What is Happiness?

Happiness is something we have all experienced, if even for brief moments in our life. We essentially strive consciously or unconsciously for happiness in every moment of our waking life, but how much time have we ever given to try and understand what it is that we are striving for?

If you sit with that question with enough authenticity, you will probably come to the conclusion that you have spent very little time of your life trying to understand happiness, and yet a lot more time trying to chase after it. I would say that it is this understanding of happiness that is of higher importance than the endless chasing of it, and through understanding happiness we can find a deeper sense of lasting fulfilment and end the eternal chasing of our own tail.

Now I have said that it is important to understand happiness, so where do we start with that? I would firstly point out the simple fact that happiness is every human beings highest priority whether they know it or not. When you question what you want most in the world, we may hear an infinite array of responses from different people, yet all of the responses would be on the assumption that what they want will make them happy. For example, someone may say “What I want most in my life is a little cottage with a farm”. Now if we were to be able to offer that person their farm upon the one condition that they will be unhappy when they receive it, you would find that they no longer want that which was desired. You can substitute this out for whatever you desire the most and test it out on yourself. Would you want your idea of heaven if when you receive your wish you will be unhappy? Take your time to sit with that and you will see that you wouldn’t want that heaven, simply because it is actually the happiness itself that you are longing for, as is every other human being on the planet. It is happiness itself that defines and is your one true criterion for heaven. At this point we can now understand that happiness is in truth our highest yearning, meaning that we should obviously prioritise this longing over other desires we may have, even though we probably have not been doing that throughout our whole life due to always looking for “this” or “that” rather than knowing that both “this” and “that” are just substitutes for the happiness we truly seek. When this is understood, the fire to discover what happiness is in truth becomes ignited and the spiritual yearning for truth arises within the human being, the aspiration to free oneself from suffering.

Now that we have established that the desire for happiness is not only primary, but is actually our only true desire, we must then investigate into the nature of happiness itself.

When we think of moments that we have been happy, it is likely that we have almost always assumed that the happiness is experienced due to a particular object, feeling or experience at a certain time. For example, a beautiful sunset or a magnificent piece of art temporarily may make us feel peace and happiness, with us later saying “wow that was great” and going back for more, only to find that the object may no longer be present (in the case of the sunset) or may no longer give us the happiness that we originally felt (in the case of the painting). Essentially, in our misunderstanding we believe that it is the object or experience itself that contained the happiness, and due to that erroneous belief we keep seeking out more of that particular object or experience. Now, if this were true, that happiness was found within an object or particular experience, would it not be the case that humanity would have found the perfect object or conditions for happiness? That we would all be satisfied and content all with the same particular object/experience by our side continuously? Obviously this is not the case, pointing us to the possibility that the real and lasting happiness that we are looking for is not contained in any particular object or experience. At this point of understanding, one is then open to the possibility that lasting happiness cannot be found in the content of the world; that abiding happiness is not something I can find and cling onto. It must be something that is more permanent and natural, something that is not transitory.

Lasting happiness must be found in that which lasts

As we move further into our investigation, we find ourselves sitting with the question “Well, what does last?” If we look out into the world we see that everything is always changing, and is impermanent as the Buddha taught. We find that there is nothing I can truly grasp onto for the security of own my happiness. Although this seems somewhat nihilistic, the possibility for happiness is still there even though it may not seem to be at this point.

Now, whilst it is true that there is nothing in the world that is permanent, this statement is not true for that which is beyond the world, beyond the realms of time and space. To explain this in more comprehensible terms an analogy is useful:

Imagine standing over a motorway on a bridge watching all the cars come and go out of sight. Now the reason we can see all of these cars come and go on the road is because we are in essence ‘beyond’ the limitations of the road and the cars on it. The cars come straight towards us but we know in truth that they cannot actually hurt us as they are not on our “level” of reality. This is similar to our actual experience, we just simply replace the cars for the emotions, thoughts and perceptions we experience that cause our suffering. The issue is that often most humans are not aware of it being the case that they are merely witnesses to their passing emotions and thoughts rather than being actually involved in them. We believe our thoughts and feelings hurt ‘me’ without seeing that what I actually am is not affected by these transitory emotions, feelings, thoughts and perceptions. What we are is on a different “level” of reality that isn’t actually being affected by what occurs on the level below it. This “level below” in our analogy is the world of space and time, that our essence is beyond and untouched by, just like how the screen is unaffected by the movie that plays upon it.

