate, spouse. And so, the world itself will weep just like a woman who has lost her husband (thus is makeless).

If you die without a wife, you still be mourned.

Second Stanza

[5] The world will be thy widow and still weep

[6] That thou no form of thee hast left behind,

[7] When every private widow well may keep,

[8] By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind.

The first line ends with a double accent: STILL WEEP. This double accent slows down the reading and creates an emphasis: weeping is unavoidable.

The sorrow will be that you have not left your “form” behind in a child.

Thus, the world will be worse off than an actual widow. A “private widow” will at least have a child in whom she can see her husband’s form. And by seeing the child, can keep her husband in mind. But you having left nothing make that impossible for all.

Third Stanza

[9] Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend

[10] Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;

[11] But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,

[12] And, kept unused, the user so destroys it.

An “unthrift” would be one who misuses money. To be thrifty is to take care with money.

SHIFTS but his PLACE: If a fool wastes all his money, it does not hurt the broader world, “for still the world enjoys it.” The world gets use of the money. The fool is the only one affected. He “shifts his place” in the world.

It is different if you destroy beauty. While the money remains in the world, beauty consumed disappears. If the user does not beget children, he “destroys” the beauty.

Couplet

[13] No love toward others in that bosom sits

[14] That on himself such murd’rous shame commits

The couplet returns to the ostensible objection raised in the first line. You claim that it is really “love” toward a potential widow that keeps you from marrying. I will not marry, because I don’t want to break a woman’s heart by dying. But that is not how the world works. You really do not love others by refusing to marry. You are simply murdering your own self, your beauty, your family that never is or will be; all in the name of trying to spare them.