If you were to read this, and I remove the condition of if immediately because you are, then you cannot negate that you are interested in happiness; perhaps very interested in happiness. We all want it whether we recognize it and we are scheming for getting it or not. We all want it sooner or later and preferably as much as possible too, right? You either have it or you don't. If you don't have it what can you do about getting it?
Firstly, let us take a quick look at the views of a sprinkling of some of the world's great sages and points of view and see what we can get from that on the subject.
The Buddha's view was that the removal of suffering and craving opens the path to happiness.
Thomas Aquinas got there by substituting his feelings of the loss of a friend for a relationship with God.
Mencius considered that doing righteous deeds would lead to happiness by strengthening well-being.
In the Indian tradition the ultimate happiness or ultimate Samadhi is that which replaces life's cycles of pleasure and pain and acquisition and loss.
Al-Ghazali inferred that happiness is attained by replacing this earthly life with one in a hereafter that has been earned by means correctly applied in this world.
So there we have five global views in which an awful lot of people put an awful lot of faith.
Interestingly each one infers that getting happiness arrives in the form of a substitution. I replace X with Y and then I get Z, which is happiness. What about doing absolutely nothing, no substitutions or replacements just be yourself as you are, always have been and always will be. Your mind just has to figure out who and/or what the Self is. In fact it is even easier than that: no figuring out at all just acceptance of reality as it really really is and that reveals the prize of undiminishing and undiminishable happiness!
