Happiness... impossible or inevitable

[Dtris]

Happiness is really a loaded word. I do like how Quo basically said that the way Dalai Lama used the word was not the common usage.

As most people understand being happy, like a kid in a candy store, or a kid when Santa comes, that is an unsustainable state. If we could be that happy all the time we would be mentally unwell.

However most people misunderstand chronic depression as well. Acute depression from some event in life is basically the opposite of happiness. Yet acute depression cannot be maintained either. Chronic depression is not the same feeling. So being acutely depressed, or despondent, is the same as being happy, both transitory states. The child cannot maintain being happy no matter how excited they are when they open the new toy. The despondency of losing something dear also fades fairly quickly.

The fundamental error in our society is thinking that the Yang state of happiness can or should be the default state. By nature the default state must be one of balance, Yin and Yang in a natural cycle. When this is achieved you can feel happy knowing it is temporary, and sad, and everything in between. While the default state becomes one of appreciation for the varied emotions and states which we are able to experience. This default is then closer to joy as each experience, even pain and suffering, become sacred.