What do we mean by happiness?
This gets into a very complicated question. Is it, “Oh! How wonderful,” and, like in a Hollywood movie, we go dancing down the street and singing some song? Is happiness contentment, “Well, it’s not so good, but, OK, I’ll shut up and be content about it?” What actually is the definition of happiness? That’s an important question.
Happiness is, first of all, a “feeling.” We’re talking about feeling some level of happiness or unhappiness; it’s the way that we experience the ripening of our karma – a very interesting definition or explanation. From acting destructively, we experience – being with you, talking with someone, seeing something, listening to music – with unhappiness; and as a result of constructive behavior, we experience it with happiness. That’s in general, just conventionally, what we’re talking about when we’re talking about feeling happy or unhappy.
Happiness is also specified as that feeling which, when we experience it and it ceases, we intend to experience it again. Unhappiness as that feeling which, when we experience it, we intend to be parted from it. The Tibetan translators rendered the Sanskrit term chandas, intention, with ’dod-pa, meaning to “wish.” But even with the term “wish,” we’re not talking about the mental factor of “craving.” The Sanskrit word that’s translated into the Tibetan as “craving” actually means “thirst.” “I’ve got to be free of this pain,” and, “I have to experience this happiness again.” We’re not talking about this exaggeration of happiness into the most wonderful thing in the world and unhappiness into the most horrible. If we follow the original Sanskrit term that is used, we’re just talking about conventionally feeling “happy.” With happiness, it would be nice to experience it again when it ceases and that’s what we’re aiming for as our intention; and with unhappiness, we’d like to be parted from it when we’re experiencing it and we’re aiming for that as our intention.
When we speak about the incorrect consideration of suffering or unhappiness as happiness, it’s based on a different exaggeration than happiness as wonderful and unhappiness as horrible. We project that whatever happiness we have is going to last forever. It’s not, so when it changes or ends, we get frustrated.
Now, of course, unhappiness isn’t going to last forever either. Nevertheless, because we would prefer happiness to unhappiness, we have problems with exaggerating happiness, perhaps because we might not be happy very often. But, regarding happiness, we have this expectation, this hope, that somehow, “If I could be with my loved one all the time, I will be happy,” or “If I had a huge amount of money in the bank, I would be happy.”
Obviously, there are many, many things that we could say about happiness and unhappiness, and how we deal with these feelings, and so on, but that’s for another time.
All sentient beings wish for happiness, or to have happiness. For example, if some animal finds food for its offspring, it feels happy, and “even just giving a morsel of food” makes for some positive force, and results in happiness. Aren’t we getting stuck on our mental defilements, or negative mind, in this discussion of happiness?
This is why I’m making the differentiation here. Conventionally, we have happiness and unhappiness. Everybody wants to be happy; nobody wants to be unhappy. Nonetheless, in our topic here of incorrect consideration, the problem is how we consider that happiness, what’s our attitude toward it, and what is our expectation of it? We should not exaggerate it and consider it incorrectly as either fantastic or that it will last forever and never lead to dissatisfaction or that it won’t change into unhappiness.
Incorrect consideration is exactly what the term literally means. We regard something incorrectly. Take the example of democracy and freedom, which many people consider happiness. But what do they imply? They imply many choices. For instance, that we have the freedom to choose what we like. There was a study done about this, among the various scientific studies that His Holiness is participating in and sponsoring. The study was investigating happiness. What was discovered was that the more choices we have, the more unhappy we are. If there are 150 different types of soap or breakfast cereal in the store, we go there and think, “I don’t know what to choose, I don’t know what is best.” We think, “It should make me happy that there are so many varieties, so I can get what I want,” but what happens? We choose something, and then we think, “Maybe this other one would have been better,” and so we’re never really satisfied with what we have. We’re always doubting it.
It’s like when there are 600 different, possible channels to watch on the television, and we find something, but then we think, “Maybe something else is better.” Basically, the more choices we have, actually, the more unhappy we are. It has to do with expectations. If there are so many choices, we expect something is going to be perfect. However, there is nothing that’s perfect. Having all these choices, which is actually suffering, we consider it as “happiness.” We’ll go to war to bring that to countries that don’t have that. This is absurd. Why? Because we have this incorrect consideration that “this is happiness.”
In my life, everything used to be fine, with my parents there was a lot of love, and with my friends, and everything that I wanted came true; however, on the other hand, I would wake up every morning and wonder, “What am I doing here?” I realized I have many material things, and they weren’t happiness. And now, even if I were to lose what I have, I wouldn’t be sad about that. So now, it’s truth that makes me happy. Happiness is when I have some glimmering of the truth when I can see some truth out in the light.
