by Tang Huyen

"Just cultivate Buddhism and not aim at happiness, and happiness will catch up with you, as a by-product."

I don't know where you get your list of the four kinds of happiness, but for the awakened while in life, the Buddha speaks of the four joys: joy of desirelessness, joy of aloofness, joy of calm, joy of awakening (nekkhama-sukha, paviveka-sukha, upasama-sukha, sambodha-sukha). MA, 191, 738a, SA, 485, 124b, MN, I, 454 (66), III, 110 (140), Harivarman, Tattva-siddhi, T, 32, 1646, 353c1–2.

The axiom in the happiness research article is valid for all four kinds of Buddhist happiness:

"If you have no goal other than your personal happiness, you'll never achieve it. If you want to be happy, pursue something else vigorously and happiness will catch up with you."

I pointed out in a previous post in this thread that this axiom works by way of "roundabout", to give happiness as a "by-product", and that this pattern applies to Buddhist cultivation. For example, when you practice mindfulness or work on cracking a public case, you aim your attention on something (mindfulness or a public case) which then redounds on something else, namely happiness and (ultimately) awakening. Therefore the axiom does not deal only with happiness connected with desire, but applies also to happiness not connected with desire, which are the above four kinds of happiness. Actually the first of the four is joy of desirelessness (nekkhama-sukha), where nekkhama is the negative of kama: desire.

That said, the Buddhist cultivator should be happy, regardless of the specifics of his cultivation (with some exceptions, see below). Mindfulness generates happiness. Meditation generates happiness. One kind of Buddhist cultivation can be dangerous, the contemplation of the unclean. A bunch of monks cultivated it and some of them committed suicide by the knife. Also, people who are fragile or loose upstairs should avoid cultivation, except of the most superficial kind. People who hate their own guts should work it out before attempting mental culture, except for Stoic mental culture; of course Stoicism should be very good for them, but for unknown reasons such people tend to avoid it or to not know it.

At any rate, if you do Buddhist cultivation and are unhappy, then you are not doing it right, especially if you have been doing it for a long time. Perhaps what you cultivate is not Buddhist. (For example, people who are angry, bitter, agitated are not doing Buddhist cultivation at all). If you do Buddhist cultivation right, happiness should be part of the package unasked, even if you don't aim directly for it. Actually that is the best way: just cultivate Buddhism and not aim at happiness, and happiness will catch up with you, as a by-product.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 1 October 2008, in the "Happiness" thread. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The four Buddhist joys (MA 191, SA 485, MN 66 and 140) are rarely cited in sequence; TH's contribution is to identify their structural unity with the "roundabout axiom" — the indirect path is the most reliable route to what one actually wants. The joy of desirelessness (nekkhama-sukha) is definitionally paradoxical: it can only be reached by not aiming for it. The diagnostic at the end — "if you do Buddhist cultivation and are unhappy, you are not doing it right" — is a useful corrective to ascetic traditions that treat suffering as a sign of serious practice.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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