Happy Science and hard work

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I’ll show you the kind of work angels do” – they are always ready to help people become more happy.  Even in Europe.

Late Saturday night I got a mail from the helpful contact person at IRHH Europe.  The abbreviation is for Institute for Research in Human Happiness, recently updated to the shorter, more catchy “Happy Science”, which supposedly is also a translation of their Japanese name, Kofuku-no-Kagaku.  I don’t know nearly enough Japanese to say for sure. Luckily they have a European branch, in London. I inquired there as to buying their movies, but I had not expected them to be working late at night on a Saturday.  Clearly other people’s happiness is more important to them than relaxing on the weekend. Perhaps they are like the bodhisattvas of the anime, whose joy was in helping others.

Unfortunately, the movies are only available in Japan, but they would try to see if there was a way to buy them from there.  They also told me that there will be a showing of one of their movies in Oslo on August 29!  Unfortunately this is in the Swine Flu season, and I still have all the other problems with travel because of my digestion.  But it would certainly been interesting to see it on the big screen, and meet some of the locals.  Although I fear this might disappoint me.  I have found religious organizations that proselytize tend to have a disturbingly high content of glassy-eyed people with a dysfunctional relationship to things like work, humans, and self-image.  (As in, the self-image is grossly exaggerated relative to the  rest.)

At least Happy Science encourages people to study and work hard and act in the best interest of other people. Do the actual members live according to this?  I don’t know. If they do, they would certainly soon have a noticeable effect toward a better world. And in any case, it certainly seems the European branch office lives the way it teaches.