Happiness is returning to a state where nothing is missing
Happiness is kind of our default state — it’s a lack of desire for change or disruption. - Mark Manson
According to Buddhism, most people identify happiness with pleasant feelings, while identifying suffering with unpleasant feelings. People consequently ascribe immense importance to what they feel, craving to experience more and more pleasures, while avoiding pain. Whatever we do throughout our lives, whether scratching our leg, fidgeting slightly in the chair, or fighting world wars, we are just trying to get pleasant feelings.
Desire’s a contract you make to be unhappy until you get what you want. You become disturbed because you want something.
- No single thing will make you happy forever
People hold onto a delusion that there’s something out there that will make them happy and fulfilled forever. No single thing can do that.
If obtaining things made us permanently happy, then the cavemen would have been miserable, and we would all be deliriously happy. Yet, net happiness per person is not going up and might even be going down. Modernity probably brings more unhappiness than the past.
- Happiness is a process of understanding and self-discovery
There’s no single permanent solution to happiness. Rather, achieving happiness requires a process of understanding and self-discovery. It is a process of training yourself to see certain truths.
- Renouncing things is not an easy path to happiness
In olden times, one of the routes to finding peace was becoming a monk. You would renounce things—sex, shelter, money and other material attachments—and go off in the woods. You might find some peace after 30 years, when you’d finally gotten over the fact that you weren’t going to have these things. The truth is, most of them probably never got over it. There are lots of monks out there but there aren’t a lot of enlightened people.
- It’s easier to fulfill your material needs than to renounce them
It was Osho who said, essentially: “Every time I meet a prostitute, she wants to talk about God. And every time I meet a priest, he wants to talk about sex.” Whatever you deny yourself will become your new prison.
Today it’s actually easier to fulfill your desire for material comfort than it is to renounce it. It’ll take you a lifetime to renounce material comfort, and it still might not work. But you can make some money and be materially successful in less than a lifetime.
- When you’re sick, your desires run away
Physical health is the foundation of everything. If you don’t have your physical health, you have nothing. A Confucius saying I like: “A sick man only wants one thing, a healthy man wants 10,000 things.” When you’re sick, your desires run away. Without the ability to get up and function, you can’t turn into the desiring machine that you are.
- You can increase your happiness without losing your drive
Smart people are good at figuring out the truth. The more you dig into certain deep truths, the freer and more peaceful you will become. That peace will lead to happiness.
- Being Unhappy Is Extremely Inefficient
A peaceful mind makes better decisions
- Genetics is important, but it’s only half the picture
Genetics is important. It goes a long way in determining strength, athletic performance and intelligence. But your genetic set point is only about half of it. And happiness, or general contentment, is much more malleable than the other things.
It would be very hard for me to change my athletic performance dramatically purely by working out. I’m much more limited in that arena because of my genetics. But things like my temperament, outlook on life, how peaceful I am, how angry I get—these are much more in my control.
Happiness Is a Skill You Can Develop
You’re not stuck at your current level of happiness
- Happiness Is Peace in Motion
The mind goes quiet during the moments of greatest pleasure.
The first problem with attaining peace is that no activity will get you there. Fundamentally, peace is inactivity; it’s a sense that everything is fine.
- Stress is an inability to decide what’s important
Let’s define stress. In physical terms, stress happens when something wants to be in two places at one time. If I apply pressure to both ends of an iron beam, I create stress on the beam because one part wants to be north and the other part wants to be south.
- Self-improvement is just a dressed up form of self-conflict
If we want peace, we have to give up on self-conflict. We even have to give up on self-improvement, because self-improvement is just a dressed up form of self-conflict. Instead, we need to use our natural curiosity to understand things better. Through understanding, we will naturally improve ourselves.
The Path to Peace Is Truth
- When you discover the truth, bad habits can disappear
Let’s say I’m trying to quit smoking. There are techniques I can try, but they’re always painful and difficult. Often, a moment will come when I see myself in a new way that allows the habit to disappear by itself. I get a diagnosis of lung cancer and understand I’m going to die, or I see a friend get in trouble with similar bad habits. When I see something clearly enough and understand it, the bad habit can dissolve by itself.
The Closer You Are to the Truth, the More Silent You Become Inside
People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them. This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices. In meditation, you are supposed to closely observe your mind and body, witness the ceaseless arising and passing of all your feelings, and realise how pointless it is to pursue them. When the pursuit stops, the mind becomes very relaxed, clear and satisfied. All kinds of feelings go on arising and passing joy, anger, boredom, lust but once you stop craving particular feelings, you can just accept them for what they are. You live in the present moment instead of fantasising about what might have been.
The name of God is truth.
References:
- https://nav.al/happiness