Description: Happiness is an absence of neuroses.

 What makes you happy?

Harris:  Well it’s . . .  an elusive thing to get a hold of.  I think the absence of neurosis, the absence of fear, the absence of anxiety.  When you recognize what consciousness is like when those states of mind have subsided, it seems to me intrinsically happy.  It’s intrinsically at ease.  It’s intrinsically peaceful, and at times even blissful.  It’s just the lack of complication – just merely being aware of one’s self in the present moment, and not continually being in conversation with one’s self about the present moment and just thinking, thinking, thinking incessantly.  When that can subside, either because you’re meditating, or because you’re enjoying yourself so much in sports.  Or you’re having sex.  I mean any peak experience has this feature of having your attention really focused in a very uncomplicated way on your experience in the present.  And that state of mind is what I would call happiness.  And all of the obstacles to being at rest in that state of mind, I would . . . I think of as the obstacles to happiness.  And those are things like, you know, a neurotic self-absorption with how other people perceive you; or anxiety about the future; or regret about the thing you didn’t say yesterday.  Those are the ways . . . those are the modes of thought that keep us from recognizing that it’s possible to be really at ease in the present, and happy with . . . happy before anything happens.  I mean to have happiness that’s not contingent upon the next good thing that’s gonna happen, but to just actually be at rest with what is happening right now.

Recorded on: July 4 2007