The Secrets of Happiness: Three Thousand Years of Searching for the Good Life

by Richard Schoch

The Secrets of Happiness is a philosophical inquiry into the nature of happiness. Combining wit, warmth, and intellectual authority, this book offers us ancient wisdom for modern living. Richard Schoch shows readers how they can enrich their lives by recovering the ancient philosophical and religious traditions of happiness--and then putting them to work in their own lives today. In a journey across cultures and centuries--from the trials of Job to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and from Buddha's Four Noble Truths to the ecstasy of medieval Sufi mystics--Schoch answers questions that, although fundamental to our well-being, are rarely what kind of effort does it take to be happy? do you have a right to be happy? can you be happy if others are unhappy? Although Schoch finds that there is no single answer to these questions, he argues that every strategy for happiness can be placed in one of four Living for Pleasure, Conquering Desire, Transcending Reason, and Enduring Suffering. (The book is divided into these four parts.) The one thing that these disparate strategies do share is that each takes effort. Happiness, Schoch posits, is never an end-point; it is instead "a joyful struggle." The Secrets of Happiness is a philosophical inquiry into the nature of happiness. Combining wit, warmth, and intellectual authority, this book offers us ancient wisdom for modern living. Richard Schoch shows readers how they can enrich their lives by recovering the ancient philosophical and religious traditions of happiness--and then putting them to work in their own lives today. In a journey across cultures and centuries--from the trials of Job to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and from Buddha's Four Noble Truths to the ecstasy of medieval Sufi mystics--Schoch answers questions that, although fundamental to our well-being, are rarely what kind of effort does it take to be happy? do you have a right to be happy? can you be happy if others are unhappy? Although Schoch finds that there is no single answer to these questions, he argues that every strategy for happiness can be placed in one of four Living for Pleasure, Conquering Desire, Transcending Reason, and Enduring Suffering. (The book is divided into these four parts.) The one thing that these disparate strategies do share is that each takes effort. Happiness, Schoch posits, is never an end-point; it is instead "a joyful struggle."

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2006

Reviews

[Kiridaren Jayakumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exquisite book of philosophy containing the secrets of happiness preached by different popular messiah and legends of our time, from Epicurus, Aurelius, Buddha, Bentham and so many more.
Such amazing book. You could literally draw knowledge from each pages.

[Benji · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the life of me I couldnt remember the name of this book! Finally I typed in the right keywords into goodle that brought it back up : epicurus utilitarianism happiness stoics . That explains the book pretty well.

This book came at the right time: I'd read a lot of books that were anti-religion, and I agreed with them about the anti-life nature aspect of them. So when I saw this book, I didnt feel too enthusiastic about getting into a book focused on happiness as it relates to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, along with a few secular systems of value that lead to happiness. But in the sake of intellectual rigor, I gave it a try, especially given that each section is 20-25 pages and so I didnt have a lot of stakes involved with the amount of time that I'd give each one.

That said, it delivered and made me reevaluate how I felt about happiness. Religious people are shown to be happier in many studies, though my personal experience in an extreme-right church was pretty miserable. And similar to the fact that you can't choose who you love, neither are you able to choose what you believe. You can't pretend to believe in a religion in order for it to make you happy.

Looking back on it after having read it 10 months ago, I see that a major aspect of the book that you take away is the fact that it's not one-size fits all, which is a nuanced position. Looking at it written out, it seems self-evident but the problem is that most people in each of the groups described would mark out their territory as the only way that leads to the good life. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, I've heard that again and again.

Recommended as a good jumping off point to explore your favorite areas further.

[Andrew Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As no one else has rated or even read this book, I thought I would mark it up. In spite of the bad name a number of bandwagon jumping books on happiness have received, this book looks at the pursuit of happiness through a variety of religious or philosophical routes. It is more of an introduction than a full-bodied study, but none the worse for that. Readers of Alain de Botton would recognise the style and the subject. Reading through a quick guide to the likes of JS Mill, Seneca, Epicurus and Aquinas as a means of delving through their works in further detail at a later date is no bad thing.

[Totochelamouche · Rating 4 out of 5]

We have lost contact with the old and rich traditions of happiness, and we have lost the ability to understand their essentially moral nature. Deaf to the conversation of the ages, we deny ourselves the chance of finding a happiness that is meaningful. We've settled, nowadays, for a much weaker, much thinner happiness: mere enjoyment of pleasure, mere avoidance of pain and suffering. The so-called new science of happiness perpetuates this impoverished notion of the good life. Somewhere between Plato and Prozac, happiness stopped being a lofty achievement and became an entitlement.

For most of human history, happiness has been understood, even experienced, in the context of religious belief. Only in the past three or four centuries, and mainly in Western culture, has happiness been divorced, for some people, from faith, religion, and spirituality.

Yes, Epicurus believed that pleasure was the secret of happiness, but here's the twist: he defined pleasure not as sensual indulgence - touching this, tasting that - but as the absence of desire. [...] True pleasure, Epicurus insisted, is marked not by intensity but by tranquility.

