vietnamese version

Four Kinds of Happiness

1. The Happiness of Sense Contacts
2. Deva Happiness
3. The Happiness of Concentration
4. The Happiness of Insight

 

“We have in common one thing that is the driving force behind everything do – our search for happiness. Everybody looks for happiness but very few people find it. The first and second noble truths of the Buddha’s teaching clearly state that worldly happiness is a myth, yet we never give up hope of achieving it. This is good, as we would otherwise be constantly depressed at not having found what could make us unconditionally happy.”

 

First:   The Happiness of the Sense Contacts


The Buddha spoke about four different kinds, or grades, of happiness. The first one arises because of contacts made through the sense. The Buddha compared these to a skinned cow, where flies are sitting on the raw flesh, constantly causing irritation. This is an in-depth understanding of our sense contacts. The Buddha also mentions sensory contacts as the first means of gaining some happiness. Most people remain at that stage. We can’t always get the pleasure we are seeking and even when we do get it, it escapes us again and again, so that there is no chance of constant happiness through our senses.

There is happiness at those times when the sense contacts are pleasant. There is unhappiness when the sense contacts are unpleasant, when the body is uncomfortable or we don’t hear the words we’d like to hear, we don’t taste what we like or we smell what is unpleasant or see sights which we’d prefer not to see. Nobody avoids such experiences in life. It’s impossible to go through the whole lifetime without unpleasant sense contacts.

It’s impossible to go through the whole lifetime without pleasant sense contacts. We have, one might say, a fifty-fifty possibility, if we have good kamma. Half the time our contacts are pleasant and fine and half the time they are not. Most people keep on trying to increase the pleasant contacts and hope to make them happen one hundred percent of the time, which is impossible. There’s no chance of success, yet most people continue to try. Most of us blame external events when unpleasant or painful feelings make us unhappy. The real reason, of course, lies inside us because of our reactions to sense contacts.

The more a person is purified, the more pleasant sense contacts will be. A pure heart and mind will find enjoyment in the simplest things. In a beautiful sky, lovely greenery, a pleasant conversation.
Anyone who has not purified themselves very much might not even notice these things. They might never look at the sky or the greenery. They might search for pleasant contact through much grosser possibilities. Drink or drugs, indulgence in food or sex might seem their only obvious sources of enjoyment.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with enjoying the pleasures of the sense when they are harmless and refined. The Buddha called them a danger though because we so easily make them our goal and direction; we try to get more and more of them or to keep them, try to make them permanent, not to lose them. That’s what goes wrong with us, because it’s an untenable proposition. There’s no way that we can make it come true. No sense contact can be permanent. In fact it would become very unpleasant if that were the case. There’s also no way of making sure that we get pleasant sensations. Trying for them takes up our time and energy and leaves no room in our lives for meaningful pursuits.

Our senses are with us. We can’t deny them and there’s no reason to do so. But it is possible through mindfulness, to realize that the pleasure we get through mindfulness, to realize that the pleasure we get through them is fool’s gold. It glitters but it has not value. The glitter can be enjoyed but one should not attach any importance to it. Yet again and again problems arise for people, because they can’t get what they want through the senses.

The Second Happiness: DEVA HAPPINESS


The next step in happiness is called the deva happiness. But it doesn’t mean that we have to become devas, that we have to first die and then get reborn in the deva realm; that sounds like pie in the sky. It doesn’t seem to have any bearing on our present lives.

The deva happiness is the happiness that comes to a person who has cultivated the four divine abidings, the four emotions of loving-kindness, compassion, joy with others and equanimity. That kind of happiness can be compared to living in heaven upon earth. Such happiness is independent of the five senses and only dependent upon our own minds.

The underlying condition is the purification of the heart so that it contains only lovingness and compassion. Both lovingness and compassion are qualities of the heart, just as intelligence is a quality of the mind, and they can be cultivated. When that has been done, happiness is one’s own. Other people benefit also, but the primary result is one’s own happiness because the heart is totally independent of being influenced by outside occurrences. Whatever people do or say, what happens or doesn’t happen in the world has no bearing on oneself. When the quality of the heart has been cultivated and has been made pure and full of love and compassion, nothing can touch it. There’s peace, harmony, ease and a feeling of security in heart and mind.

