To be Happy or not to be Happy

[Seiryu]

Some years ago, I was at a Kwan Um center sitting. There was also an independent Korean school that many of the Kwan Um members would visit as that teacher was once a student of Seung Sahn Sunim before he passed. The teacher of the independent school was (is) a student of the current head of the Jogye Order; Zen Master Jinje

I remember over hearing some of the members at the Kwan Um school speaking down about ZM Jinje saying statements such as “ahhh, that guy thinks enlightenment is all about being happy…”


It was such an interesting thing for me to hear. Because I get their point. A focus solely on happiness and trying to achieve it can lead to a denial of what's happening in this very moment, right here, right now. Also, it can lead to chasing after an experience of happiness…..

But at the same time ...that mentality can also allow for a rejection of happiness all together….
Justifying a sense that not only is happiness not what it is about, but I shouldn’t even try to seek out happiness at all and just be ok with my crappy existence.


What do you guys think?

The search for happiness and contentment is as old as humanity itself, and it is as part of Bubddhist history as anything else….

How much happiness is too much?

How much striving is too much?


SAT

Seiryu

P.S
Here is a quote I found from ZM Jinje

“If you realize the truth, you will live in bliss every day. There will be nothing more special than drinking tea when you’re thirsty, resting when you’re tired, or greeting guests when they visit. These everyday acts will be enough.”

[Horin]

I remember Abbot Muho saying "true happiness is the ability also to allow not to be happy"
All conditions change sooner or later, so does happiness, in the sense of feeling good, change. When we accept the pain, the discomfort, the age, the sickness and all the conditions in life, our resistance against the conditions will become lesser and also the suffering becomes lesser.

I don't know, but I cannot imagine always to be in bliss..I don't know if it's possible, but when I see my family, my wife, my kids or my friends, but also other people that are not so close to me suffering, there is no bliss. Yet, I try to accept "bad" circumstances that I cannot change, even if it's more or less hard to do so.
When a child of me is in hospital, I am concerned for it. Can I drop all the concerns and just be in bliss? I don't think so. But when I accept all the sorrows, the concerns as they appear, it's ok.

Gassho
Ben

Stlah

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[Risho]

Always seeking a blissful state seems dangerous and perhaps what the precept on avoiding intoxicants is pointing toward. I mean humans fall for all sorts of tall tales, but there isn't any single state that is permanent; is there a state beyond calm and stressed where we can taste the CALM despite the storm clouds?

Gassho

Rish
-stlah

[Onka]

Antidepressants and other pain meds keep me functional. Constant pain keeps me present and grounded. I'm happy with that.
Gassho
Anna
st

[Kyonin]

Hi Seiryu,

What I am about to say is by no means an official Zen statement, just a personal comment. I might be totally wrong.

For what I have learned all this years of practice is that happiness as we know it, is a concept that we have created out of ego. We measure happiness in terms of what we get out of the universe for us. So happiness is about how secure you think you are, how many cars, relationships, collections, titles and money. The more we have of these, the more happy we think we are.

I think to have stuff surrounding us is important. We need stuff to have a comfortable life. But the thing is we have to practice daily and each and every moment to cultivate equanimity. When you do this you are ready to enjoy pleasant things, but also you are ready to accept conditions you may not like.

Happiness, joy, fear, anger and sadness may come, but we are able to get back to equanimity.

Zen practice allows us to be right in the middle of the turmoil of the mind, a demanding society and our needs. Not sure if this is enlightenment but it sure happens naturally after some time practicing.

Gassho,

Kyonin
sat/LAH

[Risho]

Damn Kyonin - well said

Gassho

Rish
-stlah

[Jundo]

So happiness is about how secure you think you are, how many cars, relationships, collections, titles and money. The more we have of these, the more happy we think we are.

I would just clarify Kyonin's words to "the more happy we think we will be," because anyone opening the Hollywood gossip pages to see how movie stars and princesses live unhappily with all the fame, money and cars will realize that it is not about that. One needs a certain amount of nutritious food, a warm and safe place to live, companionship and love ... and not much more really to be content. The wise are content with or without all those things, and do not cling to any of it even when they have such things.

