what is happiness for you?

General discussion, particularly exploring the Dharma in the modern world.
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Ayu
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Re: what is happiness for you?

Post by Ayu »

Because this so-called happiness about wordly affairs is not everlasting, it is a sad phenomenon also.

I can wish everybody to be happy. I think, being benevolent is a very important state of mind. But it is wise not to forget, how "happiness" and "unhappiness" stick together. It is no surprise, if happy people become unhappy later - or contrariwise.
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Ayu
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Re: what is happiness for you?

Post by Ayu »

In my view, this "Buddhist happiness" is a state of mind being free from the delusion of being a self.

Phenomenons ---> are empty. Emptyness ---> is bright light. :shrug:
Jeff H
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Re: what is happiness for you?

Post by Jeff H »

My teacher says something like this: if you go to a psychiatrist and say, “help me become completely free of illusions, delusions, and misery so I can make sure every other living being is likewise free”, you might reasonably expect the rest of your sessions to be conducted as an inpatient on a locked ward.

I think happiness is the perfect illusion every being has of having everything exactly as we want it and never having to endure anything we don’t want. That’s lunacy.

Where Buddha made it real is by explaining that we approach it in the wrong way. He redefines our illusion of happiness as a sickness that simply perpetuates the cycle of manifest and changing suffering. As HHDL often reminds us, the innate objective of every being is to pursue happiness and flee suffering. But all our efforts are based on our illusion of perfect happiness and doomed to fail.

To break free of that we need to completely redefine happiness. Take the underlying motivator that recognizes the virtue in your own happiness and non-virtue in your own suffering, then expand that, bit by bit, until you actually realize that “happiness” means virtue and harmony for all, and “suffering” means non-virtue and disharmony for all.

Refuge in the Three Jewels means that there is a way for both conditions (the illusion of happiness and suffering) to dissolve into the bliss of perfect, universal harmony, and it is possible to make that happen. I think that is Buddha’s happiness, but it is nothing like ours.

So I aspire to make what is happiness for me more like what is happiness for Buddha. But it isn't yet.
Where now is my mind engaged? - Shantideva
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Astus
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Re: what is happiness for you?

Post by Astus »

Jeff H wrote:Refuge in the Three Jewels means that there is a way for both conditions (the illusion of happiness and suffering) to dissolve into the bliss of perfect, universal harmony, and it is possible to make that happen. I think that is Buddha’s happiness, but it is nothing like ours.
I think setting up an otherworldly happiness is only extending the original pursuit of everlasting bliss and contentment. What Buddha clearly stated is that the cause of suffering is craving. And the most common reaction to that that I have heard was that giving up desire is completely negative, undesirable, and nihilistic. So, I consider it a skilful means in Buddhism that instead of proclaiming emptiness and extinction in a straightforward way, there is a currency of expressions like happiness, bliss, peace, and other nice words. The other objection I have regularly heard is that total contentment is unwanted, because then all the action is gone from life and there is no room for development, innovation, etc. left. That we need problems so we can solve them. Basically, we want to keep ourselves busy, either in a secular-materialistic way, or in a spiritual-religious way, or perhaps both. Then it is easy to find the idea that we need to practice a lot, we need to learn more, and so on, just to keep ourselves occupied with Buddhism, and consider that as virtuous. Certainly, excuses are plenty for that.

So, some may know of zazen as "good for nothing", and still make it a goal. Others might have learnt mahamudra's "do nothing", and think that it needs to be realised. And there are other terms around, going back to apranihita, a synonym of nirvana. While samsara means constant occupation, chasing thoughts, feelings, and impressions, nirvana is the end of it all, no more chase. But that sounds totally boring, to simply stop doing things. Fortunately, a bodhisattva is eternally liberating beings out of immeasurable compassion. That is definitely a virtuous (therefore happy) existence. As for the part that a bodhisattva knows that there is nothing to attain, let's leave that as a theory or far away aim. What that tells me is not that we are all poor helplessly deluded beings far away from the buddhas. It tells me that we love to be busy, and it is practically unimaginable even for Buddhists to accept that life is not only empty (of both meaning and purpose) but also suffering.
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
Jeff H
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Re: what is happiness for you?