This gets into another level of discussion. There’s something called “tainted happiness and untainted happiness.” When something is tainted, it’s mixed with confusion, with unawareness of how it actually exists. Tainted happiness will ultimately be unsatisfying and a big problem. However, there can also be a happiness that’s not mixed with this confusion. It doesn’t arise from confusion and it doesn’t make more confusion.
So, if we speak about what is lasting happiness, lasting happiness comes from a separation from confusion, a separation from – it’s usually translated as – “ignorance” or “unawareness.” It’s like a feeling of relief, like when we take off our tight shoes; being parted from that restriction is happiness. Now, we’re not talking about a temporary separation. It’s not like I eat and temporarily I’m parted from hunger, but it’s going to come back. We’re not talking about that. This is the problematic happiness that I was talking about. We’re talking about when our confusion, our unawareness and everything, is gone forever, is never going to come back. That’s a lasting happiness. That’s different; that’s a different level we’re talking about.
The happiness of seeing “the truth” is certainly something that’s discussed in Buddhism. However, one needs to go really deeply because we could think that we’ve understood the truth, whereas we haven’t gone deeply enough, and then sometimes we get very, very disappointed and frustrated. This is a very important point in the Buddhist teachings, never to think that we’ve understood enough until we become a Buddha. Always go deeper and deeper and deeper. Often, we think we’ve dealt with a problem and that we don’t have that problem anymore. Or we think, “If a problem were to come up in the future, I’d be able to deal with it OK.” Nevertheless, when the problem actually arises, we find that it’s not so easy.
Let’s spend a few moments thinking about whether we have a false way of considering happiness. If we are exaggerating happiness and what we consider to be happiness, we need to deconstruct that to see it’s not really like that. We enjoy what we have, but realize that this is not ultimate happiness, it may change, etc., etc. However, let’s try not to be naive into thinking that this is easy in actual life. It’s not easy because we have so much automatically arising grasping for that happiness to last, and for it be ultimate happiness, and for it to “really, really make me happy.” We do – that grasping automatically arises, particularly when aimed at the happiness of being with someone we’re attached to.
We might not be so attached to material objects, but with other people and love, we’re talking about something very delicate. Now it starts to get very personal. “I want to be loved by you.” Is that happiness? What is it? Interesting question. Tell me, “being loved by you,” is that happiness or suffering? Now we’re talking about a special “you,” the one that we want to love us. Is that happiness – or is that suffering? What do you think?
Love contains the potential for the risk of future suffering. It’s like eating fugu, the Japanese pufferfish that is poisonous and lethal if prepared incorrectly.
Alright, so being loved by somebody, or loving somebody, carries with it the risk of pain when they don’t love us anymore. What about the expectations that the other person has, that come along with them loving us? Do they expect that we’re going to be available for them whenever they want, for example? Do they expect us to be perfect, a perfect fit for them?
For example, I was very much in love, and it ended badly, and I suffered a lot. But if I think about the whole story now, I’m not suffering anymore, because I learned a lot from that.
Does that mean that you’ll no longer be hurt in another relationship in the future if it also breaks up? This is the point that I was making before. How deeply have we gone in overcoming the cause of the problem?
In the standard Buddhist teachings, it says that there’s suffering and there’s the suffering of suffering. That’s referring to having physical pain, and then on top of that having mental pain.
There are certain levels of intensity of suffering, that’s true. However, being loved by someone – what are our expectations? Do we expect them to express that love in the way that we would like it to be expressed? What about if they don’t express it that way? Do they have to express it all the time? Do they need to constantly tell us that they love us, in order to reaffirm that? How often do they have to tell us?
Because, in fact, as nice as it is to feel that we’re loved by somebody, what exactly is involved? What are our expectations? Most of us know how terrible it feels when we feel that the other person doesn’t love us anymore and now, we don’t have that love anymore. What is it that is being loved by somebody? Why is it that being loved by someone that we don’t care about doesn’t count? I want to be loved by you, by this one. For example, being loved by that one isn’t happiness, but being loved by this one is happiness. This is strange. Being loved by my dog is not enough.
Sometimes that’s enough.
Sometimes, yes. Well, are we content with that? “Well, my mother loves me. That’s it.” These are things to think about. There’s no clear, immediate answer, but these are topics that we have to work with. What we want to overcome is this incorrect consideration, which is based on exaggeration.