ACCORDING TO EPICURUS...

My own small edition of the West's most famous research into happiness is in a friend's loft, where it has lain since 1997, along with most of my possessions. Every so often I do get a craving to surround myself again with all those wonderful books, but it quickly goes away.

So I've had make do with the web quotations below. From what I can remember, Epicurus advocated a life governed by calm reason, and talked a lot about tending his garden! There is much in common with Buddhism, that other great happiness-focused tradition, but without the total dissolution of the ego, so hard to attain without a severe asceticism, and so contrary to our culture-bound idea of ourselves as discrete individuals. So, although he lacks a wide readership today, perhaps studying his ideas may provide some insight into our modern condition.

As I've said before, it's EXPERIENCE, Stoopid:

"Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance."

And lower expectations:

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you have now was once among the things you only hoped for."

And freedom:

"A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs and monarchs."

And friends:

"Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship."

Independence (basic financial security):

"The man least dependent on the morrow goes to greet the morrow more cheerfully."

This could also be read as advocating less attachment to the consequences of our actions, a commonplace Eastern teaching. Finally, there is independence of mind:

"I have never desired to please the rabble. what pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far from their understanding."