This is a far greater happiness than the pleasure obtained through one of the senses. While in itself it does not lead to or have as its result liberation, it is a necessary ingredient on the path. Lovingness and compassion alone don’t produce insight. They smooth the waves of emotions.
When those waves of grief, pain, lamentation, worry, fear and anxiety, envy and jealousy, dislike and resentment have finally come to rest, there is a clear reflection without any obscuring ripples in it, like a mirror, the mirror of the mind. That mirror of the mind makes it possible to get a clear vision. Without cultivating these purifying qualities it’s not possible to develop further.

It’s all very well to understand, to know and to quote, but it doesn’t take one to the end of suffering. The waves of emotion are obstructive. They not only get in the way of clear vision, they even obstruct the vision of the path itself. When there are waves, one can no longer see where one is going. Indeed one might even forget that one is going anywhere at all.
The happiness of the deva realm doesn’t depend upon rebirth. It’s possible right here and now. It’s internal work which can be done by anyone at any time. There are no special times such as meditation courses or special people who can do it. This is a happiness which of itself, without going any further, creates a different kind of life for the one who has done the internal work.

The Third Happiness: The Happiness of Concentration


The third kind of happiness is the happiness of concentration which comes from meditation. That too is only possible if one has achieved purification in moral conduct, generosity and loving-kindness in the heart. It doesn’t require perfection because that is reserved for the Arahant. It does require some expansion of heart and mind.

The happiness one gets from concentration is glimpsed often by meditators. But one needs to cultivate such concentration and practice diligently to enter into the meditative absorptions. There are different degrees of meditative absorptions resulting in different degrees of joy, bliss and ecstasy. They all enable the mind to carry some happiness with it even outside meditation.

A person who can enter meditative absorption and experienced that kind of happiness is someone who can find happiness even when the sense contacts are unpleasant. Such people know they can return to the happiness of the concentration, the meditative absorptions at any time. Knowing that creates a feeling of ease in the heart because nothing else appears to have great significance. When a person is able to go into the meditative absorptions at will for the length of time they wish, that becomes their reality and not the quarrels and the arguments, the inflation and the wars, the future or the past and all the other things that people worry about. None of that has real significance.

The reality lies within the happiness of the meditative absorptions. The meditative absorptions also prepare the mind. They give the mind not only the ability to be happy, but also the mind that has gained strength. The ordinary mind finds it very difficult to stand still. It has a jelly-like quality. It shakes constantly. It doesn’t need a trigger – that’s its natural mode of behavior. It doesn’t have the strength to penetrate the brick wall of delusion. It’s not a very good tool, is it? Jelly disintegrates at the slightest contact. A jelly-like mind disintegrates at the slightest blame, at the slightest worry or fear, at the slightest bodily discomfort. A jelly-like mind goes to pieces. What else can it do?

A mind that can stand still is a mind that has the quality of a rock, solid, unmoving. A rock is a better tool than jelly with which to penetrate a brick wall. A rock-like mind isn’t going disintegrate at the slightest impact. It has the strength of a finely honed tool, with which we can pierce this apparent reality in which we live and reach absolute reality.

There are eight different stages of meditative absorption and they are like eight rooms in a house. If one has finally found the front door with the right key and opens it up and goes into the first room, there is no reason why one can’t walk into all of there seven rooms also. It is not so difficult to find the front door and put the key in. The key is called mindfulness of breath and the front door is found when one continues with determination and perseverance to keep on meditating. One doesn’t sit back and say, “That’s enough, my knees are hurting”, or “what’s the use?” or “Maybe next life,” or “it’s too difficult,” or any of the many other excuses.

The Buddha said, ‘A fool says: “it’s too early, it’s too late. It’s too hot. It’s too cold. I’m too full. I’m too empty.”’ The front door is there for everyone to find. We have the key. We have to fit it into the lock. When we open the odor, we find that the rooms in this house are splendid. The splendor is within our own hearts and minds but at present it’s locked up. We have no access unless we create it through meditation. Most people never unlock it because they don’t know what the key is nor do they know that here is such an entrance. We are very fortunate to know the door and there may already be a small opening through which the light is shining.

