highest happiness

The Buddha describes the Dhamma as "subtle, deep and difficult to see," and one of the things that make it difficult to see is its thesis that the highest happiness cannot be won by yielding to the longings of the heart but only by subduing them. This thesis runs utterly counter to the thought, attitudes and actions of people fully immersed in the world. As long as we are infatuated with the seductive lures of sensual enjoyment, as long as we take delight in being this or becoming that, we will regard the sublime Dhamma as a mystery and a puzzle.

The Buddha therefore realized that the first major challenge that he would face in establishing his world-transcending Dhamma was to break the grip that sensual pleasure and worldly attachment have upon the mind. He had to knock the mind out of its accustomed ruts and set it moving in an altogether different direction.

We have to learn to see beneath the glitter of pleasure, position and power that usually enthralls us, and at the same time, to learn to see through the deceptive distortions of perception, thought and views that habitually cloak our vision. Ordinarily, we represent things to ourselves through the refractory prism of our subjective biases.

In the Buddha's Words, Bhikkhu Bodhi


Picture from BuddhistChannel