What is true happiness?
True Happiness Explained
Happiness ultimately drives the human conditon. It is what we all crave and in this world there are many different types.
The happiness we strive for in this practice is a happiness that is lasting.
True Happiness is hard to come by but it is the goal of the spiritual practice. Try happiness is unconditional.
It does not change. It is a type of happiness that doesn’t let you down.
Typical Happiness come from pleasures based on senses – wealth, status, praise, physical, some win others lose, inflicting pain on others. Even something as small as getting that new “thing” you wanted counts a happiness but that is fleeting and perpetuates the cycle of craving.
Every form of suffering grows out of mental impulse, consciousness, feeling, greed, clinging, grasping, re-becoming, birth, decay, death, and sickness. Therefore, eliminate them, you will be permanently happy. [Sutta Nipata, 731-750].
There is no happiness greater than the perfect calm. [Dhammapada, verse 203]
Ways to cultivate happiness
- Expressing Goodwill (Metta) to all living beings can help cultivate happiness.
“May all beings be at peace; May all beings be freed from suffering.”
- Learn to stop doing unskillful actions influenced by greed, desires, or anger
- Continue to practice meditation – its the practice that leads to this unconditional happiness
- Practice the precepts
Happiness in Pali is called Sukha, which is used both as a noun meaning “happiness,” “ease,” “bliss,” or “pleasure,” and as an adjective meaning “blissful” or “pleasant.”
