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

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...)