The Certainty of Karma – The Ripening of Karma in Happiness or Unhappiness
We have begun the discussion of the four laws of karma, of behavioral cause and effect (las-'bras), which are the first things presented in this part of the lam-rim. The first law, the certainty of karma, is not an easy one. What it says is that, if we are experiencing suffering, the so-called suffering of suffering, namely, the suffering of pain and unhappiness – actually, it’s not so much pain as it is unhappiness, misery (today, we’ll look more deeply at what we mean by “unhappiness”) – that suffering is the result of destructive behavior; and if we’re experiencing happiness, namely, our ordinary, conventional happiness – which has its drawbacks: it never lasts, it never completely satisfies, etc. – that happiness is the result of constructive behavior, so-called tainted constructive behavior. It is tainted because the confusion of unawareness is still present.
Understanding the Connection between Destructive Behavior and Unhappiness, Constructive Behavior and Happiness
Now, how do we become convinced that unhappiness is the result of destructive behavior and that happiness is the result of constructive behavior? The connection between unhappiness and destructive behavior and the connection between happiness and constructive behavior is what we started to investigate last time. I think that this is an important question, one that is usually not gone into in great detail. But, without being convinced of this connection, we won’t have a strong motivation to refrain from destructive behavior. So, it’s important to make that connection. It’s also important to understand that it has nothing to do with punishment and reward. If we’re unhappy, it’s not that “I was a bad boy” or “a bad girl.” “Now I’m being punished with unhappiness.” It certainly is not that. Nor is it our “bad luck,” our “misfortune,” our “fate” or things like that. There’s nothing like that in Buddhism.
So, how did we start to look at this? First, we went through a discussion of what we mean by “karma” – karmic cause and effect – to try to understand the mechanism involved. In other words, what is the connection between destructive behavior and unhappiness and constructive behavior and happiness? If we understand the process, we can then try to figure out why it is that the only result that comes from destructive behavior is unhappiness and not something else. We need to see that the result and the cause share the same sort of essential nature – that they fit together.
In Buddhism, one of the main principles of cause and effect is that the effect that follows a cause is always a reasonable effect. The cause and the effect are related. There can’t be an irrelevant result from a cause; otherwise, anything could result from anything. So, there need to be certain premises regarding what types of results can follow from what types of causes (please note, though, that these are not like divine laws decreed by Buddha or some divine power, but are more like natural laws). This is a very, very difficult point, so let’s not kid ourselves by thinking that it’s easy to understand.
We’re not going to come up with all the answers to all of this, but what I want to try to do is to introduce the type of analysis, the way of thinking about this, that may eventually, if we really pursue it, lead to understanding the connection between destructive behavior and unhappiness. This is really crucial because, otherwise, we will continue to seek remedies for unhappiness that don’t deal with, let alone eliminate, the real causes. So, instead of refraining from destructive behavior, we will turn to alcohol, to all sorts of distractions, thinking that they will remedy the situation.
This is the Buddhist main point: if we want to get rid of the result, we have to get rid of the cause. So, then we apply the trainings of refuge. We can turn to some of these things as provisional remedies, ones that help temporarily. But distracting ourselves with sex, friends, affection, drugs, alcohol, or food is certainly not going to get rid of the causes for the unhappiness. Those things don’t really deal with the problem; they just put a Band-Aid on it to make us feel a little bit better. We’re not really delving deeply into the cause.
We saw that there are two main explanations of karma in the Indo-Tibetan tradition of Buddhism. Of these two explanations, we have been looking at the one that is a bit less complicated. According to this system, karma (las) is a mental factor (sems-byung, subsidiary awareness), the mental factor of an urge, or impulse (sems-pa). It is the urge, or impulse, that draws us into an action, whether a physical, verbal, or mental action.
