Article February 26, 1972 Issue

Happiness Is Spiritual

FREDERICK J. BRIGHT

There is a story about a Chinese farmer who worked in the paddies from sunrise to sundown for a daily handful of rice. He lived in grinding poverty. One day he inherited, from a distant and forgotten relative, a vast fortune. He at once built himself a magnificent house on the cool upper slopes, and richly furnished it with all the things he had most admired but never thought to own. Yet his most cherished possession was a servant whom he paid a princely salary to fulfill but one duty each day. This was to wake his master at four in the morning and announce, "Sir, it is four o'clock, and you do not have to get up." Whereupon the affluent one squirmed with joy beneath the silken covers.

Many of us would feel considerably less ecstatic at being waked up.

The widely differing views of what constitutes real happiness, and the uncertainty of its tenure with us, are due to our habit of assessing it on the evidence of the material senses.

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