In the same way as being beyond the road and cars of the motorway, what we truly are in our essence is already beyond our feelings and emotions that cause our suffering, we just do not notice it due to it actually being so obvious that we overlook its utter simplicity. It is similar to watching the person on the overlooking bridge watching the cars come towards them on the motorway below and panicking screaming “help me I am going to be run over”, and even saying “ oh my how much pain I am in, my leg is broken from the accident”. We see in this analogy that all the person needs to do in this case to go beyond their suffering is simply recognise that they actually cannot be hurt by the cars coming towards them. They only have to realise that they are causing their own suffering from their misunderstanding of reality. In this analogy, we see that the unhappiness is only caused by our own imagination, our amazing ability of mind to convince itself that we are in danger and suffering. Meditation is how we then “treat” this misunderstanding of reality, allowing us to overcome the delusional imagination that obscures our natural state of happiness; the same happiness that the motorway watcher would feel if he noticed that he is simply deluding himself believing that the cars can hurt him and are hurting him. If he for a moment stood still and allowed the confidence to ‘let a car hit him’, he would miraculously discover that he was not in any way harmed. He would have his first glimpse of his own self-delusional tendencies. This is how meditation works by allowing the thoughts and feelings to “hit” you, until you slowly realise that their is no basis to the suffering being experienced from them. We recognise overtime that they are only a combination of thoughts and sensations which never affect our own being, our true nature of happiness that is beyond time and space, the transcendent self. It is a process of realising that we have always been content and naturally happy, we simply couldn’t notice it as we were too pre-occupied with our own mental projections of suffering.

Emotions, sensations and thoughts are not what ‘I’ am, they are what I’ experience. I myself am beyond the transitory arising and passings of experience.

Most people will go their whole life without realising the severity of their addiction to projecting suffering simply because it would be a devastating discovery for their ego. It is rarely realised because it is so common and constant that it isn’t noticed. It can be compared to how you are amazed by a shooting star but not the sky itself, how we always overlook the most obvious and abundant things in our life, only fascinated by the unique and momentary experiences which is obviously a recipe for unhappiness. This inability to appreciate that which is naturally abundant is the cause of our own unhappiness. It is actually because happiness is so close and so naturally abundant that we miss it, we overlook it as we think that it must be some firework explosion or transcendental orgasm given to us from the gods. This is a very immature understanding of happiness and is simply just called ‘excitement’. Real happiness is quiet, silent and better described as peace. As I said, this peace and happiness is so close to us, so intimately in our own face that we rarely notice it; it is even more abundant than the sky itself. Consider this:

Have you ever noticed that your vision always blocks out your nose because it is so close to your eyes? It is always in your vision but you never are consciously aware of it? In a similar way, the happiness we search for in our life is just like this; it is so close to us that we wouldn’t ever think to look there so we never see it. In its discovery we laugh at ever previously thinking it was something that we had to strive to attain or cultivate, we see that it was hidden in plain sight, yet the most well hidden of eternal treasures.

Happiness is closer than our own breath, closer than our own heartbeat.

This understanding is summarised in the story of a homeless beggar, who for years sat on a box begging for money from every person who walked past him. After many years he became exhausted of begging and decided to give up and began to pick up his limited belongings so he could move to a new spot and hopefully gather more money. However, just before he left a stranger came by and said “what’s that box you was sitting on?”, to which the beggar replied “oh that’s just a box, it’s nothing”. Upon saying this he opened the box to show the stranger the inside of the box, only to be shocked that inside was a fortune of beautiful gold. He discovered in that moment that he had been sitting on a fortune the entire time without realising it. This is the human predicament, and we are all just like the homeless beggar and desperate to be happy, until one day we come to see that have always had, and in fact actually are the very same happiness we have been longing for our entire life; a truly revelatory discovery that is not a philosophy but a lived actual direct experience. It was not a philosophy, idea or belief when the beggar found the gold underneath him, it was real and lived experience. In this same way we must discover our natural happiness, our true nature, for ourselves, beyond belief and beyond another being saying so. I, like the stranger passing by in our story am suggesting that you are sitting on top of happiness right now, but unless like the beggar in the story you look for yourself, we may never discover the fortunes in our own heart. Mere belief is not enough and we must truly look for ourselves, we must have holy curiosity for our own predicament.

That which we want the most is what we always have been. We ultimately are happiness itself and must discover this in our own heart.

For one to realise this for themselves, it is only necessary that we question our own predicament and where we are looking for happiness from. The homeless beggar could have found his fortune many years ago before anyone told him to look in the box, and so the sooner he would have cultivated a genuine curiosity for his own situation he would have naturally found what he was looking for. We do not need anyone else for this happiness, it is right below our own feet. This happiness is the same as the silence that is there before you even can look for happiness. It is there prior to your desire to be happy. It is the most natural of states, such that it is not even a state, as states are all impermanent. It needs nothing to change for it to be there. All that we need to do to acknowledge this place in ourselves is become quiet, attentive to our moment to moment experience, neither moving away from or towards anything, simply content where we are. Relaxed and at ease, happiness is there without a cause. Our true happiness is always without a cause as it is only when happiness is uncaused that it cannot be lost. All things are caused, but you, the aliveness that reads these words behind your eyes, you are uncaused and unchanging. We find happiness when we discover that which doesn’t change and is uncaused. The spiritual phrase for happiness is “spirit” or “consciousness”, the religious phrase is “God” and the scientific name is “Energy”. All of these terms are ultimately synonymous with your own self. In the end it is our own self that we discover to be the greatest thing we could ever conceive of, and in that discovery life finds fulfilment moment to moment in freedom from suffering and peace and happiness in abundance expressed in the simplicities of life from cleaning dishes to listening to a tweeting bird.

May you be happy as you are right now.

– Aaron Pearson –