Ghazali's crisis coincided with his introduction to Sufism, the mystical side of Islam that preaches neither doctrine nor dogma but affirms, above all else, the transforming power of the personal experience of God's presence. The Sufis call this experience dhawq, "taste," which nicely captures the sensuous immediacy of their vision of happiness.

Happiness may, and probably will, begin with pleasurable feelings, but it will also go well beyond them because happiness isn't really about feeling good - it's about being good. The problem is that we are apt to mistake the former for the latter.

The virtuous man will be courageous, Cicero explained, not because he esteems courage but because he desires to live without anxiety. And exhibiting courage is a highly effective way to have an anxiety-free life.

That is the teaching of the Chandogya Upanishad, one of the most ancient Hindu scriptures, dating back several thousand years. (Upanishad translates as "sit down near," which tells us that they were originally composed as stories to be listened to, not read.)

And it was precisely to lift the cloud of ignorance, to dispel illusions, and to foster true knowledge that jnana yoga emerged in India more than a thousand years ago.
The philosopher Shankara (A.D. 788-820), the first great teacher of jnana yoga, asserted that happiness could be achieved through knowledge alone.

Traditionally, the jnana yogins renounce society and give up their family, home, property, and career. Because they have learned to discriminate between the world of false appearances and the world of absolute reality, they gladly forsake the world of appearances. For who would choose to live in ignorance and delusion when knowledge and clarity are possible? (To offer a pedestrian analogy, this must feel something like the connoisseur whose refined palate makes the house red undrinkable.) The busy life of the householder - providing for a family, punching the time clock, being a good neighbor - distracts them from the contemplation of eternal truth, which has become their heart's desire.

The wisest seek refuge in a separate realm where other people's ignorance - our ignorance, for most of us are busy householders - will not stain the purity of their wisdom. (This is not as far-fetched as it seems, for in the medieval Christian West, monasteries and universities were created for much the same purpose, although that purpose has now all but disappeared.) We must imagine the recluse to be happy - happier, in fact, than those of us still imprisoned by our delusions as we run the race of life. He is happy because he has exchanged a world of illusion for one of perfect and pure reality.

Krishna teaches that we must act (passivity is never an option) but always with indifference, neither pinning our hopes on one outcome nor desperately seeking to avoid another. Let us be clear: we are not expected, suddenly, to relinquish all desire and motivation for action. [...] Rather, we must prevent ourselves from becoming obsessed with the results of what happens when we act on our desires. Our goal, then, is detachment from the fruits of our labor, whether gain or loss, joy or sorrow, praise or blame. Holding these worldly concerns at a distance, we shall come to regard them all equally. (Around the time that the Gita was composed, the first Stoic philosophers in ancient Greece were thinking much the same thing.)

Such freedom can be fully gained only through discipline, which is the rousing imperative of karma yoga. Action without yoga - without control - is idle movement, just spinning your wheels or revving your engine. To give action its ultimate meaning and purpose, we must temper it through the discipline of yoga. "Stand fast in Yoga," Krishna commands. "In success and failure be the same and then get busy with your works."

In the West, the most famous bhakti movement - and one that for many people is their dominant image of Hinduism - is Hare Krishna (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON).

All the types of yoga that we are looking at teach the value of detachment from what confronts us in the here and now - the world and its incessant demands (jnana yoga), action and its consequences (karma yoga), and the self and its ego-driven obsessions (bhakti yoga) - for in detachment they find the secret of happiness.

But if we are ready for it, what lies ahead is the mental journey (our modern-day chariot ride) from delusion to insight and, finally, to wisdom. Which is another way of saying that it is a journey to happiness. Like Siddhartha, we can delay the journey only for so long. Something inside us - call it the dark night of the soul, a change of heart, or even a midlife crisis, so little does the label matter - compels us to leave the palace, climb into the chariot, and take to the open road.

A similar, though less dramatic, expansion has occurred in the United Kingdom and Western Europe, where more than a million people have converted - most of whom, it should be noted, are drawn from the white liberal educated elite.

One ninth-century Zen master told his students, "If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha!" to underscore the importance of remaining independent of authority figures.

In the castle of Roccasecca, north of Naples, where he was later imprisoned by his brothers, was born the youngest son of the Conte d'Aquino. History - and heaven - knows him as Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), saint of the Roman Catholic Church, author of the Summa Theologiae, and reconciler of reason and faith. The scion of an aristocratic family (his great uncle, Frederick Barbarossa, had been the Holy Roman Emperor), Aquinas was sent at age five to be educated at the Benedictine monastery at nearby Monte Cassino.

In our time of abrasive journalism and political debates that quickly descend into juvenile retorts, it is easy to miss what is (for us) most unusual about how Aquinas argued his points: that he fought not against his opponent but for the truth.

Like other theologians of his time, Aquinas had learned about a wise Persian mystic from an earlier century named "Algazal."

