According to the Dalai Lama, one of the reasons why happiness can seem hard to find is that people confuse it with pleasure.
To consider this more closely, we can begin by looking at what kinds of things give people pleasure.
The possibilities here are endless, but some examples might be:
Being in love.
Listening to music
Having lots of beautiful possessions, comfort, luxury
All of these things can give us a temporary rush of chemicals that create feelings of elation and well-being, and there is nothing wrong with these feelings, in themselves. Our problems begin when we become too attached to anything that gives us these feelings, particularly if our desire for pleasure is accompanied by a need to possess something or someone or we become addicted to things which we know to be harmful to our health, or to other people.
If two people look at a beautiful garden, one might think “How lovely”, be happy for the person who owns the garden, and then go about their own life without envy or resentment or any desire to possess a garden like that. The second person might think, “I wish I had a garden like that”, feel jealous of the owner, and feel discontented as a result. Ironically, freeing ourselves from the desire to possess things allows us to feel that we own the whole world.
Unfortunately, sources of pleasure can easily become the most important things in our lives. In fact, they can effectively take over our lives so that we spend all our spare time thinking about where our next bit of pleasure is going to come from. For example:
The next thing we are going to buy
The next holiday we are going on
The next promotion in our job
The next bar of chocolate / cup of coffee / cigarette
The next chance we will have to get our “ideal partner” to take an interest in us
We may expect that if we get these things they will make us happy. Certainly, they often give us a feeling of pleasure - but how long does the pleasure last?
The holiday comes to an end. The latest cars and clothes become last year’s models and designs. The “ideal partner” turns out to be a real person with a mind and faults of their own, which makes it impossible for them to live up to our unrealistic expectations. And even if we win the lottery, there is always that awareness that there are some things that money can't buy.
When the pleasure wears off, it is natural to immediately look for another source of pleasure: buy something else quickly (even in some cases before we are out of the shop where we bought the first thing!), find a new partner, move on up the career or housing ladder. We mustn’t fall behind or we could become poor, unpopular, lonely, bored. And then we would be unhappy. Wouldn’t we?
It’s a bit like being at the fun fair. We can imagine any source of pleasure as a Ferris wheel that we jump onto when it’s on its way up but then forget that we must eventually go over the top and come back down the other side. If we don’t like the sensation of coming down, because coming down makes us feel cheated and disappointed, we might jump onto a nearby wheel that is on its way up. If there are lots of Ferris wheels standing next to each other, all rotating in the same direction, we can keep jumping onto another and another so that we never really come down very far but keep riding the crest of the wheels like a roller coaster. This is a pretty fair approximation of the lives of many people in our society today, with or without the encouragement of the media and advertisers, who are very happy for us to continue to play this game.
Some of us may spend more time down at the bottom of the wheels than others, but even when we’re not up there riding high we can spend a lot of time and energy wishing we were. (This is desire).
So if riding the roller coaster is not the same as being happy, how do we get off? Does it mean that we should give up trying to be happy and spend all our time being poor, bored, lonely and depressed? The answer lies in looking again at the Ferris wheels. What we have here is a series of circles. The top of each is something positive and attractive, the bottom is it’s opposite, something negative that we really don’t want.
Perhaps this might remind you of the Tai Chi symbol, the yin and the yang in the circle. Isn’t this exactly what we’re talking about?
We can’t stay in the yang region forever, life won’t let us do that. And trying to stay in the yin region isn’t a viable alternative. But there is another solution. Notice the still point at the centre of the circle, which everything revolves around. This is Wu Chi, the point of balance, peace, stillness, harmony, serenity and equanimity. When we stand here we can watch the whole thing revolving around us and not be caught up in it.
We can look at life with a kind of detachment; just watch and see how life is, with all its ups and downs. We can learn to understand it. We can let go of excessive desires, addictions and self-pity. We can appreciate beautiful things and feel happy for others who take pleasure in possessing them, without needing to possess them ourselves. We don't resent people who have more wealth or status than we have, or gloat over any good fortune that comes our way. We can accept people as they are and not try to possess them or expect them to be perfect or superhuman. We can see that everything changes and stop trying to cling to things and keep them exactly as they are. We can enjoy small things, natural things, which don’t cost any money, like sunsets and flowers and making other people happy. We can look at what we already have and feel lucky and content with that.
This doesn’t mean that we can never fall in love, or buy a new car, or attempt to change things for the better, or that we won’t get old or sick. We can still live our lives to the full but without excessive attachment or aversion. A gold necklace or a dirty floor cloth are neither good things nor bad things in themselves, it’s how we see them that gives us problems. Everything is ultimately made of the same “stuff”, the same sub-atomic transient packets of energy, so why love one thing and hate another? We can decide that we like the shape of a cup better than a plate but they both have their uses and they are both made of the same clay.
Why bother to look at the world in this way? Because the roller coaster ride doesn’t make people happy. Standing in the centre does. When you see that pleasure and pain are both temporary and opposite sides of the same coin, you are no longer bound by them and you create the space to be yourself and make your own decisions instead of feeling that you are caught up in forces you can’t control. This leads to a deep and lasting sense of contentment and happiness from which you can get on and enjoy your life and help others to do the same.
We can allow ourselves to be happy if we let it happen now. Sources of pleasure, as well as being fleeting and impermanent, are also very often things for the future. We say “I will be happy one day when I get that job, buy that house, marry that person, divorce this person, have children, lose some weight, get my hair done, win that game, pay off the mortgage, win the lottery….”
Happiness is not dependent on luck or wish-fulfilment. Happiness is a decision that we make in this moment. Right here. Right now.
If we can be content with what we have, right here, right now, we don’t have to wait to be happy.