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

[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.