the happiness of every living thing

 

 

 

What we really want to do is serve happiness.
We want everyone to be happy, never unhappy even for a moment.
We want the animals to be happy. The happiness of every living thing is what we want.
We want it very much but we cannot bring it about.

We cannot make even one individual happy.
It seems that this thing that we want most of all is out of our reach.
But we were born to serve happiness and we do serve it.
The confusion is due to our lack of awareness of real happiness. 

Happiness is pervasive.
It is everywhere. And everywhere the same.
And it is forever.

When people are really happy they say:

 'This will last forever even after death', and that is true.
When we are unhappy it is because something is covering our minds

 and we are not able to be aware of happiness. 

 

When the difficulty is past we find happiness again.
It is not that happiness is all around us. That is not it at all.
It is not this or that or in this or that.

It is an abstract thing.
Happiness is unattached. Always the same.

 It does not appear and disappear.

 It is not sometimes more and sometimes less.

 It is our awareness of happiness that goes up and down.
Happiness is our real condition.
It is reality.
It is life.
…
When we see life we call it beauty. It is magnificent - wonderful.
We may be looking at the ocean when we are aware of beauty

 but it is not the ocean. We may be in the desert and we say

 that we are aware of the 'living desert' but it is not the desert.

Life is ever present in the desert and everywhere, forever.
By awareness of life we are inspired to live.

Life is consciousness of life itself.





~ Agnes Martin
from Agnes Martin, Paintings, Writings, Remembrances 

by Arne Glimcherersity 

 

 prepared for a lecture at the Univ of New

 Mexico, Santa Fe 1979

 

art by van gogh

with thanks to being silently drawn