Looking for Our Happiness in All the Wrong Places
Posted: Sunday, December 20, 2009
by e
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
What do you do when you are unhappy? Usually, you will try to change things so that you will become happy again. To put up with the unhappiness is unthinkable.
A survey of political articles reaffirms this idea. Most reflect a very deep unhappiness with something or someone, with the gist of the article being to change either our leaders or our government so that we can be happy again.
So if we are intelligent at all, and once we see this all play out, why wouldn't we seek a different approach to happiness? One that doesn't involve circumstances beyond our control which breed a constant underlying fear that our happiness will change?
The key here is "seeing." Not reading or talking or listening to others, but seeing exactly what is playing out for us internally. Can we see our discontent, beyond the policy issues or personalities involved? Can we see our own aggressiveness and anger which follow our opinions like tracks follow a cart, as we try to rectify our discontent? Because if we can't, we are damned forever to be puppets of endless policies and personalities that we do not agree with. They won't go away.
This means that we have doomed ourselves to endless stress. And it is not the policies or personalities that doom us; it is ourselves that sentence our own minds to endless conflict. Can you see this?
If we could but really "see" this, only one time. If we could see how we cause our own inner conflicts simply because of words we read on a computer or in a newspaper, and how we then form opinions for or against those words, we would realize that all of it is only a dream.
Seeing is insight, insight into our minds and how they work. Few look inside their minds, and instead live in externals such as what we take in by reading, listening, and then forming opinions in our minds. We don't see the deeper meanings of all of this and what it does to us internally. We don't recognize that our anger or discontent is always our choice, and instead try to placate the anger and discontent by striking back, which is like hitting at smoke.
Seeing and insight only occur when the mind is quiet. Thought, which is based on what has happened in the past and what we perceive will happen in the future, only keeps us on the same old treadmill from which we will never get off. It only takes one time to see thought in action, and how thought keeps us under constant stress before we drop thought completely and instead rely on insight.
Thought operates in images - pictures in our minds - instead of the reality that ever changes and is right before us. Thought is too slow to see the immediate truth, and therefore from past impressions, creates the ego, and creates all the images that we hold dear for our security, images of our relationships, our possessions, and our beliefs. But ego and all those images are false, that is, they are constructions of mind that are temporary and delusional. But how can we see through all those images, which are our security? That would take an inordinate amount of courage and energy!
And if we dropped all our illusions that keep us psychologically secure, regardless of whether they are false or not, what would happen to us?
What would happen is that "insight" and "direct seeing" into reality would become our true security.
No longer shackled to ideals or concepts, we would now be free. Freedom being the end of the tyranny of the past and future, and especially the end of the cruelty of ego and all that the ego does to cause us endless stress.
Thought is useful in the world, but like a sharp knife, it can be used for good or evil if direct insight and understanding is not riding herd on the process of thought.
Just being aware that the mind is thinking is a beginning, and then being aware of the emotions that thought brings up is another step. Strong opinions, hatefulness, conflict - all are the results of the unawareness of the thinking process.
True, unconditional love happens in the absence of thought. Love with thought involved is usually lust, attachment, or dependency. The next time you really feel deep down, authentic love, check this out.
So where are all the right places to look for happiness? Happiness can be found in the absence of thought and in the presence of direct seeing and insight, and direct seeing and insight will then become our security, a security that can never be taken away.
And as a result, our stress will be replaced by ease and love.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)e, I read this article of yours a couple of times and can't make any sense of it. I don't believe too many people can make sense of it or they would have left a comment. What are you trying to say anyway?Hi David, sorry that I didn't make it clearer, but I was trying to say that when we look outside of ourselves for happiness, the happiness we may find is only fleeting at best and a seed of suffering and stress at worst. On the other hand, when we look inside and understand ourselves, then that intelligence and seeing for ourselves creates security for us, a security which replaces the false security of images. I guess this would be hard to follow unless we can see the images that we create which replace reality. We really live in images, not reality. Meditation is about the only way that I know of to see these things, although some people have seen them spontaneously.
(That probably didn't help, right) :)Well e, I've never meditated however I find happiness in seeing other people happy. Like that song goes by Barry Mantilo (my spelling may be off) some of the lyrics "I feel glad when you're glad feel sad when you're sad. Does this make any sense to you?Yes, if we are sensitive to others, we will feel their happiness and be happy with them. In Buddhism it is one of the Four Brahmaviharas (Mudita).
1. Metta: Loving-kindness towards all; the hope that a person will be well; loving kindness is "the wish that all sentient beings, without any exception, be happy."
2. Karuna: Compassion; the hope that a person's sufferings will diminish; compassion is the "wish for all sentient beings to be free from suffering."
3. Mudita: Altruistic joy in the accomplishments of a person, oneself or other; sympathetic joy, "is the wholesome attitude of rejoicing in the happiness and virtues of all sentient beings."
4. Upekkha: Equanimity, or learning to accept both loss and gain, praise and blame, success and failure with detachment, equally, for oneself and for others; equanimity means "not to distinguish between friend, enemy or stranger, but regard every sentient being as equal. It is a clear-minded tranquil state of mind - not being overpowered by delusions, mental dullness or agitation."
I have heard it said many times: "No one can be at peace with others, if they are at war with themselves."You have encapsulated this wonderful sentiment in your writing. Thank you e and blessings to you.That's a great quote Dr. Rhymes. As long as there is a self present, we will be in conflict, because conflict is life, without conflict we wouldn't be. So thought is the conflict solver, but also creates the ego, which is our grand illusion. But when we try to solve our conflicts with thought, the solution is always flawed because thought can only operate in images, or pictures in the mind, never reality, and therefore the solutions are always incomplete, and so thought continues in our brains night and day trying to rectify the imperfect solutions it comes up with and there is never any peace. Thought can never really touch the eternal because thought is always of the past and the eternal is ever changing and in this moment. Thought can only imagine, in images, the eternal, which is called illusion. Insight, on the other hand can actually experience the eternal, and the mind can remember the experience, however, thought can never express a deep insight because thought will take an insight and hold it in time, which becomes the past and therefore not real anymore. .
Insight sees the reality of things and solves the problem completely once and for all. Then the mind can rest. So thought always keeps us in bondage, whlle direct insight frees us. I know that this might seem like another language from mars, but if someone can get a taste of it, it will begin to make their life and life's constant conflicts easier.
Hi e,It sounds like you are speaking to the reactive mind, where for every pro, we form a con, and vice versa. It's the always busy mind, the one that falls into some role the way water fills a space.You know, this holiday season people will go home thinking they will find joy in familiar surroundings. But they will always find anxiety, as they revert to roles and expectations, and find they can't break out of the conditioning they grew up with. John the Executive reverts to Little Johnny who was always getting into trouble; Ellen the mother of three becomes Little Ellen who just never could please her mother, because it was her little sister Sassy who was, and always will be the darling of the family. Ellen will not, and should not seek self-validation where she will never find it, and the same goes for John. These are self-destructive reactions to habitual social constructs that need not be.This is only a sliver of what I could write, given the abundant thought provoking material you've given us in this article.- GWow G, great observations that make the article less cerebral and more down to earth. Thanks!
Best wishes...............e
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