We're genetically predisposed to certain moods, but we can help ourselves too. Hint: There's a difference between mere pleasure and substantive gratification.In search of lasting happiness
Valerie Ulene (LA Times, Jan. 31, 2011)
As last year drew to a close, I found myself struggling with whether I'd draft resolutions for 2011. For years I've made commitments to exercise regularly, spend less and learn a second language, only to abandon them within the first few weeks of January. In spite of my poor track record, resolutions are difficult for me to resist. I guess I find something inherently hopeful about them, and failing to make them seems a bit like giving up. They are, in my mind, a road map to a more fulfilling and happier life.
Not surprisingly, finding happiness is more complicated than that.
In fact, until quite recently, many mental health professionals viewed the pursuit of happiness as pure folly. Most concentrated their energy and attention on individuals suffering from diseases like depression and anxiety, on relieving despair rather than promoting well-being. That's all beginning to change. Proponents of "positive psychology" think that happiness is a goal that people can -- and should -- work toward. They believe that it's not only possible but crucially important. More>>
Arriving at Happiness in Buddhism
Wisdom Quarterly ("Ignorance cheerfully returned if not completely enlightened")
Happiness is not arrived at by directly craving and striving for it. Focus on things that naturally give rise to happiness. Q: Like what? A: Virtue (sila), focus (samadhi), wisdom (prajna).
Focus on focusing? Yes, that's a great start. Lasting happiness is a spontaneous result of getting back in balance. Where are we out of balance?
Do we have serenity, the unscatttered concentration that leads to happiness here and now? Being able to enter a serenely absorbed state at will gives rise to two great forms of happiness known as rapture and bliss (piti and sukha). One refers to ecstasy predominantly felt physically, the other mentally.
Then there's the heart-mind: Do we have wisdom, which leads to ultimate happiness? Displacing ignorance -- not by learning and thinking but rather by being mindful and directly knowing -- leads to enlightenment. The mind, like a candle, need not expel darkness. Illuminated, returning to its natural luminosity, takes care of that.
Happiness is actually the natural disposition of the mind: Rapture, being uplifted and transported, is very pleasurable. Bliss is a pleasant bubbliness, a lightness of being, an abiding with a good-humored nature. Both result from success in serenity meditation (shamatha or jhana-bhavana).
- Mind is luminous whether or not it is tainted by mental defilements.
Lasting "happiness" (beyond sensual and supersensual pleasure) comes from more than serenity. But the experience of serenity here and now depends on being in balance.
Happiness is available at any moment; it's our natural state! Of course, until one experiences this, it will seem untrue and impossible: Calling it proof, we'll offer reasons why we're unhappy, and why we deserve to be unhappy, never realizing how it is a choice.
What proof is there that happiness is a choice? Look, I can be happy right now, at will. Then my body smiles and sends endogenous chemicals to confirm it. Nothing made me happy other than choosing it. Everything that was "wrong" before is still "wrong," but I'm happy. I'm not stupid -- even if others say, "You're too stupid to see how unhappy you should be!" LOL. Who is silly, the one who can summon happiness in spite of any circumstance, or "victims of circumstance" who have their internal experience of mood dictated by external circumstances?
It isn't what happens; it's how we react. It isn't our circumstances; it's how we choose to perceive and interpret what is happening. I wasn't always able to choose, had no idea it was a choice. Actually, as a kid I knew. Then I forgot/got it trained out of me. But I recovered this natural ability by meditation (not just the sitting kind). And yet how many of us are "too busy" trying to be happy or focusing on happiness to actually meditate or do something that as a natural result gives rise to happiness?
Like many things in Buddhism, the factors of a result, such as happiness, are inseparable. But the Buddha analyzes them (separates them into constituent parts) for better understanding.
For example, the Noble Eightfold Path is a set of inter-dependent factors, literally "limbs," like the arms of an octopus. Developing any factor supports the others. More fundamentally, nongreed helps nonhatred and both help nondelusion, and nondelusion helps nongreed, and so on.
Another example is our "being" -- which is in fact an impersonal process of becoming. Its parts are inseparable, a cohesive whole. But it is better understood as what the Buddha called the Five Aggregates
- (1) form,
- (2) feelings,
- (3) perceptions,
- (4) formations,
- (5) consciousness
if the mind is ever to grasp who we are and the illusory nature of this entity being clung to as a "self." The unshakeable happiness of enlightenment is impossible without abandoning ignorance around this point.
The Five Spiritual Faculties
Bhikkhu Bodhi (American Theravada Buddhist scholar-monk)
There are Five Spiritual Faculties one balances for success in meditation moving towards enlightenment: This set is one of the groups of factors given special prominence in the sutras and is included by the Buddha among the 37 Requisites of Enlightenment. These faculties (indriyas) are:
- faith or confidence (opposing doubt and uncertainty)
- energy
- mindfulness
- concentration
- wisdom.
The term indriya, "faculties," applied to this group as a whole is derived from the name of the ancient Vedic god Indra, ruler of the devas, and the term accordingly suggests the divine-like quality of control and domination. The Five Spiritual Faculties are so designated because they exercise control in their own specific compartments of the spiritual life. As the god (deva) Indra vanquished the demons (asuras, yakkhas, and nagas) and attained supremacy among the devas, so each of the five faculties is called upon to subdue a particular mental disability and to marshal the corresponding potency of mind toward the breakthrough to final enlightenment. More>>