Before an urge to do something actually arises, we have a feeling of liking to do the action. That feeling of liking to do it is what actually brings on the urge. After the action has ended, there is a karmic tendency that continues. We discussed how a tendency is an imputation on the conventional “me,” which itself is an imputation on an individual continuum of five aggregate factors. A karmic tendency is not something physical; it has no physical qualities. Nor is it a way of being aware of something. In other words, if an incident happened in the past, and if there’s the possibility of something similar happening in the future as a result of that incident, then there must be something that synthesizes, something that integrates, or puts together, these two occurrences.
What we call a “tendency” (sa-bon) is sometimes translated literally as a “seed,” a “karmic seed.” But “seed” is too physical an image. That image is used because it’s an easy one for us to understand at the beginning stage. But don’t get confused by the word “seed.” It’s not something that’s physically there, “planted” in the mental continuum, either directly or on the back of the conventional “me” – although, the words “seed” and “planted” are used. Rather, it’s an imputation on the mental continuum.
Karmic Potentials, Karmic Tendencies, and Karmic Constant Habits
Now, there’s a difference between tendencies and potentials. A potential is either a constructive or destructive phenomenon, whereas a tendency is an ethically neutral (unspecified) phenomenon, meaning one that is not specified as being either constructive or destructive. We don’t need to go into great detail about why there are these two different types of aftermath of karma. There are also habits (bag-chags), karmic constant habits, which are another type of karmic aftermath. They are asserted only in the Mahayana systems and have to do with the appearance-making of true existence that comes from the unawareness that both accompanies and is the basis for our karmic actions. Karmic potentials and tendencies give their results only sometimes, not always. Constant karmic habits, on the other hand, give their results every moment until enlightenment.
These tendencies and potentials ripen into various things. For instance, they ripen into a rebirth state, which means they ripen into our experiencing a rebirth state. Some explanations say that tendencies and potentials are contributing causes for the actual rebirth state itself, but the main emphasis is on experiencing that rebirth state. For example, within that rebirth state we have tendencies to experience situations in which similar things to what we’ve done in the past happen back to us (results that correspond to their causes in our experience, myong-ba rgyu-mthun-gyi 'bras-bu) as well as tendencies to repeat certain types of behavior that are similar to what we’ve done in the past (results that correspond to their cause in our behavior, byed-pa rgyu-mthun-gyi 'bras-bu). The tendency to repeat a certain type of behavior, as we saw, ripens as a feeling of liking to do an action, which is what then brings on the karmic impulse to do the similar action.
This is what we’ve presented so far.
The Ripening of Karma into Feelings of Happiness or Unhappiness
What I’d like to present now is the main emphasis in this discussion, which has to do with another thing that ripens from a karmic tendency, which is feeling (tshor-ba), namely, feeling a level of happiness or unhappiness. This is a different mental factor from the mental factor of feeling like doing something (dga’-ba). Feeling like doing something is a mental factor of desire that gives rise to the urge to do something. Both of these types of mental factors ripen from the tendencies that are built up when we act on the karmic urges to behave in a certain way.
Now, the feeling of happiness or unhappiness that ripens is not necessarily in accord – if we’re thinking in a more simplistic way that happiness always accompanies constructive behavior and unhappiness destructive behavior – with the other things that we experience at the time. For instance, we could act in a destructive way and feel happy about it: “I’m happy I yelled at that person. I’m really happy that I got back at them,” and so on. They don’t necessarily match because many, many different karmic potentials are ripening in any moment. Feeling like acting in a certain way, experiencing something similar to what we’ve done before, feeling a level of happiness or unhappiness – all these come from very different karmic tendencies. There’s also another mechanism that has to do with why a disturbing emotion comes up again. It’s similar to the karmic mechanism whereby tendencies and so on are built up. However, positive and negative emotions arise from their own tendencies, not from karmic tendencies. So, what we experience is very, very complex.
Last week, we spoke in quite a bit of detail about what factors were involved with the karma to experience, for instance, being hit by a car when crossing the street and about what the relationship was between our karma and the person driving the car. We saw that that is also very, very complex.