But if you want to discover the greatest allegorical expression of the Sufi path, you must turn to an epic poem of five thousand lines written in the twelfth century by another Persian writer, the sometime pharmacist Fariduddin Attar. This inspirational classic is called The Conference of the Birds. [...]
As the poem begins, the birds of the world realize that they are the only creatures who lack a supreme ruler, and so they decide to search for one. They elect a hoopoe bird to guide them in their quest.

The Sufi orders, which arose in the twelfth century, are not monastic orders, such as found in Christianity, but fellowships, or confraternities, of those who have chosen to follow the Sufi path. [...]
The most famous of the Sufi orders is the Mevlevi, whose members are known throughout the West as the whirling dervishes because of the distinctive dance they perform as a means of concentration. (The dervishes spend 1,001 days learning the dance by spinning around a large nail placed between the first two toes of the left foot.)

But virtue, as Berkovits reminds us, must be freely chosen, because our choosing is what matters. To be virtuous under compulsion - you would like to shoplift, but you don't because the closed-circuit television camera would expose you - is to be not virtuous, but only obedient. Virtue arises only when you could do something wrong and then do not.

Despair is the wrong conclusion to be drawn from the unalterable fact of suffering, for that is to concede that our response is likewise unalterable.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Little book with lots of good thoughts. Interesting to trace the philosophical perspectives through time, and see the building influences. Gotta say I mostly skimmed the earlier chapters, and the summary is fascinatingly simple, intuitive. Not for everyone, although perhaps it oughta be?

[Nora Alshareef · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books I’ve ever read

[Michelle Weijia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the fourth book and probably will be the last one I read on the topic of “happiness” for this period of time. It is completely different from the other three books as it is rooted not in psychology but in philosophy.

In the book, the author examines how ancient philosophers/thinkers in different traditions and cultures look at happiness: what it means to be happy and how to attain happiness? It covers the following eight philosophical or religious traditions:
—> The Utilitarians
—> The Epicureans
—> Hinduism
—> Buddhism
—> Christianity
—> Islam
—> The Stoics
—> Judaism

They are different views based on different assumptions — some are completely different and some share hidden similarities. Within each perspective, there are insights worth noting and wisdoms to be gained even though I may not agree with all of their messages or I don’t really understand some of them. Overall, since I’m not religious, I felt more connection with the three philosophies discussed.

It’s a paradox that I resonate with both the philosophy of Epicureans and that of the Stoics because they seem to be teaching completely different things — one focuses on pleasure (although not the common idea of pleasure as in hedonism) while the other emphasizes virtues; one promotes seeking pleasure and avoiding pain while the other preaches the indifference to and endurance of life’s inevitable suffering; one practices seclusion and the other advocates public life and civil duty. Here is why I feel I can integrate them. It is not necessarily to reconcile their ideas such as finding similarities, but to find their usage/wisdom applied in different situations. I had greater affinity with Stoicism and found their wisdom particularly useful when facing adversity; however, during easier time, I’m more attracted to Epicureanism and found their wisdom on simple pleasures and tranquillity in life useful.

It’s purely out of intellectual curiosity for me to read this book and I found it stimulating. There are so many more insights/wisdom I have gleaned or glimpsed from the book. It’ll take some time or some experience for some of them to sink in but they are in my brain somewhere. :)

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Approaching philosophical and religious concepts with ease and sensibility, Richard Schoch managed to do what many have tried, but few accomplished: talk about difficult and controversial points of view in a clear and approachable way. The Secrets of Happiness: three thousand years of searching for the good life is a book not only about philosophy and religion, but about the many ways happiness has been perceived throughout time.
Written in four different parts, one for each of the primary conceptualizations of the path to happiness - pleasure, enduring suffering, reason, and the transcendence of reason - the book does a magnificent job of explaining each of them through the use of stories, descriptions and analogies. Schoch’s style makes the book reader friendly, as he never resorts to complicated language or jargons to explain difficult concepts.
The author’s approach, however, may seem amateurish and superficial for those with a higher knowledge of philosophy and theology, as he does not deeply elaborate on any of the presented concepts, choosing instead a more explanatory route.
Moreover, The Secrets of Happiness is an exceptional book for those who like to dab their toes into philosophy and religion and those who are simply looking for a good book that will make them think about life and humanity.

[Dee Buck]

Selected this book in error. Didnt read

[Pâmela Vasconcelos · Rating 4 out of 5]

É um bom livro trata sobre Filosofia. De Epicuro a Sêneca. De Platão a Buda, abarca muitos assuntos. Não é meu tipo favorito de leitura, mas gostei.

[Sarah Jameson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick canter through and summary of happiness philosophers and world religions' stands on the subject.

[gramakri · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book, but nothing new for readers well acquainted with what ancient philosophies have to say about happiness, other than the convenience of having key ideas about happiness well consolidated to serve as a quick reckoner.
But a real eye-opener for those who believe happiness can be bought !
Read more about this book at
http://bookwormsrecos.blogspot.in/201...

[Suzan Oktaria · Rating 5 out of 5]

rahasia kebahagiaan itu ada di hati