TO-DAY happiness is too commonplace even to wish to gain in the ordinary sense; at least its meaning has been changed. In the olden time, it was looked on as the most decent thing to desire beside health; people thought they had even a right to claim it, and it seems to me they got it in nine cases out of ten, as they were not so very fastidious. There is no time like to-day, when happiness has lost its golden dais ; if health still keeps as a thousand years ago, a world-wide adoration, it is because it is least troubled with spirituality, that interesting baffler ; and it is too honest to be less true. It never tells a lie. (But do you hate its homeliness and tactlessness ?) We know that our forefathers who had, as it seems to-day, their virtue in stupidity, attached to happiness a meaning of permanence and stability of Cathay, and imagined it far away ; but after all it is a superstition, is it not ? And that superstition has been broken for some time now; however, I do not mean that happiness has ceased to exist. On the contrary, it is very much alive, [<172] indeed, but not in the old meaning ; and in what way ? It is true, I think, that happiness which we fancied to be something substantial is found to-day to be a more Psychical phenomenon ; the question is where we can find it. It is much nearer to truth to say that one who least expects it always gets it, and to seek after it persistently is not always the way to get it. You must learn how to get it without a thought of it. And first of all you must understand that happiness is a most arbitrary word; the word itself means almost nothing. It should have a wider meaning than it used to have, because it should be understood, as I wish, to be a living quality of Psychical life rather than one particular human feeling. Let me explain it to you in some other way.
    A man went to a holy priest of the Zen sect, and disturbed his deep meditation with his complaint. He said: am miserable, because I am poor. I am miserable, because I am in ill health. I am miserable, because I am old." The priest said: " If you are poor, you try to live in poverty, and you shall be happy. If you are in ill health, you try to live [<173] in ill health, then you shall be happy. If you are old. you try to live in old age, then you shall be happy."
    Now, living in it is not living with it. Assimilation is not the proper word; to say to lose yourself in a condition of evanescence might be a better expression. And to lose it is to gain it. The best swimmer never struggles against the wave; and you have to go to the darkness of night for the light of day. There is a secret to turn misery or unhappiness on the spot to happiness by the magic of your conception (Oh the attitude!); and simple it is. If you say it tells only a half truth, I will say to you that the half truth can become the whole truth upon the shortest notice. [<174]