People love their lives, i.e. they love to continue living. They do not like to die. It is the first basic right as far as humans are concerned. It is also the first Fundamental Human Right as listed by the United Nations. It is the right of everyone to live without any threat whatsoever to one's life.
Buddhism goes even further than this. The Buddhists extend this right to live happily to all living things, voicing it as “May all beings be well and happy" (Sabbe satta bhavantu sukhitatta)
What is really meant by “happiness?” It is a term which is not easy to define. According to some philosophers what constitutes happiness is purely subjective, emotive or attitudinal. Buddhism takes a different viewpoint.
The Buddhist position is that there is an inseparable connection between morality and happiness: What is morally good leads to happiness. What is morally bad leads to unhappiness.
Meaningful life
If I ask you why you seek happiness, your natural answer would be, “I want to lead a meaningful life.” Herein we come across the problem: interpretation of the word ‘meaningful’.
A meaningful life does not depend on your bank account, or the behaviour of your spouse, or your job, or your salary. A meaningful life must answer a simple question, “What have I brought to the world?” If you can look at a day and see that virtue, truth, and living an altruistic life are prominent elements, you can say, “You know, I’m really a happy camper”.
One of my ex-employees has a rare disease, and every month he goes to the hospital for dialysis and drug treatment, and will for the rest of his life. You could say, “Well, that’s a tragedy, a dismal situation.” But the last time I spoke with him, he said, “Look, I’m happy.” And he was. He was finding a way within the very limited parameters of what was available to him. His mind is clear. He’s reading, he has a backyard full of vegetables, he’s meditating, and he’s teaching meditation to other patients in his hospital. He’s living a very meaningful life in which he can honestly say that he is happy.
The good news is that genuine happiness is not out there in the market place to be purchased or acquired from the best teacher around. One of the best kept secrets is that the happiness we’re striving for so desperately in the perfect spouse, the great children, fine job and excellent health, depends so much on external events, people, and situations, which are all beyond your control. It is not something just waiting to be unveiled. We should know that the genuine happiness we are seeking comes from within us. That knowledge changes everything.
Kusala Kamma
Buddhism has no concept equivalent to that of sin. While there may be gods in Buddhism, there is no Eternal Creator and Judge. In Buddhism actions are judged by their utilitarian value: whether they lead to greater happiness for the person and affected others, and whether they lead to better karma, rebirth, and progress on the path to Enlightenment. The Buddhist terms for judging whether actions have a felicitous or infelicitous effect are kusala and akusala, which usually gets translated as either wholesome and unwholesome, or skillful and unskillful. The utilitarian nature of these concepts is made clear in the Kusala Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 2.19):
An action characterized by kusala kamma, which are wholesome, skillful, good, meritorious, is bound to result (eventually) in happiness and a favorable outcome. Actions characterized by its opposite (akusala kamma) lead to sorrow.
When we say that skillful and meritorious actions promote happiness, we are not just talking about the happiness of the individual. In Buddhism the individual and others in the community have equal claims to happiness. Buddhism is, neither individualist nor collectivist, but represents a middle-way between these dialectical opposites.
Selfish behaviour does not bring genuine happiness, but only fleeting sense pleasures and ego gratification. Selfishness disturbs our loving social ties with others, creates dissension in the community, and makes us slaves to the hedonic treadmill of transient pleasure. The Buddha believed that real happiness came from the cultivation of wisdom and character. Aristotle differentiated eudamonia, or genuine well-being, from hedonia, or sense-based pleasure. Contemporary Positive Psychology is demonstrating the truth of the Aristotelian-Buddhist idea of a deeper, more worthwhile sense of well-being that is wisdom and character based.
Mindfulness
If we are to live skillfully and meritoriously, we must first establish some degree of control over our unruly minds. This is where mindfulness comes in. If we’re heedless of thoughts we’re driven by them like a leaves in the wind. If we’re mindful of thoughts, we can exercise discerning judgment about them. We can discern whether or not a thought is skillful and then decide whether or not to rehearse, practice, nurture, and reinforce it.
We should avoid unskillful and unmeritorious behavior because we want ourselves and others to be happy, not because we’re afraid of a God’s wrath. The only source of retribution we really need worry about is the one we ought to: Cause-and-Effect. This is true whether one believes in the Buddhist concept of karma, or the modern scientific understanding of cause and effect.
Thus, a mind that has realized the Buddhist goals of subduing greed, hatred and egoism while developing love, wisdom and compassion is a mind that will have a natural and spontaneous happiness.
Buddhist ethics
It is obvious, then, that while Buddhism proceeds from a very different set of premises than most other religions, it is nearly complete agreement as to the standards of ethical conduct: love, kindness, charity and generosity are universally hailed by all of man’s great philosophers and leaders.
In addition, Buddhism takes a further step in this direction. It teaches how to achieve these ethical ideals as living realities. It not only teaches to love or metta, it tells us how to achieve the genuine feeling that is metta. For love and compassion, like all other aspects of this universe, arise through cause and effect.
The Buddha regarded the question of ultimate beginnings as irrelevant to the problems of life in the present. Change and cause and effect are the paramount features of the Buddhist concept of the universe. All things mental, physical and social go through an unending process of birth, growth, decay and death. Nothing finite is static, immortal or unchanging. Whatever has an origin is subject to cessation, be it man or mountain, consciousness or constellation. And what is it that regulates this unending flow of flux and mutation? The answer is cause and effect
The primary concern of Buddhist ethics is the reduction (and, finally, the elimination) of greed, anger, delusion and suffering. But these primary goals naturally lead to a social ethic and one that operates independently of political, theological or doctrinal ideologies. For it works as follows: as men learn to lessen the greed, hatred and egoism that burn in their hearts, and as kindness and compassion gain prominence in human motivations, then will men strive to better the world in whatever way their immediate situation affords.
The whole point of Buddha-dharma is that liberation comes not by believing in the right set of tenets or of dogmatic assertions, or even necessarily by behaving in the right way. It is the insight, it is the wisdom, it is the knowing the nature of reality. Finally, it is only the truth that will make us free.
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