What is happiness? What is peacefulness?

mouthfulofclay

Other than a warm gun. Any wonderful, beautiful postulations or answers?

Simonthepilgrim

mouthfulofclay wrote:

Other than a warm gun. Any wonderful, beautiful postulations or answers?

As ever, I turn to Thich Nhat Hanh and find that he says:

It is true that the Buddha taught the truth of suffering, but he also taught the truth of "dwelling happily in things as they are"(drishta dharma sukha viharin)*. To succeed in the practice, we must stop trying to prove that everything is suffering. In fact, we must stop trying to prove anything. If we touch the truth of suffering with our mindfulness, we will be able to recognize and identify our specific suffering, itsa specific causes, and the way to remove those causes and end our suffering.
* Samyutta Nikaya V, 326 and many other places

Thich Nhat Hanh The Heart of The Buddha's Teaching

Happiness arises when we make others happy. It arises when we realise that we already have even more than we can want.

mouthfulofclay

How do you say the difference between being happy because something went the way you wanted it to and happy because you are moving freely. Because you don't really want good karma or bad karma right? You want a balance in between the two?

Seems like there is a dangerously thin line there between wanting to find "peace" and being peaceful. Because you can't be peaceful (or be peace) as long as you want to do so, but I imagine you need that desire to spur you to ask important questions. I guess you could attain an awakened state from any other state...

I think I'm answering some of my own questions, but I wouldn't be surprised if I am not quite right, or even way off.

federica

Let me just say how it sits with me.

I have had an extraordinary couple of years, with my fortunes fluctuating wildly, almost like a needle scratching the effect of a seismic earthquake on a page....
But on that page, at centre point, (which the needle crosses wildly) there is a line, that remains steady....

I often fail, and lose sight of it, but generally speaking, I settle down, and come back to it. So with all this wild movement around me, and outside of me, at the centre - at MY centre - is the steady, perpetual, unmoving flow of a straight, calm, reliable line....

This is the Peace. This is the Joy. This is the Serenity.
The crapola going on around me is not what generates my Happiness, my Joy, my Peace of Mind. Nothing outside of myself can do that.
What I also have to remember (and this is the hard part) is that nothing outside of myself is responsible for the grief, the frustration, the suffering, the misery, the sadness....
I too manufacture all of this. It is my perception, my appraisal of all that goes on, which is flawed.
My core is my constant. the rest will flow as it will.

Simonthepilgrim

Returning to the centre, the balanced "place", has taken me years of practice. Some (most, perhaps) find it far sooner and stay in it longer but we each do our best. This is why, although I know that I create the delusions of suffering and stress, I maintain that a meditation practice is vital for us poor beginners.

It's easy enough to say that our natural state is awake, happy, balanced, etc. The Jewels of Buddhism have given me a map that appears to show me the way out of the delusions of samsara, or what, in Christian gospel terms, I would call "the world". It is not the wonderful interdependent universe of which we are a natural part, it is the deceit in which we become entwined. That is why we find, all across the world's religions, the idea that the world is ruled by a "devil" character, a "Father of Lies" - because we are steeped in the "getting and spending" that Wordsworth wrote about.

Meditation enables me to see the cracks in the edifice, through which the reality can be glimpsed. And even those glimpses are enough to bring the mind to its happy, balanced state. And the more I do it, the more it becomes a "default" position.

Brigid

And the more I do it, the more it becomes a "default" position.

Great line, Simon.

I'm still pondering the question so I'll post later when I have something useful to say.

mouthfulofclay

federica wrote:

like a needle scratching the effect of a seismic earthquake on a page.... But on that page, at centre point, (which the needle crosses wildly) there is a line, that remains steady....

This is the Peace. This is the Joy. This is the Serenity....My core is my constant. the rest will flow as it will.

Okay, let me go further. Fed, I am going to use this quote because I think I can use it to help me.

If we take the picture of the graphical seismic representation, it goes up and down over and over again and each time it does it crosses the center line. I think it is safe to say that the center line is buddha. Now, the way I would look at the oscillations is that the ones below the line are my attachments to things I don't like and the ones above are the attachments to things I do like. Without acknowledging the buddha/center line, I look at the oscillations and say "At the bottom I am unhappy and at the top I am happy. I want to try to find a way to live in a way that keeps me at the top." Acknowledging buddha and practicing dharma, we say "When I live in ways that keep me oscillating toward either the bottom or the top I am unhappy, because I am engaged in a cycle that leads to unhappiness. I want to try to find a way to live in the middle, or on the middle path." We also know that we do stray from this path both up and down (side to side :eekblue:).

Soooooo my question or my inquiry is about the etymology of all this, I guess. I am used to saying I am happy when I am at the top of the graph. But is happiness really the middle line/middle path? Sometimes I think that's a very Western thing to say which makes the middle path look nicer and easier than it really is... but I'm not sure. Is the word happiness a cop out? Peacefulness?


Also, after proofing this and making some changes: I don't think dharma practice is about living on that middle line. I think it is about still oscillating from top to bottom or "unhappy" to "happy," but letting go of the desire to control that oscillation and just riding it. Maybe that is like having the middle line within you at all times, even when you are at the top or the bottom. I might (and probably am) wrong about this idea, but I am very new to this.

Simonthepilgrim

MOC,

It is the external (events, etc.) which goes up and down: "Murphy's Law", natural disaster or sunny days, riches or poverty. What Buddhist practice enables is equanimity, a balanced mind. There is particular practice to attain this, so that whatever sh*t the world chucks at us we can remain in a serene mind.

If I remember right, Fede is fond of Kipling's poem If which sums it up pretty well. Kipling was very influenced by Buddhism of course:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

We have to forgive the sexist last line. All the fault of his time and place.