Taoism would hold that ecstatic highs are always temporary, and that in order to return to a contented mean, you will first have to experience an equivalent low. That low will either be a mirror image of the high, or will be a longer but less extreme low.hadespussercats wrote:Hm.
I was thinking about contentment versus happiness-- contentment being something we can build, versus happiness being something that happens upon us one way or another (at least that's the basic sense I've gotten from the thread thus far.)
For me, I think contentment involves having people I love who love me back (in the whole variety of shades that love comes in), and doing work I'm proud of. Admittedly, chance plays a big part in this as well-- we're lucky if we have people who love us, though we can work on loving others well. And we're lucky if we can find work we're proud to do, and excel at it, though we can always develop our skills, our contacts, etc.
Of course, all of this is predicated on not being too sick to experience these feelings, on having food and shelter and enough safety to thrive. But those aspects are just a foundation for contentment-- never mind happiness.
On the other side of happiness, there's ecstasy. That can be cultivated, too. There are so many different traditions with different ways of approaching it-- through deliberate starvation or drugs or sleeplessness, or certain ways of moving or using muscles, or through sex (a whole world of techniques that use sexual pleasure as a mind-opener or a door to ecstatic joy.)
I've tried some of these successfully. But I also have a brain that's sometimes wired for ecstatic joy. Falling in love can be like this, too. But it's a hard state to sustain. Not just physically-- it's hard to take care of yourself or others if you're in it.
And I guess there are medium versions of this sort of thing-- the high you can feel from hiking or running. I don't push myself hard enough when I run (these days) to really experience the dopey version of runner's high. But I often smile while I run, without thinking about it. And I usually feel energetic and positive after. That's a sort of happiness, I guess.
And then there's the Ratz meet high. Took a couple weeks to really come down from that one!
Their point being that you'll have to pay the piper for ecstatic highs. The same goes for "happiness" which is a fleeting emotion.
Taoism views "contentedness" as being the desirable state - because as you say it is something you can build (or cultivate) over time, and it is possible to sustain contentedness over an extended period of time without accruing a "low" debt.
You really know your Tao, Cormac. 