The wise are Content (Big "C") to not even be "content" all the time!

I describe our way as neither running hungrily toward happiness, nor running away from happiness or the natural sadnesses of life. Be happy to be sometimes happy, be happy to be sometimes sad when your dog dies too. (I am not talking about clinical depression or the like, but even then, we can learn to accept the condition when we have such disease, and even as we seek to be free of the disease. On the other hand, when my mother dies, when my house burns down, when I read a sad story in the news, I want to feel sad, I want to cry sometimes. It is okay and human). As strange as it may sound, our Zen practice allows us a kind of Joy (Big "J") that sweeps in both ordinary human joys and sadnesses. It is a Joy that does not even require us to feel joyous (small "j") all or most of the time, and is Joyous to be downright miserable and anything but joyous sometimes!

Many modern Teachers, if you look closely, are actually doing a bit of "bate and switch" on their use of "happiness," which turns out to be much as the "joyous and content to be joyful, joyous and content to be sad, joyous and content to be healthy, joyous and content to be sick sometimes" aspect that you hear around here quite often. I have spoken about this and all the Dalai Lama's books on "happiness":

=============

The Tibetans tend to speak of "Happiness" quite a bit in their books and talks ... but when looked at closely, it is much the same as the subtle Joy and Peace that we speak of in the Zen corner of the woods ... a Joy that holds comfortably the happy times and sad times, a Peace that is wholly all life's many pieces. .

Frankly, if somebody just wanted to be "happy happy happy", I think there are pharmaceuticals that will do the job faster and deeper than any meditation ... at least for a short time.

I sometimes think that the Tibetans writers chose the word "Happiness" in their literature to impress Westerners. The problem is that some folks may hear that and think that they are going to find the key to 24/7 "laughing gas" happiness ... and are a bit disappointed when in fact what is delivered is something much more subtle (though fathomlessly richer). I once wrote ...

Even in Tibetan Buddhism's emphasis on "happiness" ... such words might disguise the real teaching of the Dalai Lama and most Tibetan Teachers I know (same message as here at Treeleaf, in fact) that the point of this Practice is not the attaining of a happy happy ha ha happy happiness all the time (I have never met such a constantly giddy Tibetan teacher, and who would want such a state ... like only watching the comedy movies and never the drama!), but of a certain subtle Happiness (big "H") that transcends AND yet fully contains both the happy times and the sad, smiles and tears, the rainy days and sunny days, as judged by small human eyes in this life of Samsara. I do not think they are teaching people to feel happy that their mother died or tickled that there is a war somewhere in the world ... but a Boundless Joy and Buddha's Smile that shines through all that life can dish out.

A Buddha's Happiness transcends and holds small human "happy and sad".



Gassho, J

Sat TodayLAH

[Jakuden]

So much truth here!! Funny we have been purging and getting rid of “stuff” the last 6 months or so, and it’s closer to bliss than acquiring the stuff in the first place ever was!

Gassho
Jakuden
SatToday/LAH


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[Shonin Risa Bear]

"Sometimes nothing can be a pretty cool hand." -- Cool Hand Luke.

gassho
doyu sat today

So much truth here!! Funny we have been purging and getting rid of “stuff” the last 6 months or so, and it’s closer to bliss than acquiring the stuff in the first place ever was!

Gassho
Jakuden
SatToday/LAH


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[Seibu]

Justifying a sense that not only is happiness not what it is about, but I shouldn’t even try to seek out happiness at all and just be ok with my crappy existence.


SAT

Seiryu

Zazen has changed my outlook on life, happiness, unhappiness, and anything in between tremendously. Whereas I used to ride the roller coaster of happiness and trying to find ideal balances in life, I can now (most of the times) be aware of the fleeting nature of all human emotions and experiences. It all belongs to the scenery of zazen as Uchiyama used to say. This doesn't mean that I am always aware of my state of being in a zen way, but it does allow me to go back to the basic state, or universal self. I never told anyone here but ever since I came to this understanding my quest to read even more works of philosophy vanished completely. Why? Because I live in happiness now? No, not at all. It is just a new way of understanding...of getting a glimpse of how things really are. I quoted this bit you shared because, and I have to be careful here because I know nothing about your life, in zen all these adjectives are labels we give to situations. I hope this make a little sense...it is just my experience.