So, happy and unhappy – why is that here? That’s our main point for today. We have the mental factor that is translated as “feeling.” As I have often pointed out, the word “feeling” as it’s used in the West covers many, many different meanings. Here, in the Buddhist context, the word that is translated as “feeling” deals exclusively with the mental factor of feeling a level of happiness. The mental factor of feeling is one of the five ever-functioning subsidiary awarenesses. As such, it accompanies each moment of cognition, either mental cognition or sensory cognition, and it is the way in which ordinary beings experience (myong-ba) the ripenings of their karma.
Happiness and Unhappiness Are Mental Factors; Pleasure and Pain Are Physical Sensations
When we talk about happiness and unhappiness, we’re not talking about pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain are forms of physical phenomena; they’re physical sensations. Physical sensations can be experienced with happy, unhappy, or neutral feelings. For example, there are some people – masochists – who like pain; it makes them happy. There is also the mental state – being happy while thinking something, cognizing a mental object with mental consciousness (yid-kyi rnam-shes). So, we’re talking about the feeling that accompanies either mental consciousness or sense consciousness (dbang-gi rnam-shes). That sense consciousness could be seeing, hearing, smelling, or tasting something, or it could be the physical sensation consciousness of experiencing, for instance, pleasure or pain.
Since there is usually complete confusion about happiness and unhappiness versus pleasure and pain, let’s just digest that. Let’s think about it and try to appreciate that we’re talking about two different things. Feelings of happiness and unhappiness are mental factors (we’ll get to the definition of happiness in order to be able to recognize what in the world we’re talking about). Pleasure and pain are physical sensations. There’s a karmic potential that will bring about experiencing pleasure or pain, and there’s another karmic potential that will bring about feeling happy or unhappy at that same time. These are two different things.
Try also to differentiate between the feelings of happiness and unhappiness that accompany mental cognition, such as thinking something, and those that accompany sensory cognition, such as seeing something, listening to something, eating something, etc.
[meditation]
Do you have any questions or comments?
Participant: How can pain be defined as pain if it is something that is experienced with enjoyment or happiness?
Dr. Berzin: That’s an interesting one. It’s like hot and cold. How do you define hot and cold? There must be a definition for what makes something hot and what makes it cold. Certainly, the mental designation of it would be different according to different people and different species. For instance, we can feel horribly cold, and other people don’t feel cold at all.
With pleasure and pain, we’re talking about something totally physical. If we’re talking about something totally physical, it must have to do… Mr. Science, what is pleasure and pain? It has something to do with the nervous system and something in the brain. There must be certain types of electrical impulses that go with what is considered pleasure and pain. There must be a difference that you can measure.
Participant: I don’t think so. I think it depends on the person.
Dr. Berzin: It depends on the person whether they experience pleasure or pain?
Participant: It’s about how you perceive it. What one person considers pleasure, another might consider pain.
Dr. Berzin: We’re talking about the physical phenomenon itself and whether we feel happy or unhappy about it. How we perceive it has to do with our mental labeling of it. Well, pleasure and pain are physical sensations. For example, if we’re talking about eating food, we’re talking about this taste or that taste and having a happy or an unhappy feeling accompanying that.
Participant: How you can say that the taste of chocolate is one of pleasure? You can’t say it’s one of pleasure for somebody who doesn't’ like chocolate.
Dr. Berzin: Now you’re getting confused with the terminology of “happy” and “unhappy.” We could eat chocolate and experience it with happiness or with unhappiness. Now, in our languages, we don’t make such clear distinctions between pleasure and pain, and happiness and unhappiness. We could say, “I experience it with pleasure,” but here we’re defining pleasure simply as a physical sensation.
Participant: Then what are you saying? Is it pleasure or is it not pleasure to eat chocolate?
Dr. Berzin: The word “pleasure” is irrelevant here. Is it a happy experience or an unhappy experience?
Participant: But that’s not the question. The question is, is it pleasure or is it not pleasure?
