Happiness doesn't exist (kind of)

[jducoeur]

My thanks to mindways for the pointer to this fine exposition of the heart of Buddhism. While it's by no means the complete be-all and end-all, this nicely summarizes one of the most central tenets. It's very unintuitive to most folks, because it is *so* contradictory to our upbringing, but more and more I've found it to be quite correct...

Comments

Thanks

[etherial.livejournal.com]

This is the first treatise on Buddhism I've read that didn't feel like an argument in favor of mass suicide.

Re: Thanks

[jducoeur]

Yeah -- Buddhism is often incorrectly seen as nihilistic, which happens because the concepts are so very different from the usual (especially Western) assumptions, and are often poorly described. This article states it much better than I could, with an appropriately positive focus...

[janeelliot.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It was something I needed to read at this moment.

The joy of growth

[andrea habura (from livejournal.com)]

Generally, I agree with this, but something has always bothered me about Buddhism: the discounting of the joy of stretching yourself. In the short term, in increases unease, because you are moving from a place of comfort and balance to one that is less secure. But there is a deep pleasure in meeting that challenge and growing thereby. And I believe that's an important part of life, too.

Re: The joy of growth

[jducoeur]

Actually, I think this is a misunderstanding, albeit a common one -- indeed, I had a similar conversation over in mindways' journal from whence the pointer came.

The key thing is, Buddhism isn't about avoiding sources of discomfort, it's about growing out of the *mindset* of discomfort. That is, dukkha is rarely if ever caused solely by the outside world -- usually, it is more due to how we *perceive* the world and how we relate to it. It has an awful lot to do with how we get our egos bound up in stuff, both good and bad, that turns those things into sources of dukkha.

So the Buddhist attitude (as I understand it, cautioning that I'm still a relative novice here) would say that there is nothing at all wrong with stretching yourself in these ways -- indeed, that the interesting question is *why* stretching yourself is causing discomfort. That usually is due to issues of self-image: excessive attachment to ideas about your own identity. Conquering those false (and often negative) attachments is key to removing the barriers, and letting yourself grow more naturally and easily.

In other words, Buddhism tends to focus on the unease itself, and ask why growth is causing unease in the first place. *That* is the real problem to be overcome, making growth easier and more natural.

Mind, this isn't to say that growth comes without pain or effort. The conversation on the other journal brought up the straightforward example of exercise (a nicely simple analogue to your point), which may require pain in order to improve oneself. But that sort of pain isn't dukkha -- viewed properly, it just plain doesn't *matter* much, and can even result in its own gentle contentment of following one's path well.

Similarly, personal growth may produce uncertainty, but that uncertainty doesn't have to be a source of dukkha -- viewed properly, the uncertainty is simply a necessary fact of life, neither to be chased nor avoided but simply accepted as part of the path. Truth to tell, this is one of the lessons I figured out relatively early, some years ago, and was key to my getting really bone-deep comfortable with the startup life.

Again, all of this goes to why "suffering" is such a poor translation of dukkha -- it just doesn't capture the right connotations. Dukkha is all about the internal world: our excessive attachments, and the way that they prevent us from simply *being* and *doing* happily...

Re: The joy of growth

[mindways]

...the discounting of the joy of stretching yourself. In the short term, it increases unease...

So far as I am aware the recommendation would not be to avoid unease by avoiding an activity. It would be to avoid unease by changing your mental state such that you no longer feel unease when you are doing that activity. You can still tackle challenges and grow; you simply do not feel unpleasant about being "out of your element".

Part of that shift in mental state involves being less *attached* to pleasures, but that in no way means you cannot *experience* them.

Re: The joy of growth

[mindways]

Oop, posted while jducoeur was posting above. Didn't mean to belabor the point!

Re: The joy of growth

[jducoeur]

Not a problem -- asynchronous posting will do that. (The advantage of Wave's see-every-character style was that it avoided this problem, although I don't think it was worth the immense distraction factor...)

[umbran.livejournal.com]

I think the piece has a flaw.

Just as they say that "suffering" isn't quite the right word, I think they may be off the mark with "happiness". I think "contentment" is probably closer.

[jducoeur]

Could be. The words are squishy, but you may be correct that "happiness" is a bit misleading. OTOH, I suspect most Westerners take "contentment" to have weaker connotations than is intended: I've managed to get there enough times to be conscious that the emotion can be quite strong, moreso than people are likely to expect. So that doesn't seem a perfect match, either.

