Hwang Soonil
Dongguk University
Can we achieve sustainable happiness in this life? Can happy feelings last forever? Buddhists have been exploring the real meaning of happiness behind the simple feeling of joy. The feeling of happiness cannot last forever because of impermanence, one of the three marks of the phenomenal world. Happy feelings, instead, cause pain to the person who is attached to the object about which one felt extremely happy.
In the early canon, we can frequently see a dialogue between the Buddha and Māra, the evil demonic king, usually appearing as two contesting poems. One such poem in the Suttanipāta shows Buddhist attitudes towards the feeling of happiness.
‘One with sons rejoices because of sons’, said Māra, the evil one. ‘Similarly the cattle-owner rejoices because of cows. For acquisitions (upadhi) are joy for a man. Whoever is without acquisitions does not rejoice.’
‘One with sons grieves because of sons’, said the blessed One. ‘Similarly the cattle-owner grieves because of cows. For acquisitions (upadhi) are grief for a man. Whoever is without acquisitions does not grieve’.
In this presentation, I will discuss Buddhist attitudes towards the real meaning of happiness by clarifying a punning exchange of words applied in the poems and by examining different attitudes towards joy and grief according to the Buddha and to Māra. This will show that real happiness can be replaced by a state where there is no more unsatisfactoriness.
(Presented in the 2015 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum: Understanding Happiness, 16-17 July 2015, Le Meridien Bangkok Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies and Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University)