MY BUDDHIST BLOG NUMBER 152

Hi Everybody,
Lovely quiet Saturday afternoon. Arsenal has just won 4-1!! Perfect time to spin a little blog. New chapter, new subject, Buddhism and Happiness.
' Do we really need a discussion about the nature of happiness you might well ask? it's such a slippery and elusive emotion to define, and so intensely subjective, that we're in grave danger, aren't we of just going around in pointless circles? And in any case, however difficult it may be to pin it down in a definition does that really make any difference? Isn't it very much like the taste of the strawberry, we may not be able to describe it, but we all know it well enough when we actualy experience it?

But those arguments clearly cut both ways don't they? It's precisely because it is so slippery and so elusive a term that we might get a great deal out of even a brief discussion of what we really mean when we talk about happiness in this world. And personally I think there's a great virtue in being a bit tougher on ourselves, so that we take the time and the trouble to think our thoughts through more completely, and set them down more precisely. Not least because this particular word is, in my view, in danger of being so immensely overused that its meaning becomes gravely dilutes.

And there are other equally compelling reasons. Above all else perhaps the fact that if you are vaguely interested in, or practice Buddhism, you simply can't escape it. You can't have failed to notice for example the number of times the word happiness has cropped up in these blogs so far. Which mirrors the fact that it occurs a great deal in Buddhist discussions. In fact Buddhists will often say that the fundamental reason for their practice is nothing less than greater happiness for themselves and for those around them. And if we give it a moments thought, that too is somewhat surprising, in the sense that if I were to ask you to go away and search for the word ' happiness' in other religious liturgies you might never come back! Why? Because the simple fact is that we have to search very hard indeed to find the word happiness in those contexts; happiness in the here and now that is, in this life, rather than in some heavenly hereafter. That's a very important distinction. The fact is that most religions don't talk about about happiness in this life as having anything to do with the purpose of their existence. Or indeed, talk about it at all.'

That's the introduction. I think it's a really important discussion.
So hope to see you next time around.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon as a paperback or as a download from Kindle