"The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches...My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles." The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen," though by then he had already lost his father when he was 7, his first wife when she was 20 and his first son, aged 5. In Japan, the late 18th-century poet Issa is celebrated for his delighted, almost child-like celebrations of the natural world. Issa saw four children die in infancy, his wife die in childbirth, and his own body partially paralyzed.

"In the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno's arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied."

 

I'm not sure I knew the details of all these lives when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. "There is nothing either good or bad," I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, "but thinking makes it so." I had been lucky enough at that point to stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment (officially at least) on Park Avenue, enough time and money to take vacations in Burma, Morocco, El Salvador. But every time I went to one of those places, I noticed that the people I met there, mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and even optimism than the friends I'd grown up with in privileged, peaceful Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing a therapist every day. Though I knew that poverty certainly didn't buy happiness, I wasn't convinced that money did either.

So - as post-1960s cliché decreed - I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I'd noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I'd imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media - and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can't think of a single thing I lack.

I'm no Buddhist monk, and I can't say I'm in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I've written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn't want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I've come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world).

When the phone does ring - once a week - I'm thrilled, as I never was when the phone rang in my overcrowded office in Rockefeller Center. And when I return to the United States every three months or so and pick up a newspaper, I find I haven't missed much at all. While I've been rereading P.G. Wodehouse, or "Walden," the crazily accelerating roller-coaster of the 24/7 news cycle has propelled people up and down and down and up and then left them pretty much where they started. "I call that man rich," Henry James's Ralph Touchett observes in "Portrait of a Lady," "who can satisfy the requirements of his imagination." Living in the future tense never did that for me.

"Perhaps happiness, like peace or passion, comes most when it isn't pursued."

 

I certainly wouldn't recommend my life to most people - and my heart goes out to those who have recently been condemned to a simplicity they never needed or wanted. But I'm not sure how much outward details or accomplishments ever really make us happy deep down. The millionaires I know seem desperate to become multimillionaires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose motivations they are no longer sure of). And I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno's arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

Being self-employed will always make for a precarious life; these days, it is more uncertain than ever, especially since my tools of choice, written words, are coming to seem like accessories to images. Like almost everyone I know, I've lost much of my savings in the past few months. I even went through a dress-rehearsal for our enforced austerity when my family home in Santa Barbara burned to the ground some years ago, leaving me with nothing but the toothbrush I bought from an all-night supermarket that night. And yet my two-room apartment in nowhere Japan seems more abundant than the big house that burned down. I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nibbling at sweet tangerines in the sun. When a Sigur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplendent. And then it seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn't pursued.

If you're the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn't where your joy lies. In New York, a part of me was always somewhere else, thinking of what a simple life in Japan might be like. Now I'm there, I find that I almost never think of Rockefeller Center or Park Avenue at all.

By Pico Iyer

Jerusalem hopes to see the Obama administration lead efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear arms, that's the key message Israel's leadership wants to see visiting US secretary of state take home

The identical message Israel's leaders made an effort to hammer home as they met with visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in rapid succession on Tuesday is that Israel expects US President Barack Obama's administration to lead the international charge against the Iranian nuclear threat.

Here on her first official visit since being appointed secretary, Clinton's hectic schedule included meetingswith President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni.

All of whom told Clinton that the progression of Iran's military nuclear program must be halted and that more pressure must be exerted to cut off the supply of missiles and technology to Tehran while combating the funding of terror organizations.

Israel considers Iran its central threat, Clinton was told. Furthermore, Israel also believes that time is running out while Tehran stalls in an effort to establish facts on the ground that will be difficult to change in the future.

Jerusalem is seeking to have Washington set time constraints on dialogue with Iran, and if these should fail the world must impose harsher economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

And if this course of action should also fail to yield results, Israel is asking the US to consider military action.

Defense Minister Barak told Clinton during their meeting that Israel would not take any option off the table.

The second track pursued by the Israeli leadership embraces the notion reportedly put forward by President Obama, according to which Russia would prevent the sale of advanced technology and long-range missiles to Iran while in exchange Washington would reconsider its missile defense shield in Europe.

And the third track urges stronger action to prevent the smuggling of arms from Iran to Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas, in accordance with the resolution passed by the UN Security Council.

Clinton made clear during her visit that the Obama administration would continue predecessor George W. Bush's stalwart opposition to an Iran with nuclear might at its military's disposal.

Israel's Ambassador to the US, Salai Meridor, who accompanied Clinton's visit, said Washington had yet to decide whether it would set a deadline for the dialogue with Tehran before moving to harsher sanctions.

As for Russia preventing the sale of long-range missiles and technology to Iran, Clinton confirmed that the proposal was in talks with Moscow.

The secretary said that she has already discussed the matter with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during the Egyptian conference earlier this week on the rehabilitation of Gaza, and that she expects to talk Lavrov again on Friday.

Dispute over Palestinian issue

But while Jerusalem and Washington appear to be in sync regarding Iran, there is a great deal of disparity between the leaderships' view of the stagnated Palestinian peace process.

The first matter of contention is the closure imposed on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

In her meeting with Barak, Clinton pressed for Israel to open the border crossings to ease the Palestinians' needs, and expressed her concerns regarding the impact the closure has on the humanitarian situation in the coastal territory.

During her joint press conference with Minister Livni the secretary said that it was difficult to discuss the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza so long as the rocket attacks against Israel continue, however the Obama administration is expected to continue pressuring Israel on this matter.

Another issue that will likely drive a wedge between the US administration and the future Netanyahu government is the two-state solution favored by Obama and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Netanyahu was adamant to project a solid relationship with the Obama administration and a lack of US pressure on the Palestinian track, and indeed Clinton did broach the subject during her meeting with him. The secretary did however discuss the two-state solution and the Annapolis process in her other meetings.

US sources made clear that the matter "would be discussed in due time. There is no point in raising the issue before the Israeli government is formed."

The sources stressed Secretary Clinton's message that 'friends must be honest with each other' as testament to Washington's future intentions.

The settlements are another issue related to the Palestinian talks, one that already plagued the

Republican Bush administration and will certainly be on the agenda of the new Democratic one.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice publically slammed construction in existing settlements, which Olmert's government dismissed as natural growth.

Obama's administration is expected to make things very difficult for an Israeli government that will adopt the right-wing stance regarding the West Bank, that settlements should not be evacuated and that the state should permit construction where in demand.

This without mentioning the matter of the illegal outposts, which former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had already agreed to dismantle, though most remain untouched.