I have written about happiness before, spoken about it as part of wellness and pursued it, more or less, for four score and ten years. Am I there yet? I dunno. Are you? If not sure, what might constitute a worthy wellness perspective on this great philosophical mystery, the pursuit of happiness? Maybe, as Viktor Frankl and others suggest, it's best not to pursue happiness at all, but to allow it to ensue from good works and other quests that render special moments in time as enriching and joyful as possible.

Pursuing or ensuing, we probably can't be happy all or even most of the time, providing our minds are not zoned for zero occupancy. What, then, might be done to enable more happiness, or at least to retain the images and sensations of happy times as often as possible?

There is so little we know about happiness, even though almost everyone values it. How much happiness do we really want or need? Is it possible to overdose on it? Or under-dose, for that matter, to the point of getting all wrinkly and mean and maybe dying prematurely of terminal crankiness brought on by happiness deficiencies? Who knows?
Well, some people know, or claim to, based upon their work applying the methods of science to the great and not-so-great questions and puzzles about the phenomenon of happiness.

I've been thinking about happiness more than usual for a few days, ever since receiving a brochure describing a grand conference in Sydney, Australia on Happiness And Its Causes. The event, sponsored by the Vajrayana Institute, a Buddhist think tank, took place in early June. It attracted a sellout audience of over 3,000 delegates. The featured speaker was The Dalai Lama. A conference report at the event website noted that his Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama spoke about 'Happiness in a Material World in 2007.' Other speakers included noted American happiness experts Richard J. Davidson (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Stephen Post (Case University), Alan Wallace (Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies) and Tal Ben-Shahar and Daniel Gilbert (Harvard) and Martin Seligmann (University of Pennsylvania).

The main thing that captured my attention in the brochure was the list of promises regarding what participants would learn, including but not limited to the following:

• Practical techniques to enhance happiness.
• Tools for a happier life.
• The science behind happiness.
• The answer to the question: Is genuine, lasting happiness possible?
• Also, the answer to this question: Is happiness just a matter of biological luck?
• And this one: Will searching for happiness give life meaning?
• Two more: Can we learn to be happy and is the search for happiness self-indulgent?

Actually, this is just a teaser set of promises outlined in the brochure. I would like to interview some of the delegates who attended. If they got what was promised, then I suppose they are now very happy. These happy people might now inform the rest of us about appropriate responses to the above bullet points.

Another event is set for next year. I would have assumed that there was nothing left to learn about happiness, but information about the 2008 event at the sponsor website identifies a few areas evidently overlooked a few months back when the Dalai Lama came calling, such as:

• Practical techniques to enhance happiness at home and in the workplace.
• Strategies to deal more effectively with the problems of daily life.
• Ways to boost your productivity at work.
• Methods by which to improve your relationships.

You may be wondering, How much does all this happiness cost and/or Is it too late for me, since the Dalai Lama has moved on and the 2007 event is over? No, you can attend NEXT year's happiness conference. The early-bird registration fee for that is $595 (Australian), but hurry - prices increase after December 20! For extra happiness, add the pre-conference ($295) and post- conference ($145) workshops and throw in the Happiness 2007 DVD ($99). To get away from the riff-raff, consider stepping up to the Platinum premium seating option ($200) or, what the hell, go all the way and get yourself a Gold Pass ($1,045). You wanna be happy, don't you? Well, it ain't cheap, evidently.

Apparently, making money is not at all in conflict with being happy, and I suppose we can all breathe a sigh of relief about that. The only topic I did not see addressed at the happiness conference was DBRU equivalents. It's hard to understand how anyone can achieve real happiness without a mastery of the DBRU concept and the daily enjoyment of a plethora of actual DBRU equivalents. But, we all have much to learn about happiness. I suspect there is a lot of variation and subtlety in the ways we experience and express happiness. This is probably true even for folks with lots of commonalities, and more so across cultures.

I wonder if the Dalai Lama addressed DBRUs and, if so, what advice he had about experiencing more such equivalents in our daily lives.

All the best. Be happy, if and when you can, and always look on the bright side of life.

The following was written by my friend Bob Miles, a Tampa resident who was in attendance at the Happiness conference in Sydney who is currently in South Africa. It was Bob who provided me with the brochures about the conference that led to the writing of this essay.

* Don -- All is well in the southern hemisphere. Currently in Cape Town where I hosted and spoke at an investment conference. Off later this evening for some whale watching and then hopefully will find some happiness exploring the dark continent over the next few weeks.

Enjoyed your happiness essay, as always. I observed that most people were at the happiness conference to find IT and IT probably is not found at such a meeting. It is probably found in the pursuit outside rather than inside a lecture hall.

My other take away is the Dalai Lama said the purpose of life is to be happy and I think all of us define happy in so many different and unique ways. So it must be an inside job even though many of us make it an outside search.

Off now to find happiness in whale watching. Which makes me think that most of us think others are far more happier than ourselves. Kind of the Great Gatsby syndrome.

Hope you are busy chasing Carol around the house and score some of your own happiness.