There Is No Happiness
The layers above show words that allow their combination to result in happiness, unhappiness, and unhappy. The layers here are simple and foremost: there is no happiness.
The layers: We can get happy, we can get unhappy, we can get unhappiness. But never expect to get the happiness, without the un stands there and the happiness has no choice as to take it with itself. Where there is happiness, there is the un — therefore the unhappiness. We can get happy, unhappy, and unhappiness without being affected by any means of happiness, but happiness will always be affected by the other words that keep coming along to make it not as it is. To be there, to get the complete combined layers of happiness, is impossible.
“Wishing you have a long and healthy life full of joy and happiness.” one can easily find these notions on people’s birthdays or any similar special days. But then again, we did not mean that, it’s just words we like to utter out of courtesy, and the real deal is never truly understood and obligated. No problem, we can use any of this lightly.
Humankind has got languages even before their consciousness a sudden existence, of the self-realization as sentient beings. The human uses this ability of languages to communicate — first the non-verbal, then up with words, and here we have the literacy so systematically and comprehensively. The consciousness with all of its branches, embarks the journey for the new foresight world, of life we overdo and soon to be doomed. To think of this evolution process as an accidental step — misstep even, one would argue that humans should not even be here, let alone the invention of something that is never been here and never will forever. Yet we still can make ways of thoughtful discussion about happiness, as only within words, as a collective planted idea.
The layers are a deadlock, and this is like our life-world, and not to accept, or far embarking our creative sentient notions, like there is actually the happiness now and here, is to live outside of this layers, say outside the life-world. We can get some sense of happiness — not now, not here, but after the lifeworld. How pity, the awaits still somehow terrifyingly uncertain. There is a vast knowledge and traditions that went as long and far back as humankind started its life-world, that there’s exist a bigger force and the all-powerful being, which does not let us grasp happiness in a certain, that the way to happiness is obtained by a set of rules, set of actions, and other similar anything that goes in the spectrum of goodness and ethical decency. This of course we all know as religion.
There are other layers, and we cannot grasp them. The layers could be wider, denser, even more plentiful confusing maze. We could get the upgraded version of the unhappiness — not likely the happiness for it is not yet in our life-world, so it is new for us. The very certainty of happiness is that is not certain, even at the very hour of our death. Nothing is ever fulfilled. Nothing is over. Not until the very end.
So unhappiness is certain in our life-world, but not the happiness? To use the concept Dukkha inside Buddhism and Hinduism, in these two the word revolves in similar meanings to which are “suffering”, “unhappiness”, or “pain”. Buddhism and Hinduism have different approaches to overcome Dukkha. Buddhism emphasizes the Anatta or the non-self and Hinduism is the returning and understanding of the Atman or the self.
The concept of Anatta is still highly debatable among scholars and in the development of Buddhist traditions. Some say not to be mistaken Anatta as the not-self, but the non-self. The non-self is still believing that there is a self, and we shall not cling it with our idea and idealization for this self, because it can be the source of our Dukkha. Instead, we need to embrace the impermanence, the non-attachment, and not to cling to — let alone the material world, but even as important and sublime of an essence, which is the self. The self might be there, might not, but best not cling to it.
From Hinduism, the Atman or the self is anything that is nothing sentients ever do affect upon with their abilities, such as desires, feelings, perception, knowledge, understanding, errors, insights, sufferings, bliss, and others. It is the pure, permanence, the everlasting imperceptible of our life-world of material and non-material well-being. We can get just as close to attaining the understanding and return to the Atman, through good ethical behavior in life which is to do Dharma.
The impermanence emphasizes from Buddhism is to see Dukkha or unhappiness as temporary, which may come in time as the opposite — the happiness. The permanence emphasizes from Hinduism that there is something permanence, and this is our true purpose. The happiness is attained by the liberation of Dukkha, to act good, Dharmic life, therefore closer to Atman — the permanent, therefore to Moksha — the permanent state of the permanent, breaking and end our cycle of rebirth and repeated struggle of Dukkha in the life-world.
All of this happiness contestation from Buddhism and Hinduism — or others, both of their ideas presenting that there is the afterlife. The purpose is to go beyond the repeated life after the afterlife, to be outside of the layer, to avoid getting another life here in the life-world where happiness is never accomplished. Hinduism with its Moksha, the liberation from the layer, and to finally be one with God, the divine peace and companionship — the happiness. Buddhism with its afterlife is not necessary to be grasped with our sentient abilities, it is the enlightenment or the non-existence of the self, the liberation from the layer, and to finally be the not-anything, nothingness alike, the solitude and the divine peace — the happiness.
How many people in the history of humankind in the life-world, have attained happiness? We cannot know, and never will, for it is beyond our layers. This small portion of choices inside of it, with the way exit so clear and yet so unreachable. We may just be even more confused, forget it might, that the there is no happiness is the ultimate happiness. With the waiting of the thousand times more unending repeated unhappiness, we try our best with our time and effort to reach this true purpose, and how the entailment exhaustion is adhered and inescapable. Still, there is no farewell to earnest…
