(This is Part 16 of a series. Go back to Part 15.)
Now let's take each of the Three Golden Questions and look into it a bit further:
1) How can I be happy?
The power of the 1st Golden Question is that it covers all the bases in the vast realm of "I want," plus many other things. It doesn't stop at "How can I get the new car, the new house, the new relationship, the new understanding, the better job," etc., but includes them and goes beyond and then cuts to the chase—how can I be happy?
All those other things are simply sub-goals or way-stations on the way to—we hope—being happy. We've been taught that if we can just get enough—enough money, enough acceptance, enough possessions, enough power, enough beliefs, enough cool, etc., that we'll somehow be happy.
And maybe we will—the answer to the question will be a personal one. But whatever the answer, it will eventually come from a deep wellspring within you. The dwelling with the question day after day, week after week will eventually uncover within us realms that perhaps we didn't know were there.
Then all the things we've done to try to become happy will fall by the wayside. Not that they'll necessarily be gone. Those things may still be there—or not—but we won't need to be concentrated on them.
If we're already coming from the place we've been doing all those things to get to, then those things are interesting but not determinative any longer.
There's no longer any need to manipulate ourselves or the world to get some outcome that promises happiness; the happiness arrives by itself. As we spend time with the 1st Golden Question, our true nature will begin to introduce itself. Why worry where life is going when it's an endless meeting of itself with itself?
This can be mis-interpreted as a passive approach to life, but it doesn't turn out that way. On the outside it can look like formidable action of one kind or another, but inside we know that nothing is happening. We're just meeting ourself again and again in each new flower.
2) How can I appreciate reality as-it-is?
The 2nd Golden Question becomes a meditation on how to appreciate the unbelievable beauty and majesty of reality in all its splendid disguises of darkness and light, illness and healing, defeat and victory, sorrow and joy.
As said before, though the answers that will come are interesting and valuable, an even greater value comes from the mere dwelling with the question—because the question itself embodies a kind of frequency that will, quite apart from answers, reveal unforseen realms that are, paradoxically, right here.
Another way of saying the same thing is that the answer may reveal itself in a kind of seeing that has nothing to do with words. Or it can come as words, it can come as action, it can come as surrender. It can come in a million different ways.
Another way the question can reveal itself is that a deep underground spring of appreciation and gratitude may well up within you—where did this come from?—and you'll understand that you received your answer.
3) How can I nurture the happiness of the world?
The 3rd Golden Question leads us to compassion, leads us to watering that beautiful plant however we can, leads us to nurturing action that attempts to turn on a light instead of fighting darkness.
But of course "we" are never actually doing anything, it's all being done and always has been done in an infinite dance since time out-of-time by that which cannot be named or grasped or even adequately praised.
If you would like to, here's a good way to work with the Three Golden Questions: Take the first one and hang with it the way you would with a Zen koan, that is, just letting it marinate in your consciousness, an ongoing mystery for a day, a week, a month or whatever time seems best.
And then, after dwelling with it for that period of time, take the next question and do the same thing. And then the third question and do the same thing, and then the first one again, on and on, until the mysterious answer appears and reveals itself.
A toast to your happiness, and to the happiness of all life that you encounter.
—jim sloman, 9.11.03 for 10.14.04
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