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

[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.