Gassho,
Jack
Sattoday/lah

[Shoki]

I do not sit zazen to make me happy. But in the long run I think happiness is a byproduct of sitting. I think zazen may lower my blood pressure too but that's not the reason I sit. So I don't get too hung up about if this sitting makes me happy. One thing I've learned is that when I am not happy, then for that day or hour, I am not happy. So what? Be unhappy. Later is usually different.

I am suspicious of people who have some kind of religion or philosophy or whatever that makes them walk around in a constant state of bliss. In my experience they are either hiding something or are on some chemical supplement.

Gassho
STlah
James

[Seiryu]

I am suspicious of people who have some kind of religion or philosophy or whatever that makes them walk around in a constant state of bliss. In my experience they are either hiding something or are on some chemical supplement.

Gassho
STlah
James

I want to look at this a bit. because it may be true that people who are in a constant state of bliss are hiding something and using the Bliss as a cover or they're on some some chemical substance that is keeping their mind at a certain place

But there may be an assumption within your suspicions, that being in a constant state of bliss or being in Bliss majority of the time is simply impossible and the only way someone is there is either by lying or by taking something.
but I think we need to be careful in comparing someone else's state and our state.

Because from what I have observed it seems a lot of people who are born and have been raised in this world, this modern consumer-driven productivity driven world, their constant default state seems to be one of melancholy. Or a more flat "meh' type state.

One from which if one has an emotional Rising we call that happiness and if one has an emotional drop we enter into more depression or sadness or the usual.

But just like we can have a default state that can line itself up in melancholy or something more flat it seems very possible that through some type of meditation practice people can have their default state shift and land most of the time on states of happiness and Bliss.

I'm more cautious of assuming that the way in which I view the world is the way the world is...

Sat

Seiryu

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[Shoki]

Seiryu,
Very good points. I agree that the way I view the world is not necessarily how it is. Also about being careful in comparing our states to others. I just spoke about my observations about people in my experience. It always turned out to be drug use, insecurity, some kind of fake front, etc. I have not conducted any studies. I don't spend a lot of time delving into what makes other people tick.

I guess zen practice has made me happier. I don't really think too much about striving for happiness. But more directly it has softened my edges, made me see clearer, thought about things less from a me at the center way, made me consider how the result of things and actions will affect something other than me, made me more accepting of things without anger and frustration. Usually anyway.

Gassho
STlah
James

[Kyōsen]

I remember Abbot Muho saying "true happiness is the ability also to allow not to be happy"

I like this and I agree.

One can be happy while not experiencing things that aren't pleasant. I think the ability to dissociate the idea of happiness from pleasant is worthwhile. I also think that, like the Buddha, if you along the road you meet happiness you should kill it.

I believe a common mistake most of us make at one point or another is in conjuring an idea of what happiness is in our imagination, then using our energy to pursue that thing that we imagined and just assume must exist exactly like we imagined it. Instead of allowing things to come and go as they are and learning to find happiness with the natural flow of life, we become a bit neurotic about our pursuit of happiness. We end up mistaking happiness as something conditional, that exists "out there".

If only I had the right toothpaste then I could be happy like the people on the TV!

Happiness arises all on its own, right here. All we need to do is get out of its way (easier said than done, I know). Also: Gratitude is an important part of happiness, perhaps the most important part.

Gassho
Sen
Sat|LAH

[Seiryu]

I remember Abbot Muho saying "true happiness is the ability also to allow not to be happy"

Although I think this is also profoundly wise, it does seem to confuse Happiness for a state of mental equilibrium. That mental state that allows whatever to arise to arise without being bothered one way or another.

Sat
. Seiryu

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