“If you are talking about temporary happiness, it arises out of the context of knowing what the opposite feels like. Sadness gives meaning to happiness because they are connected and on the same plane. We ‘want’ to be happy not sad. That is how you know they are opposites. Some things make you happy and some things make you sad. These are usually external events that trigger an inner reflection in you. You are more at the mercy of your inner workings than external stimuli because the external world doesn’t move you nearly as much as your mind does. It is your inner workings that move you and present you your feelings of experience which is what you act upon. This is what you are most truly intimate with.

Given the context of the rest of these questions, I assume you mean the lasting true wholesome happiness? I’m not sure if it exists yet, though I have found it a worthy thing to prod at to find its potentiality. I have a theory that it’s more of a balanced contentment with life. Contentment is the state of non-desire (an oriented perspective or operating state that which has abandoned all control of trying to ascertain pleasure and reject pain) an immediate association of grace with whatever may come in the present natural reality. In contentment, you don’t wish a thing to be different, rather a gratitude for how things are, especially in adversity. For in the state of desire, you subconsciously declare the natural reality of existence is not good enough and is inherently naturally flawed, and your naturally flawed being (a part of nature) is somehow supposed to fix this crucial and urgent flaw of nature as if the entirety of existence depends on it, when it doesn’t at all.

If existence were possible to be extinguished it would have been already, yet here we are, Now genocice, oppression, limiting of natural rights, that may be a worthy desire to have to fix and bear because the alternative is to let the suffering of other self experiencers happen when you know all too well that it is me suffering. Let us only use desire like medicine in the cabinet. When we truly need it. The state of desire is never content. It is the state of wanting, longing, the state of not enough. The state of lacking fulfillment. If you don’t desire there is no problem. There is no wanting. No reason to distract yourself. You could say wanting started the problem. Why want? If I am thirsty I just go get the glass of water and that’s that. I don’t sit around desiring about it, I just go get it and don’t even think about it. This long term contentment without desire, is the happiness i think you’re asking about.

Like i’ve stated previously i don’t currently necessarily believe in an eternal bliss state, i feel even feelings need to waver like the sea and light. It takes conditioning of practice to find for yourself what is the end of desire. What end does it meet? What goal does it accomplish? What does it mean to indulge and desire and repeat. What does it do for you and others? Are you content with yourself and your decisions? Contentment actually i feel would be our normal state if not overstimulated by our minds needs and wants pulling us in all sorts of directions. Our culture naturally creates the brain structure to form in this way, if you always get more, you’ll begin to expect more.

So stop all this incessant trying and just be with and dig what is without wanting it because wanting it does nothing but put you in an unsatisfactory state of experience. The alternative to really getting with life and being grateful for it is to turn away from what is and to resent it. You can see obviously which one sounds like the better life to live.”