If Your Bliss Is Just Your

From The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (1990), a documentary filmed in May 1987 at the Directors Guild of America, Hollywood — one of Campbell's final public appearances before his death that October. The remark was a direct correction of the popular misreading of "follow your bliss" as a licence for hedonism. Campbell insisted that true bliss requires self-knowledge and sustained effort: "It may not be fun, but it's your bliss and there's bliss behind pain too." He grounded the concept in the Sanskrit ananda (rapture) from the Upanishadic triad sat-chit-ananda, which he had encountered while helping translate the Upanishads in the 1940s.