As usual, semantics are hard. There are times I really want telepathy...

[tafkad.livejournal.com]

I disagree.

True, relaxation from un-ease can bring me to a state of peace, but there are times I have so very much good that I cannot accept it's just a lack of Bad.

There's the feeling I get when I talk to my mother, even when she's in one of her confusions. There's talking to my SO for an extended call. There's knowing that I am creating something fun or beautiful. There's knowing I have contributed something valuable. Each of these gives me an active feeling of happiness, and it happens often, even when I am stressed or in pain.

[jducoeur]

That's good, but slightly at a tangent to the point.

The thing is, "stress" and "pain" aren't dukkha, and don't *necessarily* cause dukkha. They cause dukkha when you let them consume you, and distract you from the good of the world around you.

Honestly, what you're saying mostly sounds like you've got a fair bit of the right mindset already: taking your joy from the world around you and not getting bound up in the bad. The problem of dukkha is largely about the way distractions tend to prevent people from seeing the good of the world around them.

I understand where you're coming from, and it may be that the post oversells its point a bit. But I do think the heart of it stands. The world is full of joy -- the biggest question is whether we can open ourselves up to it properly. Dukkha is, essentially, the mindset problems that prevent us from doing so...

[balsamicdragon.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind a counter-argument.

I think that word choice is really a problem here. Happiness is too big a word and encompasses too many disparate concepts. The happiness that is being described in the article might be better worded as "inner peace," which is certainly a valid form of happiness. But there are at least two other kinds of happiness that cannot simply be described as the absence of dukkha or unease or suffering.

The first kind of happiness seems, to me, to always be accompanied by a sense of surprise or involves seeing or doing something for the first time. When your kid does something particularly funny or clever. When you discover an elegant solution to a puzzle. When you are watching a good movie. Dukkha could distract you from these things, but it rarely seems to. Indeed, this kind of happiness often distracts you from dukkha. It is not elusive, and it is something that benefits from seeking to find it. It is not about the journey, but about the destination, although the journey often makes it better. It often makes you laugh.

The second kind of happiness is what you feel when you relieve someone else's unease. Cooking dinner for others. Watching a movie together that you have seen before, but they are seeing for the first time. Giving a hug to a friend who needs it. The happiness you feel doing this is based upon your attachment to the other person, or to humankind in general. It makes you smile and feel warm inside.

I have often thought that, while Buddhism has some awesome ideas, it misses out on the more active joys in favor of the passive, and it concentrates on the negative results of attachment to the detriment of the positive.

[jducoeur]

I don't mind that counter-argument (and agree that word choice is always a problem with this topic), but I do to some degree disagree. There's more than just inner peace here, at least as typically understood: the joy from absence of dukkha can be quite fierce, and I think it is usually greatly underestimated.

I do understand the cases you're referring to, although honestly, I think those those examples are just a small subset of the joys of the world. But the crux of the point -- and I do think it is correct -- is that these things are not *inherently* joyful. Rather, how we relate to them has everything to do with whether we can experience happiness in them. Each of these things can be a source of happiness or a source of dukkha, depending on how we view them. Some people can not stand surprises; some get downright angry at distraction. Many find doing-for-others to be an immense burden, because of being too attached to negative feelings about those people or oneself.

In other words, I disagree with you that these things are *kinds* of happiness. I think they are potential *sources* of happiness, among the many such. But whether they actually produce happiness instead of dukkha has absolutely everything to do with how you relate to them...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

"Some people can not stand surprises; some get downright angry at distraction."

I'm at least sometimes an example of both. perhaps something I ought to work on adjusting...

[umbran.livejournal.com]

"I suspect most Westerners take "contentment" to have weaker connotations than is intended."

"...the joy from absence of dukkha can be quite fierce, and I think it is usually greatly underestimated."

If I may, I think you might be stuck on the degree or intensity of emotion - quantitative differences, while I think we are talking about qualitative differences.

Consider to scenarios: One is just after dessert at the end of Thanksgiving dinner. The other is opening a surprise birthday gift from a loved one that happens to be the perfect thing, though you didn't even know it existed.

The first will run you pretty close to the Buddhist ideal: worldly problems are, for the moment, gone. You are sated, warm, surrounded by friends, the stress and hurry of preparing the meal and hosting duties are, for the moment, gone. This is relief from dukkha. Some would call it happiness, but contentment or serenity hit closer to the mark, in terms of the nature of the feeling at the time.

