Happiness:
Philosophers struggle
to define Happiness in terms of "well-being", "positive feeling
tone", achievement of one's "well informed' (relatively wise)
desires, & so on.
The Oracle in The
Matrix did a better job if we could borrow her hint about "being the
One." She said it's like falling in Love. No one has to tell you (no one could tell you, no deny your claim).
You just know it (directly) "through & through".
In the context of
Non-Duality, the Sages tell us that Happiness is our Real Nature, as one sense
of Ananda in Sat – Chit – Ananda,
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. For the same reason that we seek Self-Knowledge,
seek to know our own Identity, we likewise seek Happiness, which is our
Identity. Cessation of Existence is inconceivable, so that those who identify
with a Body will fear Death. Enlightened or Ignorant, either way, such
cessation of Existence is unacceptable because we intuit that this would bring
an end to Happiness.
Self-Knowledge &
thus true & lasting Happiness are gained b y the removal of Ignorance as to
our own Identity. So to inquire: Who am I
? & to subjectively find the "Inquirer" to be the answer, to
be that pure Existence & Happiness – this alone is the final &
lasting solution to our unending search for Happiness.
When I breathe, turn
left or right, think this thought or another, all is done to increase Happiness
or to decrease the loss of Happiness, for this is the only motive for anything.
Complete Self-Knowledge includes the recognition that as Happiness itself, we
can never find it outside, & once realized, we can never lose it.
In the meantime, the
very mean, mean, "meantime", we chase external objects of desire in a
Dream– World. When partial Happiness is apparently attained for the
moment, that anxiety of the Mind relaxes, & a glimmer of true Happiness is
experienced. But as the Buddha advised,
in telling us that the nature of Worldly Life is suffering:
1) to not get what you want is suffering
2) to get what you don't want is suffering
3) to get what you want also includes suffering because we sense that what
appears in Time, with a beginning, will certainly have an end & be lost.
4) whatever the happiness enjoyed when you get what you want, you still sense
that you could have more or better, may have once had more or better, &
that "others" already have more or better.
Real Happiness never
ends & has never left us, even if only dimly appearing as the
"reference background" by which we "measure" lesser
happiness. We always know just how happy we are, or are not. We often know the
same about others. Ever we "measure" against that "reference
background" of perfect Happiness
which is our own True Nature, the unwavering Reality of Happiness which is our
very Existence.
[to be continued]
B) Big-Bang –
Brain–stuff (our Science interludes)
Body Perception (prior to later segment on Perception of the
World in general)
The Self is space-like
but not in Space. The Self has no location. Being space-like, the Self is not anything like a
Body. Quadrillions of cells could no possibly render a seamless, never
contradictory or intermittent sense of self–existence. The mystery of
Consciousness has never & will never be understood in terms of neurons.
Take one of those
cells. In every cubic millimeter of
cytoplasm, hundreds of complex chemical reactions proceed simultaneously, in
the same place without interference & without hardly any waste heat or matter. A marvel, but mechanism, dead robotic
machinery, never Conscious Life.
Take one Atom in a
molecule in that cytoplasm. If that Atom were a large sports stadium, 99.9%
would lie in a Nucleus that was a Pencil Dot on the middle of the field. Electron gnats would buzz almost masslessly
in the stands of the Empty stadium.
If, again in turn,
each bacterium Quarks would be like our Solar System, then each Superstring
would be like a bacterium within that Solar System. All Empty.
Where’s the complex "mechanism" of Consciousness ? A Body could not have Consciousness, a
Body-corpse could not be part of the Self.
Western Idealists,
from Parmenides to Berkeley to Bradley, rightly tell us that Perception is
thought & can never in itself prove or "contact" a physical World
or Body. What we "see" is just
the Seeing itself, which is just the thinking of the Perceptual thought, which
is just a momentary appearance–illusion "illumined" by
Consciousness – no physical matter provable, knowable, or really
existing at all.
So the promised "systematic instructions" for the elimination of
Ignorance, the Release that portents Liberation, those "systematic
instructions" begin with thoroughly knowing that the Self, that you, are
not a Body.
[to be continued]
C) "Conceptual" – Caesar –Tsar – Emperor – Benevolent
Dictator – Philosopher King
So not even so much for them (who are not bodies anyway), but if only
for yourselves, forsake Evil which never brings Happiness in either short or
long term!
[to be
continued]
[The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely
available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public
Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through www.jpstiga.com ]