When the concentration has been constant for some time the mind becomes very quiet and so does the body. Every single moment of concentration is a moment of purification. The defilements which beset us, causing our unhappiness and defaulters, are momentarily laid aside. The more often we lay them aside, the less habitual they become. The more often we can concentrate, the more often we are without them. Having a pure, bright mind then becomes our second nature.

Concentration starts out with the experience of pleasant feelings. These pleasant feelings arise because the mind at that stage is untroubled. This indicates clearly that if one were untroubled and had a pure, bright mind at all times, one would constantly have pleasant feelings. Here we get an indication of what is possible, which makes us ant this state more often. This desire for the wholesome and beneficial will eventually bring us to the point of no desire, finally eliminating all dissatisfaction.

Concentration starting out with pleasant feelings goes on to the next stage, where there’s happiness. Again this is a clear indication that the pure mind knows only happiness. If there’s unhappiness, there’s impurity. The two go together. A happy person doesn’t gain joy through sensual desires, because they know how elusive such joys are. A truly happy person is someone who is joyfully independent of outer conditions. Such a person can concentrate and thereby find a home for the mind where it can be totally at ease. But also that person has achieved purification to the point where unhappiness no longer arises. Unhappiness is caused by defilements. When unhappiness arises we can investigate its cause and invariably we will find an underlying defilement. If we don’t find that, we haven’t investigated well enough.

In the concentrated states the mind lets go of the five hindrances. When pleasant feelings and happiness have arisen, peacefulness and equanimity follow. Equanimity results in a feeling of having no desire left. Sometimes people even think that they have become permanently desireless, which is, of, a misconception. But at least for that moment there’s no desire.

That in itself is a very valuable experience in as much as one gets to know a state of no desire’. It’s utter bliss, the only bliss worth having. When one experiences it, then one knows what one is striving for. One isn’t striving to get anything. One is striving to get rid of everything. This is an interesting misconception in most people’s minds. When one first starts meditating one hopes to get peace, happiness and bliss, some of which may actually arise but only if one has let go of something else. Namely one has to let go of some of our ego-supports and most of our desires.

When the bliss of ‘no desire’ is experienced momentarily we know that’s what we really want. But we have to see clearly that it isn’t the bliss as such but the cause for it which needs cultivating. That means renunciation, giving up. Without renunciation, life is a constant striving for something. Renunciation is the answer to all kinds of achievement syndromes, not just in the material world, but even in the spiritual world. Trying to achieve something in the spiritual world is just as foolish as trying to achieve something in the material world. There’s nothing to achieve. There’s only letting go. As we let go, more and more, of ego identifications, desires and support systems, bliss will arise. Happiness which arises through concentration is based upon purity. A similar happiness can be experienced in one’s daily life if purity has been cultivated. In the meditative practice pleasant feelings, happiness and equanimity become deeper and more profound than in daily living, but unless one has already attained some purity in one’s ordinary life, one won’t be able to do it in meditation either. Daily living and meditation go hand in hand. The harder it is to get a pleasant feeling in meditation, the more purification one needs to practice. There’s no blame attached to any of this. These are just states of development.

The Fourth Happiness: The Happiness of Insight


The greatest happiness, the fourth stage, is the happiness of insight. This is irreversible. Insight, in Buddhist terminology, is always directed towards impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and non-self, either one of the three or all three. If one sees one of the three characteristics clearly, then one knows all of them because they are totally interconnected.

The happiness and bliss of total insight means that one has shed the burden of ego delusion. When one can let go of that, the relief and release is immense. Ramana Maharshi, who was a sage in southern India, compared ego delusion to people taking a train journey. They enter the train and stand in the aisle holding on to their luggage instead of putting it in the luggage rack and letting the train carry it. Like this we carry the burden of ego around with us when we need not. Ego delusion makes everything seem to be threatening or attacking us, or occasionally defending us, difficult to master, an obstacle, like a mountain which has to be climbed. It can make life look quite difficult.