The other may also distract you from worries for the moment, but cessation of worry is not actually the real working part of the emotion there. This is closer to the word "happiness" as Americans define it, the Denis Leary sense of the word, if you will.

[jducoeur]

Reflecting on this on the way to lunch, I realized that this deserves a more thoughtful answer. (Thank you, BTW: one thing I'm quite enjoying about this conversation is that it affords me opportunities to reflect more carefully on the lessons. I should note, though, that nobody should take this as Official Buddhist Thought or anything such: I'm very much a novice, still thinking about and learning this stuff myself.)

The second kind of happiness is what you feel when you relieve someone else's unease. Cooking dinner for others. Watching a movie together that you have seen before, but they are seeing for the first time. Giving a hug to a friend who needs it. The happiness you feel doing this is based upon your attachment to the other person, or to humankind in general. It makes you smile and feel warm inside.

I largely agree with this, save for the comment about attachment.

The thing is, one of the key lessons is the notion of right intent. It's not just what you do, it's why you do it. This is often interpreted by folks as somehow being about karma: if you don't do things for the right reason, it'll backfire or catch up with you or some such. But you don't have to invoke the hand of God or anything mystical here -- plain and simply, intent greatly affects how your actions will affect *you* in the long run.

There are many bad reasons to do good, some of them unobvious. If you do it out of a sense of responsibility, that tends to gradually shade into guilt, and becomes a burden. If you do it out of pride, that feeds the ego, which winds up getting gluttonous for more and thin-skinned about contradiction. If you do it in order to feel the pleasure from doing good, that becomes addictive, and can produce resentment when the world (for any of many reasons) prevents you from getting more of that high.

But the thing is, none of that is necessary. We are all of us human, and most sane humans have a pretty good sense of right and wrong. In particular, most of us instinctively *want* to alleviate the suffering of others. So the question turns on its head: why *wouldn't* you do so? That's not precisely attachment, at least in the typical Buddhist sense; I'd probably describe it as compassion.

When you strip away all the florid language, dukkha tends to arise from the human tendency to overthink things. This example illustrates one of the potential traps. Doing good is good -- I don't at all contest that, and I don't think there is anything *necessarily* passive about the Buddhist mindset. But intent is crucial: in the long run, we most effectively take joy from doing good when we do it entirely for its own sake, because deep down we know that it is right, and we don't get excessively attached to it. The rest is mostly rationalization, which tends to turn that joy into dukkha over time.

None of which necessarily disagrees with you here; it's just that the subtleties matter quite a bit...

[balsamicdragon.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree that intent matters a lot. I'm very unclear as to where the concept of compassion falls in Buddhist thinking? Or inherently known morality? My impression was that those were more Western concepts.

[jducoeur]

Honestly don't know -- like I said, I'm a novice. And me being me, likely fairly idiosyncratic. (Syncretism's pretty much a way of life for me.)

I'm not really working from any sort of orthodoxy here: it's mostly a matter that I find that the central precepts speak to me remarkably well, and I'm exploring from there. I suppose the results can most accurately be described as "Buddhist-inspired": substantially adapted from the initial teachings as I understand them, but likely often at odds with how things evolved...

[bleemoo.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind a winding tangent (thank you for posting the original article, BTW; it nicely sums up a concept I've been trying to wrap my brain around for years. And if you do mind a winding tangent, I apologize):

When you strip away all the florid language, dukkha tends to arise from the human tendency to overthink things

This is a point I have struggled with for a long time. I want to understand my personal spiritual path, but I realized very early on that "don't overthink things" is an important step on said path, for me. Which means that if I analyze my path too closely, I am stepping off said path. But I cannot see where the path is if I don't analyze it at all.

Note that "struggle" in the above context is not itself an example of dukkha; I take great pleasure and satisfaction in wrestling with these concepts, and believe that to a certain extent, I cannot step off my spiritual path, since that implies a "correct" path, which I'm not sure exists. This sort of inherent contradiction is why I often consider myself a Discordian, in addition to whatever else I am.

I want to have this sort of discussion more often.

[unicornpearlz.livejournal.com]

An interesteing concept that I can get onboard with. So, it can either mean that i shouldn't be moving to Massachusetts because I'm looking for something else 'out there', and I know I can ease my suffering here. Or, it could mean that I'm hoping the move to MA will help ease my unhappiness here. I'm opting for the latter.