Dr. Berzin: And what I’m saying is, “Is it pleasure, or is it not pleasure” doesn’t translate into Buddhist terminology. If we’re going to translate it into Buddhist terminology, we would have to say, “Is it experienced with happiness or unhappiness?”
Participant: So, then why are we talking about pleasure and pain?
Dr. Berzin: Because pleasure and pain – the way we would talk about them in the Buddhist context – have to do with physical sensations, such as hot and cold, rather than mental factors, such as happiness and unhappiness. The problem – and it’s a serious problem – is that the word for “happiness” and the word for “pleasure” is the same, and the word for “pain,” “unhappiness” and “suffering” is the same.
The word for happiness, for instance, can refers to a physical sensation (pleasure) or a mental factor (a mental feeling of happiness). And what I’m trying to say is that when we talk about karma and this first law of karma, we are talking about a mental factor; we’re not talking about a physical sensation. Therefore, I’m asking you to try to understand that there’s a difference between a physical sensation and a mental experience of a physical sensation.
Participant: But the physical sensation is immediately related to happiness or unhappiness. But if it’s fun, it’s not pain.
Dr. Berzin: If it’s fun, it’s not pain? No. That’s why I’m saying that we have to reduce physical sensation to a neurological sensation. We’re talking about a physical phenomenon.
Participant: You can’t call something pleasure if it’s something you don’t enjoy it.
Dr. Berzin: The problem here is that we’re arguing about the English words. So, let us forget about the English words and try to understand what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the difference between a physical sensation and a mental factor.
Participant: The problem is that you say that pleasure and pain are just physical sensations and that you can break them down to a neurological basis. You see that “there in the brain is pleasure, and there in the brain is pain.” But then you say that that neurological basis is always related to happiness and unhappiness.
Dr. Berzin: Well, yes. We cannot experience pleasure or pain without an accompanying feeling of happiness or unhappiness. Feeling happy or unhappy is a mental factor that is present all the time.
Now, labeling a physical sensation pain or pleasure is like labeling something short or long. His Holiness the Dalai Lama always says that the fourth finger is short compared to the middle finger, but it’s long compared to the little finger, what we call the “pinkie” in American English. It’s the same thing with pleasure and pain. These are just categories that are defined relative to each other. The border between the two will be perceived differently according to different beings and so on. So, accordingly, we designate them with the words “pleasure” or “pain.”
The variable of being happy or unhappy is not necessarily in relation to experiencing a physical sensation of pleasure or pain. We could experience being happy and unhappy when we’re just thinking of something or someone, even though we’re not experiencing a physical sensation of pleasure or pain at the time.
Participant: You couldn’t have a headache and feel happy at the same time, could you?
Participant: You can have a happy state of mind, even though you have headache.
Dr. Berzin: You have to differentiate what you feel in terms of a physical sensation and what you feel in terms of the mental state of happiness or unhappiness. There are masochists who are really into pain; it makes them happy. There are also people who whip themselves as part of a religious penance and are happy about that.
Participant: [I’m not sure that my rephrasing of your paraphrase (crossed out below) does the participant’s comments justice:] A physical sensation that could be called “pain” comes to the brain and is accompanied various emotional factors, which have to do with how we experience that physical sensation. There are certain therapies that can train us not to experience it in an unpleasant type of way, meaning that we just have the pain.
Dr. Berzin: There are also drugs that are used. Anesthesiologists, people who deal with pain control, give various drugs and chemicals that lessen the sensation of pain. That’s not dealing with the parameter of being happy or unhappy; it’s dealing with a physical thing, a physical impulse or whatever being sent to and received by the brain. When we talk about happy and unhappy, we’re talking about how we experience a physical sensation.
Another aspect is the name that we give something. Do we give it the name “pleasure” or “pain”? That’s something else – whether we name it “pleasure” or “pain,” whether we name it “happy” or “unhappy.” Happy or unhappy, as we’ll see, has to do with “I want” or “I don’t want.” That’s how we experience it. That’s the aspect of happy and unhappy. A physical sensation is a neutral phenomenon. It’s just a physical sensation, like hot or cold.
