Counting your caloriesin your sleep? Feeling ashamed for not being happier? You may be avictim of the wellness syndrome. The Wellness Syndromefollows health freaks who go to extremes to find the perfect diet,corporate athletes who start the day with a dance party, and theself-trackers who monitor everything, including their own toilethabits.
This is a world where feeling good has becomeindistinguishable from being good. Visions of social change havebeen reduced to dreams of individual transformation, politicaldebate has been replaced by insipid moralising, and scientificevidence has been traded for new-age delusions.
A lively andhumorous diagnosis of the cult of wellness, this book is anindispensable guide for everyone suspicious of our relentless questto be happier and healthier. Dictionaries say happiness is a range of emotions, from contentment to joy. We might think of happiness as an ephemeral thing that floats in and out of our lives, or as our life's essential goal, or as just the opposite of "sadness.
One word for "happiness" from the early Pali texts is piti , which is a deep tranquility or rapture. In order to understand the Buddha's teachings on happiness, it's important to understand piti. As the Buddha explained these things, physical and emotional feelings vedana correspond or attach to an object. For example, the sensation of hearing is created when a sense organ ear comes in contact with a sense object sound.
Similarly, ordinary happiness is a feeling that has an object—for example, a happy event, winning a prize or wearing pretty new shoes. The problem with ordinary happiness is that it never lasts because the objects of happiness don't last. A happy event is soon followed by a sad one, and shoes wear out. Unfortunately, most of us go through life looking for things to "make us happy.
The happiness that is a factor of enlightenment is not dependent on objects but is a state of mind cultivated through mental discipline. Because it is not dependent on an impermanent object, it does not come and go. A person who has cultivated piti still feels the effects of transitory emotions—happiness or sadness—but appreciates their impermanence and essential unreality. He or she is not perpetually grasping for wanted things while avoiding unwanted things. Most of us are drawn to the dharma because we want to do away with whatever we think is making us unhappy.
We might think that if we realize enlightenment , then we will be happy all the time. But the Buddha said that's not exactly how it works. Suppose we added to these claims a Fortunate Coincidence Thesis, according to which someone with those virtues would be highly likely to exemplify human flourishing—or perhaps, according to which those virtues themselves actually help to constitute human flourishing.
The result would be a view that we could plausibly call simultaneously eudaimonistic and utilitarian. See Flanagan , And Buddhist ethics could be like that; indeed, I take it to be a live interpretive thesis that some forms of Buddhist ethics really are like that.
This, I think, is a fourth, independent criterion, and one that points in a different direction from the others. If a view involves the Fortunate Coincidence Thesis, that view in- vites us to ask a difficult question. Given that the actions and practices that lead to my own happiness will mostly, or possibly even entirely, coincide with the actions and practices that lead to the greatest overall happiness for everyone, what is the foundational justification for those actions and prac- tices?
I have argued before that, if we are thinking about the bodhisattva path, we should adopt the second interpretation. But if we claim that what makes you morally better is the realization that the distinction between self and others has no intrinsic normative significance, how could we possibly also claim that the foundational justification for ethics is to benefit yourself and not others?
This kind of reasoning could only lead to the conclusion that what ultimately matters is the welfare of all sentient beings. Of course, this argument brings us back to a question about which Flanagan confesses he is unsure: What exactly is the relation, if any, between no-self and compassion? There are at least two serious problems with this whole discussion. When it appears in their discussions, it is functioning only as a foil for the view of self, an intermediate perspective to be considered and discarded.
Even now, there is no thing, no substance, that is me. The second problem is that no Buddhist holds that simply avowing the view of no self is enough to stop someone from being a selfish creep. With that sense of self comes self- cherishing, the emotional disposition to favor yourself over others. But if, through a combination of resting meditation Skt. This would be something like going through much of your life in a flow state.
All sense of a distinction between self and other drops away; agency in the usual sense stops functioning, and is replaced by spontaneous, skillful responsiveness. And how can you really expect to understand the way of life of bodhisattvas if your account says nothing about the bodhi they seek? If you were to eliminate the subjective sense of self completely, so that all your time was spent in a state of spontaneous responsiveness, you would never act like a selfish creep.
If you were to spend some of your time in a state of spontaneous responsiveness, then we could say at least that you would act like a selfish creep only during some fraction of the rest of your time. And that might well be an improvement. Moreover, many experienced meditators report that such a state is possible, and when we watch how they behave, we may find we have reasons to agree.
Flanagan points out that the experimental evidence that has been offered for this claim seems to be quite thin and overhyped. But I think that we can get even more precise in understanding Buddhist views in this area, and by doing so, possibly make progress toward an interpretation of Buddhism that would make testable psychological predictions about happiness.
There is some range of conditions I might be experiencing that I would be willing to accept. Call this range my acceptance window. If the ambient conditions are outside the window, I refuse to accept them, and as a result, I suffer. But within the window, I can take things as they come, and I feel no need to reject or struggle against my experience. Now we could say that there are two kinds of improvements that might lead me to experience more attitudinal pleasure.
First, my conditions might improve, so that I spend more time within my fixed acceptance window. Moreover, my pro-attitude toward experience is now more robust, as the range of situations in which I will be contented is broader. We could say that one of the major goals of Buddhist practice is to expand the acceptance window. Then we could say that Buddhism promises happiness in not one, but two senses.
Then, by embodying the Buddhist virtues, you get what Flanagan calls eudaimoniaBuddha , a particular version of well-being that is a straightfor- ward alternative and competitor to eudaimoniaAristotle. Nor is expanding the window the normal cause of attitudinal pleasure, because most people who have it, get it because, either through effort or through luck, their circumstances come to fall within their fixed window.
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Return to Book Page. Surya Das Goodreads Author Foreword. Discover the Secrets to Happiness and Well-Being The excitement you feel after hearing good news or achieving a goal is fleeting, but true happiness-that is, the warm feeling of deep contentment and joy-is lasting, and it can be yours in every moment. The Buddha's Way of Happiness is a guide to putting aside your anxieties about the future, regrets about the past, and const Discover the Secrets to Happiness and Well-Being The excitement you feel after hearing good news or achieving a goal is fleeting, but true happiness-that is, the warm feeling of deep contentment and joy-is lasting, and it can be yours in every moment.
The Buddha's Way of Happiness is a guide to putting aside your anxieties about the future, regrets about the past, and constant longing to change your life for the better, and awakening to the joy of living.
With this book as your guide, you'll identify the barriers to happiness you create in your own life and use the eightfold path of Buddhist psychology to improve your ability to appreciate the small, joyful moments that happen every day. These exercises, meditations, and concrete approaches to practicing happiness and well-being are drawn from mindfulness, "no self," and other ancient Buddhist insights, many of which have been proven effective by today's psychologists and researchers.
With the knowledge that happiness is a habit you can adopt like any other, take the first step down this deeply fulfilling path on your life's journey. Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. More Details Other Editions 6.
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