Post by Jeff H »

Astus wrote:
Jeff H wrote:Refuge in the Three Jewels means that there is a way for both conditions (the illusion of happiness and suffering) to dissolve into the bliss of perfect, universal harmony, and it is possible to make that happen. I think that is Buddha’s happiness, but it is nothing like ours.
I think setting up an otherworldly happiness is only extending the original pursuit of everlasting bliss and contentment. What Buddha clearly stated is that the cause of suffering is craving. And the most common reaction to that that I have heard was that giving up desire is completely negative, undesirable, and nihilistic. So, I consider it a skilful means in Buddhism that instead of proclaiming emptiness and extinction in a straightforward way, there is a currency of expressions like happiness, bliss, peace, and other nice words. The other objection I have regularly heard is that total contentment is unwanted, because then all the action is gone from life and there is no room for development, innovation, etc. left. That we need problems so we can solve them. Basically, we want to keep ourselves busy, either in a secular-materialistic way, or in a spiritual-religious way, or perhaps both. Then it is easy to find the idea that we need to practice a lot, we need to learn more, and so on, just to keep ourselves occupied with Buddhism, and consider that as virtuous. Certainly, excuses are plenty for that.
I agree with this paragraph, Astus. Both virtuous and non-virtuous karma bind us to samsara, but virtuous activities, such as the Bodhisattva deeds, actually cultivate a mind of harmony that has the dual effect of carrying one closer to an enlightened state while benefiting others along the way (albeit imperfectly because of ignorance).

I consider myself a rank beginner on the Buddhist path. I believe that the reality of liberation is always close at hand, but I, personally, do not know how to awaken it suddenly. For me it is a graduated path. My refuge means I have confidence that the path is true and I'm not pining for an other-worldly happiness, I'm making myself busy with what I believe can damage the pollutants that cause samsara.
Where now is my mind engaged? - Shantideva
muni
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Re: what is happiness for you?

Post by muni »

Interesting points.

Clinging to bliss, clinging to emptiness is delusion. When there is any stain in meditation as the notion of true existence as being bliss, emptiness, clarity, non-thought, these are deceptive and misleading. These are still part of samsara. Then bliss -emptiness are inseparable. I think there is no any way to describe contentment or "ever lasting happiness", since it is the union of the two truths. ( not one, not two, not many)
Then clinging is impossible.

Clinging to tools is as well a nasty bug.

Virtuous is tool, non-virtuous is empowering the clinging to self, harms, feeds own suffering in the first place. The karma is resulting in same effects. When the virtuous is grasped, it is not liberating. Virtuous erasing the non-existing line between extremes = Paramitas.

Then in equipoise the focus on Wisdom apart or the focus on Compassion apart is not; since they are union.
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tomschwarz
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Re: what is happiness for you?

Post by tomschwarz »

you have a pretty paid ticket. no catches, it's a ticket to happiness. it's in your hand.

empty mind, all is OK. there is nothing important to do. except to use that ticket and warm the world.

now astus, thanks for the links. question, thinking about the lessons of Dhanañjani Sutta, the part about not using negative means to a positive end, what about the black and white words that you use (totally, completely, etc...)... isn't the world more subtle than that?
i dedicate this post to your happiness, the causes of your happiness, the absence of your suffering the causes of the absence of your suffering that we may not have too much attachment nor aversion. SAMAYAMANUPALAYA
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Taco_Rice
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Re: what is happiness for you?

Post by Taco_Rice »

tomschwarz wrote:except to use that ticket and warm the world.
The way you posit happiness sounds like an ecological problem.
When facing a single tree, if you look at a single one of its red leaves, you will not see all the others. When the eye is not set on any one leaf, and you face the tree with nothing at all in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye without limit. But if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there. One who has understood this is no different from Kannon with a thousand arms and a thousand eyes.
— Takuan Sōhō, the Unfettered Mind
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Re: what is happiness for you?

Post by muni »

empty mind, all is OK. there is nothing important to do. except to use that ticket and warm the world.
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