Participant: For some, it’s pain; for some, it’s pleasure.
Dr. Berzin: Right. There’s a physical sensation. Some people will label it “pleasure,” some people will label it “pain.” Then there is how you experience it, which will be with happiness or unhappiness. OK?
This is very good. This is how one analyzes and how, through debate and discussion, one gets clarity. This is the correct process. This is exactly how it works. So, wonderful!
Feeling a Level of Happiness or Unhappiness Is How We Experience the Ripening of Karma
Now, happiness and unhappiness – how do we define them? Feeling is the mental factor that has experiencing (myong-ba) as its defining characteristic. That’s the main characteristic. What is being experienced? The individual ripenings, or results, of constructive and destructive karmic actions with some level of happiness, unhappiness, or neutral feeling. That’s what experiencing is all about. That’s why I have said that the biggest difference between a computer – artificial intelligence – and a mind is that a computer doesn’t feel. We can’t say it experiences data with happiness or unhappiness. What makes a mind different from a computer is that it – we – experiences things.
What does it mean to “experience” something? That’s a difficult word to define, but it has to do with feeling happy or unhappy. The spectrum of happy/unhappy is like any spectrum, of course: there are no dividing lines. So, how are we going to define them? Where’s the cutting off point between being happy and being unhappy? We do have definitions. A definition, of course, is a convention. In any case, we’re talking about a spectrum. And the happiness or unhappiness doesn’t have to be extreme. The intensity can vary. There’s a whole spectrum of happy/unhappy. And feeling something along that spectrum is what experiencing is.
The Two Definitions of Happiness According to Vasubandhu
How does Vasubandhu define happiness and unhappiness? We have two definitions here. We have Vasubandhu in his earlier texts, his Vaibhashika texts, and Vasubandhu in his later texts, the Chittamatra texts. These are two different classes of texts that he wrote.
(1) Experiencing Something in a Satisfying Manner
In his Vaibhashika texts, such as Abhidharmakosha, he defines happiness as “the experience of something in a satisfying manner,” and suffering, or unhappiness, as “the experience of something in an unsatisfying, tormenting way.” So, it’s experiencing something in a satisfying or unsatisfying manner. That’s why some people translate these terms as “satisfaction” and “dissatisfaction.”
Then he defines what “satisfying” means. He says, “Our experience is satisfying if we believe it to be of benefit to ourselves, whether or not it is in fact beneficial.” So, when experience something as unsatisfying, we believe that it’s not beneficial to ourselves, whether that’s true or not. A neutral experience is one that is in the middle; it’s experienced with neither happiness nor unhappiness – we experience it in neither a satisfying nor a tormenting way.
So, when an experience is satisfying, we believe it to be of benefit to ourselves, whether it is or not; we’re happy. When it’s unsatisfying, we feel that it’s not of benefit to ourselves; so, we’re unhappy.
Let’s think about this definition and try to examine whether or not it is a good definition. This might not be the definition we would use to define the words “happy” and “unhappy,” but this is the way that Vasubandhu defines them in Abhidharmakosha, which is a major text that everybody studies. The definition is important because we’re going to have to relate it to constructive or destructive behavior. Satisfying or dissatisfying – do we think it’s of benefit or not of benefit to ourselves.
Remember, when we talk about feeling happy or unhappy, we’re talking about cognizing something – I’m thinking something, I’m thinking nothing, I’m eating something, I’m listening to something, I’m feeling a physical sensation – and, at the same time, experiencing it with this mental factor of feeling, finding it either satisfying or unsatisfying, thinking it is of benefit to me or not.
