Unicorns and Virgins

See if this sounds familiar...

Whew, it took a lot of effort, but I finally have it all - a beautiful home, the perfect job, a nice car, the two most remarkable cats ever (apologies to other cat lovers - I'm sure your kitties are quite adequate, but...), high-speed Internet, enough money to not worry about it, etc., etc. Friends tell me I'm living the dream. So how come I'm not happy? I'm supposed to be happy. Maybe there's no such thing as happiness after all...

From The Paradox of Happiness by John Tarrant
in the Shambhala Sun, January 2004

The unicorn of happiness is not elusive because it is an illusion - it is real. It just inhabits a different dimension from getting and losing and good and evil and pleasure and loss, which are the places we usually look for it.

The legend of the unicorn says that it is attracted to virgins; indeed, virgins are its only known weakness. Before you despair, it might be interesting to take this bit about virgins as an image of what goes on in the mind. The virginal mind is innocent in the positive sense. The innocent mind is not thinking about itself and what it can get. It isn't thinking, "How do I look as unicorn bait?" "No unicorn could ever be interested in me." "I'll be famous if I catch a unicorn." "How do I construct the best unicorn-catching machine?"

Instead, the innocent mind is just hanging out, living its life. It attracts the unicorn because it is like the unicorn, who is also just hanging out, living its life.

further on,

The Chinese unicorn is sighted even more rarely than the European one. It is said to have appeared at the time of Confucius' birth and to have a taste for wisdom. One sage had the interesting thought that if a unicorn is so seldom seen, you might not know for certain what it looks like. It might be capable of changing shape. In fact, you might meet one and not realize it. How can you be sure a unicorn is not present on a given occasion? You might be sitting with the unicorn of happiness at this very moment and not know it. Perhaps when you are unhappy, you are just not paying attention.

he concludes,

When you get the hang of being more interested in life than in agreeing with your thoughts, then you will get the life you get. And you will be able to have as much happiness as you want with almost no effort whatsoever. When you stop believing your thoughts, you look around just for you, just because it is interesting to look around. Some people call that enlightenment. But you won't call it that. You'll be too interested in the new view.

And you'll notice that wherever you look, there will be nothing but those damned unicorns.

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John Tarrant is the author of The Light Inside The Dark: Zen, Soul and the Spiritual Life (Harper Collins) and director of Pacific Zen Institute which conducts retreats devoted to koans, inquiry and the arts.
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