Tomorrow is Vap Full Moon Poya Day:

Buddhist perspective of real happiness

By Lionel WIJESIRI

Tomorrow is Vap Full Moon Poya Day. It marks the offering of the Katina Cheevara or new robes to Bhikkhus who observed ‘Vas’ from Esala to Vap.

The other significant events commemorated during this month are the conclusion of the Buddha’s preaching of the Abhidhamma for three months to His mother in the Heavenly Realm (Devaloka) and King Devanampiyatissa of Sri Lanka sending envoys to Emperor Asoka of India, requesting him to send his daughter Arahat Sanghamitta Theri to Sri Lanka to establish the Bhikkhuni Sasana.

Religious rituals being conducted at a temple on Poya day

On this significant day, let us reflect upon a perennial question many scholars throughout the Western world were contemplating for the past five decades. ‘What is real happiness?’

Meaningful life

All of us seek happiness. If I ask you why you seek happiness, your answer would be “I want to lead a meaningful life.” Herein we come across the problem; interpretation of the word ‘meaningful’.

A meaningful life does not depend on your bank account, the behaviour of your spouse, your job or your salary. A meaningful life must answer a simple question, “What have I brought to the world?” If you can look at a day and see that virtue, happiness, truth and living an altruistic life are prominent elements, you can say “You know, I’m really a happy camper”.

One of my former employees has a rare disease, and every week he goes to the hospital for dialysis and drug treatment, and will for the rest of his life. You could say, “Well, that’s a tragedy, a dismal situation.” However, the last time I spoke with him, he said, “Look, I’m flourishing.” And he was. He was finding a way within the very limited parameters of what was available to him. His mind is clear. He’s reading, he’s growing, he’s meditating, and he’s teaching meditation to other terminally ill patients in his hospital. He’s living a very meaningful life in which he can honestly say that he is happy.

The good news is that genuine happiness is not out there in the marketplace, to be purchased or acquired from the best teacher around. One of the best kept secrets is that the happiness we’re striving for so desperately in the perfect spouse, the great children, the fine job, security, excellent health, and good looks has always been within and is just waiting to be unveiled.

Knowing that what we are seeking comes from within changes everything. It doesn’t mean you won’t have a spouse, or a car, or a satisfying job, but if you’re flourishing, your happiness won’t depend so much on external events, people and situations, which are all beyond your control.

Kusala Kamma

Buddhism has no concept equivalent to that of sin. While there may be gods in Buddhism, there is no Creator God and Judge. In Buddhism, actions are judged by their utilitarian value: Whether they lead to greater happiness for the person and affect others, and whether they lead to better karma, rebirth, and progress on the path to Enlightenment.

The Buddhist terms for judging whether actions have a felicitous or infelicitous effect are kusala and akusala, which usually gets translated as wholesome and unwholesome, or skilful and unskilful. The utilitarian nature of the concepts is made clear in the Kusala Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 2.19):

An action characterised by kusala kamma, which are wholesome, skilful, good, meritorious, is bound to result (eventually) in happiness and a favourable outcome. Actions characterised by its opposite (akusala kamma) lead to sorrow.

When we say that skilful and meritorious actions promote happiness, we are not just talking about the happiness of the individual. In Buddhism, the individual and others in the community have equal claims to happiness. Buddhism is neither individualist nor collectivist, but represents a middle way between these dialectical opposites.

Selfish behaviour does not bring genuine happiness, but only fleeting sense pleasures and ego gratification. Selfishness disturbs our loving social ties with others, creates dissension in the community, and makes us slaves to the hedonistic treadmill of transient pleasure.

The Buddha believed that real happiness came from the cultivation of wisdom and character. Aristotle differentiated eudamonia, or genuine well-being, from hedonia, or sense-based pleasure. Contemporary Positive Psychology is demonstrating the truth of the Aristotelian-Buddhist idea of a deeper, more worthwhile sense of well-being that is wisdom and character based.

Mindfulness

We are what we think. If we are to live skilfully and meritoriously, we must first establish some degree of control over our unruly minds. This is where mindfulness comes in. If we are heedless of thoughts we are driven by them like leaves in the wind. If we are mindful of thoughts, we can exercise discerning judgement about them. We can discern whether or not a thought is skilful and then decide whether or not to rehearse, practise, nurture and reinforce it.

A Katina Cheevara pinkama

We should avoid unskilful and unmeritorious behaviour because we want ourselves and others to be happy, not because we are afraid of God’s wrath. The only source of retribution we really need worry about is the one we ought to: Cause and Effect. This is true whether one believes in the Buddhist concept of karma, or the modern scientific understanding of cause and effect.

Thus, a mind that has realised the Buddhist goals of subduing greed, hatred and egoism while developing love, wisdom and compassion is a mind that will have a natural and spontaneous happiness.

Buddhist ethics

It is obvious then that while Buddhism proceeds from a very different set of premises than most other religions, it is nearly a complete agreement as to the standards of ethical conduct: Love, kindness, charity and generosity are universally hailed by all of man’s great philosophers and leaders.

In addition, Buddhism takes a further step in this direction. It teaches how to achieve these ethical ideals as living realities. It not only teaches us to love, but also it tells us how to achieve the genuine feeling that is love. For love and compassion, like all other aspects of this universe, arise through cause and effect.

Buddhism has no personal god. The Buddha regarded the question of ultimate beginnings as irrelevant to the problems of life in the present. Change and cause and effect are the paramount features of the Buddhist concept of the universe.

All things mental, physical and social go through an unending process of birth, growth, decay and death. Nothing finite is static, immortal or unchanging. Whatever has an origin is subject to cessation, be it man or mountain, consciousness or constellation. And what is it that regulates this unending flow of flux and mutation? The answer is cause and effect.

The primary concern of Buddhist ethics is the reduction (and, finally, the elimination) of greed, anger, delusion and suffering. However, these primary goals naturally lead to a social ethic and one that operates independently of political, theological or doctrinal ideologies.

For it works as follows: As men learn to lessen the greed, hatred and egoism that burn in their hearts, and as kindness and compassion gain prominence in human motivations, then will men strive to better the world in whatever way their immediate situation affords.

The whole point of Buddha Dhamma is that liberation comes not by believing in the right set of tenets or of dogmatic assertions, or even necessarily by behaving in the right way. It is the insight, it is the wisdom, it is knowing the nature of reality. Finally, it is only the truth that will make us free.