Happiness/ Well being and Mind Training.

First off, if you want to know why we all strive for happiness/well being, all I can say is, it is purely genetic. And I'm not a geneticist, I am a man with a lot of questions. I just had rotten luck to have enough time on my hands to think each one through.

So back to the topic at hand. I'll just call it well being. Happiness is a vague way of saying well being, people often mistake happiness for something less important and more temperature, like pleasure or titillation. Here, I'll show you what pleasure is.

I'll give you the example of pleasure first :
Say you've ordered a nice, rich chocolate cake. Your first serving, it's delicious. Your mouth is watering, and by the time your done with that particular serving of cake, you are pleasured. Then, the second serving of nice, rich chocolate cake arrives. By this time, you are less hungry and have lost your appetite due to the richness of the first serving of cake. But you press on, and eat the cake. Now you feel bloated, but the third serving of cake is about to arrive. Now, you are no longer pleasured, you are disgusted.


Happiness on the other hand has a more lasting effect, and this is best illustrated with a comparison between pleasure and well being:

If you had a ten dollar bill, and was fully conscious of the ramifications of giving that ten dollar bill to the next homeless person you saw, would you still waste it on something purely material as a piece of cake?

Well being is a deep state of fulfillment. You can be sad, but still be in a state of well being. They are both separate layers of emotion.

Pleasure is very different. Some people can rejoice in others' suffering. It is a fleeting emotion.

It is a Buddhist view that everything that has the ability to bring pleasure has the ability to bring great pain. And I agree completely, for the same things (say this computer as an example) that made me feel on top of the world the first time I got it, now sometimes makes me feel frustrated(when I realize how old it's gotten and it starts lagging, etc; i'm human too you know).

And I feel very Buddhist writing a post as shallow as this. I am fully aware that happiness and well being are all in the mind, all social things hard wired into our genetics. But since we cannot escape these states, we might as well learn to understand them. Maybe even to someday completely overcome them.

Okay, anyway, since we've established the differences between the fleeting emotions brought about by pleasure, we must now ask why we'd rather be happy than in pleasure.

Pleasure is, well, a more, not to say diluted, but generic form of happiness. That is why it is so often mistaken for happiness. It takes form of happiness. Like a bellowing storm cloud. From the outside, pleasure looks solid. But move closer, you will see that the emotion is permeable.

Happiness on the other hand is solid. So often we spend hours with hobbies, with trying to look more like people on tv, with exercise. But if it is a fact that the one thing we aim to achieve is a state of happiness, why then do we not focus on what would get us there?

Mind training is a solution. Monks and such meditate to train their mind. But one doesn't need to be a monk to mind train. The simple realization that every emotional impulse is result of complex genetic instruction and hormonal interference is enough to make you wonder how useless it is to be angry/frustrated/envious of someone or something. An open mind helps too.

With that in mind, learning to understand, let go of, and choose emotions becomes an altogether easier thing to do.

The reality of emotions is utterly unmagical, and bland.

That is all for now. This post is not a very good one I think. I don't have enough Buddhists in my life to be sure of what I have just discussed above. But it is EXACTLY what I believe.