On happiness

I ponder on this topic very often, especially often when I'm getting older.

I am 59 at the time of writing this article. It is said that Buddha began his exploration on this issue from early part of his teens stage, and resolved to find out the cause of suffering. So compared to Buddha, I am late awakened to this issue. I think most of the creatures are late awakened, or are never awakened to this subject.

Some people disagree that life is full of sufferings. "Life is happy! At least mine is a happy one." they would say. But, "are you really happy all the time? Throughout your life?" if you ask them so. "Well, of course not all the time, never it will be throughout our lives. But why do you have to pay attention to those miserable periods and embrace them all the time? Isn't life short, and we should be happy?" they would so argue, and defend their proposition.

But if life is supposed to be happy, why are there so many unhappy, or even horrible news such as homicide, kidnap, domestic violence, divorce, sickness, aging, mortality, having to deal with people whom you dislike, having to part from the people whom you love dearly, and etc. maybe these are just examples of trifling matters. What about the unhappy things of the far more significant incidents? World war, ethnic groups conflict, political conflict, economical conflict, SARS, swine flu epidemic, and many other examples which you are more knowledgeable to help listing them on here.

We cannot ignore the fact that we do have unhappy period of time in our lives despite that it is also true that we have happy period of time in our lives as well.

I'm only trying to sort out why people are not happy; when will people feel unhappy...this sort of questions. Because if we know the answers, then we should know how to remain happy all the time, throughout our life, and even eternally. I believe many other people in the world agree with my logic -- admit that people are not happy, then go to find the answer, then at last we all can be happy.

I searched on the web; I deciphered the thoughts of the authors through reading; I discuss on it with other people who also pondering on this issue, but I have not found any solution that is effective enough to make one happy instantly when he is unhappy.

As a matter of fact, all my effort in searching for solution of making people happy is an unnecessary waste of time. Because what? That solution was already found by the Buddha some 2500 odds years ago. You can be as happy as a Buddha if you are resolved to practice what the Buddha has taught.

He said the cause of suffering is from "the three poisons", and if one drops off these three poisons completely, he attains the Buddhahood, and he will be really happy eternally, and never suffers. How cool this guarantee is! But how to actually shake them off? It is always a matter of easy to say but hard to do.

What are the three poisons? They are craving, hatred, and ignorance. Indeed if we analyze any evil act, we will find there is always one, or are two or all of the three poisons involved in the incident. All the news we read from newspaper are good examples for finding the traces of these three poisons involved in the cases reported.

I want to raise an example about a homicide case which occurred about three years ago in New Zealand. A martial art master killed his young wife, then he took his daughter, three or four years old at that time, and fled to Melbourne. There he dumped his daughter in the railway station, and escaped to the United States. Let's use this example for tracing the root cause of this family tragedy. Obviously a great deal of hatred was in the husband's mind. Of course there were other factors preceding his killing, and logically those factors were unhappy ones. His evil compulsion that drove him to grab the knife to terminate his wife's life had made many people not just unhappy, but suffering, acute suffering.

If we are convinced that the three poisons are the causes of suffering, then we would like to know how to clear the three poisons from our mind?

The answer from the Buddha was the "three trainings" -- precepts, meditative stabilization and wisdom. These terms sound bleak, heavy and very serious. But that is because they are recorded in the Sutra which of course is meant to be sacred and serious in every way, but their actual meaning in today's language is like this -- obey the rules, Mindful of what you are doing, and finally you are enlightened.

Despite that the teaching has been followed, interpreted, and yet only a very few wise beings are enlightened, or enter the eternally happy state, or have completely transformed to be free of the three poisons. Obviously it is not easy to achieve that goal, so what is the point for those compassionate Saints and sages to be preaching this teaching diligently, perseveringly and wholeheartedly?

My understanding is like this. We know it is good to be happy; we were taught the method to achieve the happy state and sustain it; we all agree that the logic of this teaching is true. Now because we see that only a very few mortal beings mastered this skill in the past two thousand and five hundred years, we think perhaps it is wiser to just indulge ourselves in the wordly pleasures. What will be the outcome if this logic is adopted by every single mortal being on the planet? All gone to the hell realm ultimately, the theory points out.

In contrary, if every single mortal being on this planet has at least awakened by the belief that what they are endeavored to achieve is unlikely to come true in this life, but it is a bit of positive effort in the process of evolution toward the divine realms -- the eternally happy state; the non-birth and non-death realm, so he just wades through the difficulties inch by inch, then one day, either in this life or the life after the next, he will attain that state, definitely.

I think this is the only way and the only hope to obtain a genuine happiness -- even if not in this life, but definitely will be obtained when the notion of time is ignored and only the effort of walking on the right path is being focused on.

This concludes my ages long contemplation about why people are not happy-- we all embrace more or less the "three poisons".