Defilements are either wanting or hating, being without energy or being worried, anxious, resisting or defending one’s own viewpoint. ‘But when one lives quite free from any view, is virtuous with perfect insight won’ – that’s a description of an Arahant. Our own viewpoints are our downfall. The minute we start defending them we can be sure that we are only defending ego. The defense of a viewpoint is an indication that it is not based on experience. Experience needs no defense. The Buddha’s teaching is experiential. Viewpoints are based on ego. None of them are absolute truth.

Insight into the constant flux and flow of all phenomena, including ourselves, brings the understanding that there’s nothing in this world worth keeping, worth holding on to. Insight releases one from that resistance to other people’s viewpoints which can make life so immensely difficult. Other people have other viewpoints. The only answer to that is: May they live long and happily.’

Attachment to one’s own viewpoint only shows that one hasn’t yet grasped impermanence. When one sees constant change in everything, so that one can never really say ‘I am this,’ then a first breakthrough into depth perception happens. Which one am I? Am I the one sitting here who had a good meditation yesterday, or the one who had a lot of distractions today, or the one who’s angry or the one who’s resisting, or the one who’s accepting and devoted? Which one? If I’m all of those, what a conglomeration of people I am! I must be a whole tribe of people instead of just one.

So either I’m none or I’m all of them. We’ll have to make a choice. If we don’t want to be ‘none,” then, of course, we choose to be all of them. Then we have to imagine that there are at least a million different people in oneself. That’s not an exaggeration, because by this time in our lives we must have had one million different ideas, feelings, viewpoints, reactions over the years, in this lifetime alone. If we chose to be that many different people, life becomes even more complicated than if we were none of them. How about choosing to be none of them?

This insight is very threatening to our ego concept. Why is that? Because I want to be! To be what? To be whom? To be where? For what reason? All are viewpoints, conditioned through our thinking processes. The happiness which arises when one lets go of all that, is the happiness which is embedded in acceptance and peacefulness. Nothing needs to be achieved, accomplished or changed. All is as it is.

The four stages of happiness which start with sensual desire and lead through into insight are a continual purification process. The only way any of this can be verified is through our own experience. For that our own inner work has to have propriety. There are no holidays when doing that work, whether we are at the beach or in the meditation hall, driving a car or flying in an airplane.

There’s no respite. In order to graduate from sensual desire we can put our attention on service to others. That means on love and compassion. Service to others means forgetting self. When one gives service to others, it doesn’t mater whether one is helping them to wash their feet or helping them to meditate. There’s no difference. Love is service, service is love. Concentration is supported by the lovingness in one’s heart. One of the eleven benefits of loving-kindness is that the mind is quickly concentrated.

Concentration must not be considered the goal and the end. It is only the means. It is the means for cultivating a mind which is able to penetrate reality. There are two kinds of reality; relative and absolute. Everyone knows relative reality. There we find woman and man, young and old, poor and rich stupid and intelligent.

There are animals, trees, flowers, stars, moon and heaven, and all are judged whether they make me happy. In absolute reality, there’s none of that. There are physical manifestations of mind-made objects. That’s all. There isn’t a single me nor a single you. Nothing just manifestations that are constantly changing. Even the universe is constantly changing, contracting and expanding. And so are we.

The mind that has become concentrated, happy and peaceful is a mind that can accept this constantly changing universe and use it for it own benefit. The mind that is not peaceful rejects such reality out of hand and says ‘but I want to be happy.’ That’s the mind of most people in the world. The mind which doesn’t need any outer conditions for happiness is the mind that can say, “This is the release from all suffering. This is true happiness.”

Such a mind sees with clarity the absolute reality of what’s happening in this universe and doesn’t have to hang on to anything, attach to anything, doesn’t have to become anything, doesn’t have to be anything. It just does what is necessary at each particular moment and then lets go.

The happiness of insight is not exhilaration or elation. It’s the sort of happiness which has peacefulness as its base and a lack of desire, striving and delusion as its result. When delusion is gone, the pure bright mind knows only that which is real.