According to Buddhism what is Happiness ? Is it the same as Contentment ?
Shoshin
No one in particularNowhere Special Veteran
Kia Ora happy campers,
This short clip I found "Buddha Beat" on youtube, got the thought thinking...When I think of happiness in the conventional sense, I tend to associate it with impermanence, that is most people are normally happy one minute then sad the next no happy medium/contentment so to speak...
When Buddhism found me, I was a mental wreak, I was looking for a way out of suffering, but I was not seeking happiness, just a way to end the anguish,anxiety and confused state "I" was in...
When practicing the Dharma I experienced the paradox of stability in flux, the contentment that comes knowing the impermanent nature of all things and having the ability to just let go...
I still experience happiness and sadness but with no lasting attachment to either and I guess this is what I mean by contentment...
According to Buddhism what is Happiness ? Is it the same as Contentment ?
May you all find happiness contentment . 
..
Metta Shoshin . ..
Comments
@Shoshin
Semantics/shamantics!
but your posts always give me something to question within myself..
Mental/emotional states that are subject to conditional phenomena, are as ephemeral as those causes.
Mental/emotional states that are not subject to conditional phenomena, are unhindered by phenomena's comings and goings.
Bringing up comparisons between happiness and contentment, tend to mistakenly make us think that one is preferable from another, when it is our attachments or transcendence to either state which is really the Buddha's issue.
Kia Ora @how,
That's true...
Lasting satisfaction come from a mind that does not cling to extremes ...
Metta Shoshin .
..
Very true, but the trick is to get to a place that is really beyond extremes. You could see that "good" and "evil" are extremes. What then is the "middle"? How is that not an extreme as well (it most likely is)? As long as we see things and either this way or that, we're conceptualizing extremes.
What we practice towards is not simply avoiding or eliminating extremes, but to practice to a state were extremes simply don't arise in the first place.
You might give Verses On The Faith Mind a read sometime
Kia Ora @Chaz,
Thanks.. I'm already familiar with those verses...I also find quotes accredited to Lao Tzu of interest, for example :
"The wise enjoy nothing in particular, and therefore enjoy everything in general !"
Metta Shoshin .
..
I guess contentment is being content even when happiness isn't present?
The other day in my Sangha, our teacher mentioned "inner peace" as an alternative word to happiness, or as the final goal of our path.
A word I like to bandy often is "Acceptance."
Acceptance, inner peace, contentment no matter what, or against all odds.
With discipline the Middle Way changes. For example we may have to reside in the equanimity between happiness and euphoria. Between good and unskilful we may reside in whatever takes us and others closer to liberation . . .
So the answer to 'is blah the same as being bored' or any such labelling of a temporary state is no. Being content is clinging to a worthy arrival to move further along from.
We are in the foothills.
~ Zen Proverb
Kia Ora @lobster,
That's a neat way of putting it....
Metta Shoshin .
..
then there is no mountain
then there is
I thought that was Donovan...?
.
When our minds are free of envy then we can both experience joy at our contentment as well as the contentment of others.
Not so. When our Minds are free of envy, then we can experience joy for the contentment of others, without being in the slightest bit preoccupied about our own contentment at all. Our thinking will be purely for the well-being of others; our own state will be immaterial to us.
Confined within the dream of self & other, a perfect description of contentment, remains just another snooze.
Kia Ora,
I guess one could say contentment is when one is mentally 'stable' in a consistent kind of way under any given situation/circumstance ie pleasant or not so pleasant in the conventional sense ... "Dukkha"
Hence having developed the ability to "Go with the flow" and not get bogged down with unnecessary mental chatter....
Metta Shoshin .
..
@Lobster 'gave' me the earworm, which I love but could not for the life of me figure out who it came from. Thank you, it's Donovan.
This is different from how Pema Chodron introduces the Brahmaviras and also Trungpa. You start with the easiest to practice the immeasurables. All can be practiced though metta is most common. Starting with ones mother is also a popular starting point for the brahmaviras.
I never suggested that this is the way we should start, if that's where your train of thought is leading, @Jeffrey... I merely began with "when our Minds...." not "To start with, our Minds should be free of...."
What Tibetan monks found surprising as they began to teach for Western audiences back in the sixties, was the fact that many Westerners seemed to have negative associations related to their mother and father figures.
I can't remember if it was the Dalai Lama, or Sogyal Rinpoche, that said that the first time he delivered a conference for a Western audience and brought up the "mother example" to begin one's metta's practice, a monk who was more experienced with Western people hurried to say: "No, no! You don't have to use the mother example with Western people. Talk to them about their Grandmothers, instead..."