Happiness has no reason, happiness cannot have a reason to it. If happiness has a reason to it, it is not happiness at all. Happiness can only be without any reason uncaused. When you talk about moments of happiness they are not really moments of happiness but rather moments of less misery. We easily give up happiness for misery. Review past experiences, give your awareness to emotional tendencies, conditioned love and relationships, how if we really wanted to be happy we would simply align ourselves with it. But rather we relinquish the ability to feel happy from within for something that makes us feel miserable.
There is only one happiness, one joy and it is not dependent upon your perspective and distracting pleasures to exist. Everyday we strive to find new ways to feel valid, full and thriving. Instead of knowing the value of emptiness, uselessness. People are afraid of being empty, of losing that which they identify with even though it is that very thing which brings them grief; association. when you are nothing you will become all, dissolve and you will become whole. Claim that you are and you will be miserable. Happiness needs only understanding, no other cause. And understanding is also not a cause of it- understanding simply unveils it; it is inside you.
But when we can't get what we want we aren't happy, yet even when we get exactly what we are we still aren't happy because we can't hold onto it forever. And with people, we can't control them so anything outside our realm of association with them leaves us in a angry state. If a person cannot act and behave as we see fit, we are not happy. Key word " we are not happy." Life is uncertain, we are not in control of people, circumstances, we are only in control of ourselves. And we choose what to feel. Become comfortable with uncertainty.
A quick story: Paradox, humor and change. Life is a mystery don't waste time trying to figure it out, keep a sense of humor especially about yourself and know nothing stays the same. The student said to his teacher, " after thinking I had it all, after losing my friends, my girl how do I know what really makes me happy?" The teacher replied, " I have a place I'd love to show you I think you'll be pleased." The next day they arrived on a hill after 3 hours of traveling. Where are we said the student? This is what I wanted to show you, said the teacher. But what did we come to see? Looking around, the teacher glanced down and said " next to your foot." The rock? Yes said the teacher. Come on this is what you wanted to show me, that I would be please with? We traveled for 3 hours! But the entire time up here you were as excited as kid on Christmas morning, you've been talking about it all day the teacher said. Why are you upset? Because for the past 3 hours Ive been waiting to see this wonderful thing and obviously you had no idea where we were going. The teacher replied, well I wasn't sure where we were going, or what we were going to see. Sorry you're not happy anymore the teacher said. The student thought about it, realizing his moods were based on distractions, what could be or might be instead of what is. Fabrications of the mind, the intangible, existential musings of the unreal. Coming to this realization he turns to the teacher and says " the journey.. the journey is what brings us happiness, not the destination." The teacher smiled.
Unhappiness is our minds creation or version of reality and preconceptions against what really is. And suffering comes when we cannot accept what really is but choose to invest in the non existent version we preferred in our heads to be the outcome of circumstances. On a religious and scientific level all of life is a whole, directly impacted by and impacting the entire cosmos. The idea of separation is what we call ego. We believe we are separate in many ways from all things, especially each other but this couldn't be further from the truth. When the part exists in the whole, everything is harmonious. When the part starts existing on its own, everything becomes disharmonious, there is discord, conflict, confusion. To take our mind and create a path in finite thinking that has nothing to do with the reality that is taking place before us is an example of this. When you are not fused with the whole, there is confusion. If the fusion is not happening with he whole, there is bound to be confusion. Whenever you are not with the whole you are unhappy. Let this be a definition of happiness: to be with the whole is to be happy, to be with the whole is to be healthy, to be with the whole is to be holy. To be separate is antagonist to all of those qualities.
Emptiness: The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space (for the axle), that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out (from the walls) to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space (within), that its use depends. Therefore, what has a (positive) existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what has not that for (actual) usefulness.
The utility of the wheel, as of everything in the Universe, depends also on its empty space. In other words, everything is made of emptiness and fullness. This is the philosophical view of the Universe taught by the Taoists.
If there is a cause to happiness then happiness is in the past. Causes are found in the past. If you are happy. the question is " what has made you happy?" and that which has made you happy has gone into the past. So a caused happiness is past oriented. Past oriented means that which is no morel it is fictitious, it is imaginary, it is illusory.
The real happiness is present oriented, it is never past oriented. The real happiness arises here now, this very moment, there is no time for it to be caused. It is cause and effect all together. try to understand it. If you say " I am happy because I was given a noble prize ten years ago- your happiness is very dusty. Ten years.. so much dust has accumulated; it is not fresh, its gloating in the past, not living in the now. You are a poor person in spirit and life if you are eating food from ten years ago. The real happiness is here now. It has no concern with the past, it has no concern of the future. Sometimes you become happy about the future: you are hoping that you are going to win the lottery, or get married, or that your girlfriend is coming tomorrow and you are getting excited. For what? For tomorrow, which has not come yet ? One must be mad. Either your happiness is past or future oriented; both are false because neither exist. Real authentic happiness is here now, a conscious elevation beyond responding emotions where we choose to be happy, even in our darkness, even in our challenges to still maintain a joyful mind. Happiness arises out of this moment, out of nowhere. Because for cause and effect to exist, at least two moments are needed: one to cause it, another to effect it. But only this moment- total, alone, single- is available.
Embrace emptiness, for emptiness creates form, form manifests the whole. The space in a note, the gaps in your breath, the void in a pot, the walk through of a door all demonstrate the value of emptiness. Be useless, in uselessness there is the complete potential of use but more so the unattached flow of the changing constant called life. A tree that does not fit the needs of a lumber jack is free to continue living because it is useless, a small deer who does not fit the needs of a hunter keeps its precious life do to its uselessness, a person who does not have material possessiveness cannot suffer a lack of theft due to their uselessness. This is not avoiding life, this is living it at its most fundamental level. Finally don't be happy because you have your health, your partner, your job or your life for all these things are transient. Be happy because happiness is being.
