What the world values
are riches, honor, long life, and recognition.
What it finds pleasurable is repose for the body,
rich flavors, fine clothes, beautiful colors and good music.

What it dislikes are poverty, low status, short life,
and dishonor.

The rich are burdened with accumulating possessions,
piling up more than they can use.
Those who pursue honor
deliberate about their course of action
day and night.
In acting this way they treat their body
as being extraneous to them.

The birth of man is also
the birth of his sorrows.

What people pursue as happiness – I do not know if that is true happiness or not.
When I see what people regard as happiness and their relentless pursuit of it, it is not
what I would regard as happiness as happiness.
Is there true happiness or not?

                                                           ~*~
I consider non-action as the highest happiness, though people consider it a deep sorrow.
Hence it is said, “highest happiness is the absence of happiness; the highest praise is
the absence of praise.”

Right and wrong cannot be determined by the verdicts of the world. Nevertheless, non-action may indicate right and wrong.

…Heaven does not act and thereby sustains its purity. Earth does not act and stays still. From the conjunction of their non-action, all things are brought forth. Immense and indiscernible is the process – there is no traceable origin of it!
                  All things in their inexhaustible fullness arise from this non-action.

Zhuangzi trans. by Hyun Höchsmann and Yang Guorong. Book 18 Highest Happiness

“Happiness” is the subtext of human life. Would you say that is a fair statement? This, happiness is the implicit meaning of all that we do… The voice of Zhuangzi notes the script which receive from day one of our stepping onto the stage klieg lights emphasizes our body.  Enhancement, embellishment, preservation, of our body etc., no matter the dissolving effect of time’s passage…  

“What people pursue…I do not know”, writes Zhuangzi.

There is no need to add commentary to the concluding revelation. “Revelation” indeed because it is certainly not what we’d expect. And there’s no cynical deflection, no retreat into despair…

Let’s think about it!