[meditation]
I find this a very interesting and very good definition. I’m thinking of the example of working on my website. I work on it every day, all day long. Now, is it of benefit to me, and is it of benefit to others? I’m fully convinced that it is. Am I happy working on it all the time? Well, on one level, I’m happy. People will ask me, “Are you happy?” I say, “Yes, I’m happy.” But a lot of the time, I’m not happy. Why am I not happy while working on it? Because I’m impatient. I’m impatient because I want to be able to get more done. And I’m greedy – greedy in the sense that I want to do more and to do it more quickly and more efficiently. So, I’m not satisfied. I should be satisfied because what I’m doing in general is very beneficial. But I’m not satisfied. When I’m not satisfied, I’m not happy.
What we see here is the connection with a disturbing emotion – impatience, which is anger, basically, and also greed. I want more, so I’m not satisfied; therefore, I’m not really happy. Am I unhappy? Well, I’m not unhappy, but neither am I calm when I’m in that state. We can think of other examples. For instance, your girlfriend is coming in a few days. You should be happy because your girlfriend is coming. But maybe you’re dissatisfied because she’s not here now and, so, you’re unhappy.
So, you see, our attitudes about things can very much affect how we experience something.
Participant: What about the happiness that a Buddha experiences? Does a Buddha think, “This is of benefit to myself?”
Dr. Berzin: Well, doesn’t a Buddha always think of benefiting others rather than him- or herself?
First of all, the happiness that we’re talking about here is what’s called “tainted” happiness – a samsaric happiness. We’re not talking about the untainted happiness of a Buddha. Secondly, as regards the attainment of a Buddha, the achievement of Dharmakaya is fulfilling one’s own purposes, and the attainment of a Rupakaya (Form Body) is fulfilling the purposes of others. So, in terms of a benefit to oneself – it is of benefit to myself to attain the omniscient mind of a Buddha because then I will have benefited myself to the point where I can be of most benefit to others. So, a Buddha has benefited himself because now he is able to benefit others. “Look what I can do as a Buddha! It’s great!” So, it’s satisfying.
I’m looking at this beautiful picture here, this beautiful painting on the wall. Am I happy? Well, I’m satisfied. Is it of benefit to me? Well, it’s of benefit to me to look at it. What does that mean, that it’s of benefit to me?
Participant: I think in this case, it just means that you like it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s of benefit; it satisfies. For example, eating: “It’s of benefit to me to eat this food. I am happy that I’m eating it. It’s getting rid of my hunger.”
Participant: It could be very unhealthy food.
Dr. Berzin: It could be extremely unhealthy food. It doesn’t matter.
Participant: Actually, that is the point in the definition that I like quite a lot.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Whether it actually is of benefit or not is part of the definition.
Participant: And then to believe that it’s of benefit or not. For example, smoking cigarettes: Even though I know that it’s not really of benefit to me, it feels as though it is of benefit.
Dr. Berzin: Right. It satisfies a certain craving, and it helps you to be calmer and so on. So, you think that it is of benefit. You have weighed the benefits and the disadvantages and have decided that “I’m going to ignore the negative points and just focus on what I think is of benefit to me. I feel so happy smoking a cigarette.”
Now, what’s interesting is that we experience several senses at the same time, and the experience of one sense can affect the other. Let’s say we’re really depressed about something that we’re thinking about and, at the same time, we’re eating our favorite food. So, there is unhappiness going together with the mental thought, but is there also happiness going together with the food? In a general Buddhist way, we would say that we wouldn’t really be able to enjoy our food if we were really depressed. But when we look at it from an experiential point of view, we can see that it’s not that we dislike the food; it’s just that the pleasure that we experience (now I’m using your word “pleasure”) is not very intense. We do still like it. If we’re really, really absorbed in our depression, we might not even taste the food. But we’re not talking about that extreme.
(2) That Feeling That, When It Has Ended, We Wish to Meet With Once More
The next definition, which is in Vasubandhu’s Chittamatra text, describes happiness as “that feeling that, when it has ended, we wish to meet with once more.” So, it fits in with satisfying. When it ends, we want it to continue. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we cling to the feeling; nonetheless, we’d like it to continue. Unhappiness is “that feeling that, when it arises, we wish to be separated from.” A neutral feeling is “that feeling that, when it arises or ends, elicits neither of the two wishes.”
