The theory of Happiness and Suffering in Theravada Buddhism

Introduction

     Every organism or all living being has happiness and suffering too. So here in this paper, I would like to express that how many kinds of happiness do all living being have and what kinds of happiness are real or true happiness in life and to get our own happiness, what should we do, how to train our mind and also I would like to mention about suffering and how suffering affect human life. So happiness and suffering are going in the very important role in human life and we human are trying to get real happiness, on the other hand trying to get rid of suffering.

We observe these two opposite Happiness and suffering from Theravada view.

What is Happiness?

     In temporary world, most people interpretive the Happiness is what they did and come out good result and good result makes them happiness, and people generally believe that external conditions such as cars, phone, Computer, money are the real cause of Happiness and as a result we devote all our time and energy to acquiring.

  Superficially it seems that these things can make us happy, but if we look more deeply we shall see that they also bring us a lot of suffering and problems. So if we understand deeply our own happiness and suffering too, we understand the cause of Happiness and suffering and true happiness never related to be suffering.

 If something is a real cause of happiness it cannot give rise to suffering. If computer, phone, money, and so forth really are causes of happiness, they can never be causes of suffering yet we know from our own experience that they often do cause suffering. For example, one of our main interests is computer, but the computer we use is also the principal cause of most of our mental illness and if we use computer long time, we will probably feel headache and pain our neck, even it affect our eyes.

Human being believe  that money is essential tool for us to enjoy life, but the pursuit of money also causes immense problems and anxiety. Even our life, family and friends, with whom we enjoy so many happy moments, can also bring us a lot of worry and heartache.

Happiness and Suffering are states of mind, so the real source of happiness is inner peace, if our mind is peaceful we shall be happy all the time, regardless

 Of external conditions, but if it is disturbed or troubled in any way, we shall never be happy, no matter how good our external conditions may be.

And we can divide four kinds of Happiness or levels, that are 1wealth, 2 worldly satisfaction, 3 spirituality,4 and enlightenment. So you can image which one is good, better, and the best quality.

According to Theravada Buddhism there is only one way to reach to real Happiness and fully understand what true happiness is  that I would like to point out  Meditation , I fully agree that meditation makes people calm and reach happiness, when you are meditating and get deep concentration, I can probably say that you reach to happiness and meditation can rid of all your depression, mental problems, sadness. Meditation can make people good, it can make them happy, it can show how to rectify bad habits, it can heal suffering, anger, depression, even mental problem.

We can understand this though from our own experience and what we get happiness is real or not, we can distinguish it, for example, even we are living in the most beautiful surrounding and even we can get what we need, it is not real happiness, from that happiness that we got also can change suffering immediately, every time. So we cannot say that it is real happiness in life.

Lasting happiness we need to develop and maintain a special experience of inner peace. Again, the only way to do this by training our mind through spiritual practice gradually reducing and eliminating our negative mind and replacing with positive and peaceful states.

What is Suffering?

    In Pali word Suffering is Dukkha that mean suffering, we can consider the first one in the Four Noble Truth is that All being are subject to Dukkha. If we just look the world, everything is in pairing, good and bad, happiness and suffering, negative and positive, going together. Even we exactly do good thing but bad thing also sometime do in the same time so the result come out the same what we did Happiness and suffering come together.

 During our lifetime, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death, and we have to endure psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, and depression.

Suffering is emotional and mental distress that come when we feel painful. We have to find out where suffering come from and the cause of suffering. Actually suffering come from negative emotions such as  anxiety, fear, jealousy, envy, anger, disappointment, sadness, depression, guilt, shame, worry, insecurity, etc.   

And we can see clearly in Dhammapada, Piya Vegga, said From endearment springs grief, from endearment springs fear. For him who is wholly free from endearment, there is no grief, whence fear?

If you love someone deeply and someday he or she dumps you so you feel suffer very much, so we can probably say that  not only suffering comes from love but also suffering comes from different kinds of conditions, such as money, love, hatred, poverty, rich.

This is what I understand about Suffering and I hope this paper that I have written is related with Theravada view.

Conclusion

    As Dalai Lama said that the purpose of our life needs to be positive and we weren’t born the purpose of causing trouble, harming other. For our life to be of value, I think we must develop basic good human qualities warmth, kindness, compassion then our life become more meaningful and more peaceful happier.

Everyone in the world want happiness and hatred suffering but nobody escape from these two, in daily life if we face good conditions we feel happy and peace but if we meet with unpleasant view or bad condition, we feel very bad and suffer, anyway we should develop our mind by taking meditation to free from these kinds of dangerous enemies.

The reason why reflection of suffering is so important because there is a possibility of a way out. There is a possibility of freedom from suffering. According to Buddhist thought, the root causes of suffering are ignorance, craving and hatred. By generating insight into the true nature of reality and eliminating afflictive states of mind such as craving and hatred, one can achieve a completely purified state of mind, free from suffering and get true peace, inner peace that is what I want to mention or conclude for this paper.