I don’t think we have to choose either one or the other of these definitions. We can put them together.
Of course, my little devious mind comes up with the example, “Well, I don’t feel anything.” \ Can we not feel anything? What is that? But that’s another question. “I don’t know if I’m happy or unhappy. I don’t feel anything.” Some people might say that. But let’s not go there yet. We can look at that at another time.
Let’s look at this definition: “Happiness is that feeling that, when it has ended, we wish to meet with once more.” It goes together with experiencing something in a satisfying way. And “unhappiness is that which, when it arises, we wish to be separated from.”
This, by the way, goes together with the axiom that we have in Buddhism: Everybody wants to be happy; nobody wants to be unhappy.
[meditation]
Some Final Points
The Happiness We Are Talking about Is Our Ordinary, Tainted Happiness
There are two points that came to my mind. First of all, this second definition also couldn’t possibly apply to a Buddha. We say that “happiness is that feeling that, when it ends, we’d like for it to happen again.” Well, a Buddha’s happiness never ends. So, it’s clear that we’re talking about the type of happiness that is the suffering of change. It’s tainted happiness, happiness that doesn’t last. The second thing that came to my mind is something that goes back to our discussion of physical sensation of pain or pleasure, which is that a martyr who beats him- or herself for religious purposes could feel, “This is of benefit to me. I’m repenting my sins. I’m cleansing myself”; therefore, they would want the pain to continue; they wouldn’t want to be separated from it. So, by these definitions, they’d be happy.
Participant: Feeling happy or unhappy, then, depends on the interpretation. And after the feeling has ended, you could label it as happiness, even though you might not have been feeling happy during the experience.
Dr. Berzin: Now, this is an interesting point, a very good point. Whether you call something happiness or unhappiness depends on the interpretation – so, it’s basically mental labeling –When you reflect afterwards on what you were experiencing, you could interpret what you felt as happiness; however, you could be misinterpreting. You could have forgotten about all the unhappy parts, the things that were nasty, and so interpret it as, “I’d like to meet with that feeling again.”
Also, I think that when it says, “When it ceases, we would like to meet with it again,” it’s talking about the moment that the feeling ceases. It’s not talking about ten minutes later or the next day. That’s part of the suffering of change – that when the happiness ends, you go, “Oh, no!” Not wanting the feeling to change is part of “I want to be happy.” So, to put it in very general terms, you feel good when you’re happy; you don’t feel good when you’re unhappy. Being happy is feeling good.
The Definitions of “Happiness” and “Unhappiness” Cannot Be Arbitrary
The definitions of happy and unhappy cannot be arbitrary because happy is the way that we experience the ripening of the aftermath of constructive behavior, and unhappy is how we experience the ripening of the aftermath of destructive behavior. That’s the whole point of our discussion – to try to see the connection. That’s the law of certainty of karma. If the labels “happy” and “unhappy” were totally arbitrary, then the law of certainty of karma would fall apart.
Happiness has to have some defining characteristic, though not necessarily on its own side. But we won’t get into that level – the voidness of happiness. The voidness of happiness does not negate causality. Happiness is caused by constructive behavior; unhappiness is caused by destructive behavior. So, we have to identify what happiness and unhappiness are and what constructive and destructive behavior are and try to see the connection between them, to understand why one would necessarily follow from the other. If we don’t get that connection, why would we want to avoid destructive behavior?
This topic is actually very, very deep. It’s not enough to say, “OK, I accept it,” and then to go on. This is really the central point of Buddhism: We want to overcome suffering and be happy. And, if we’re coming from a Mahayana point of view, we want to identify suffering in others. Well, what is it that we’re identifying with in them? “They don’t have a lot of money in the bank.” Well, is that really the only thing that we are aiming to help them with? “They don’t have enough food.” Well, certainly, we have to give them enough food. We have to give them the basics in life. But will those things make them happy? Not necessarily.