Are you happy or content?

The essence of life is not happiness but the state wherein there's neither happiness nor pain but contentment.

Everyone in the world wants to be happy. The purpose of human life seems to be attaining happiness in all the things we do. It is so human, and hence, so immature. Even after running behind happiness all life you seldom feel satisfied with all the things you have got. That means there’s something wrong with the whole exercise of living for happiness. Before aspiring something you have to understand the nature of it. When you understand the nature of happiness, you will understand that the pursuit of happiness is futile.

In truth, happiness does not exist in real; meaning, it is never a lasting thing. What you call happiness is just a temporary state of mind after the pain ceases.

Let’s understand this with the help of examples –

You know, in life you are not always happy or in pain. Some times you are just neutral. Between pain and happiness there is a state of neutrality, wherein you are neither happy nor in pain.

Suppose you are living in that neutral state. Life goes on smoothly without happiness or pain. Now one day you meet an accident, which injures your arm awfully and puts you into immense pain. The infection develops and it becomes difficult to heal the wound in short time. Your life becomes very painful and full of sorrow as the wound does not heal for days and gives you constant pinching.

After a couple of months as your wound is still not healed the doctor decides to apply the new treatment. Miraculously, the new treatment works wonder and your arm becomes good in no time. Now this brings you great happiness as the awful pain of months ends finally. So, this is the state of immense happiness… or is it? This is the same state in which you dwelt prior to the accident and the injury. It was, then, the state of neutrality. How come the same state of neutrality now seems to be the state of immense happiness? This is, in fact, a temporary state of mind called happiness.

After a couple more months you are back to the normal life and the accident and the injury have become things of the past no more thought over. And the state of immense happiness is again morphed into its real hue which is neutrality. Happiness is faded away. Or we can say it was a temporary feeling which died out after a while.

Because happiness is not a real thing, it can not last. It is always, always for a while.

Another, and more human-centric, example: It talks about expectations and craving. Unlike an arm injury which is a physical pain, expectations and craving are psychological pains. When your mind is laden with expectations and craving for something there is a feeling of distress within, which is a psychological pain.

Suppose you are using a simple black-and-white screen mobile phone, and life goes on smoothly. No need to tell this is the state of neutrality – where contentment can be felt. One day you see an advertisement of a high-tech color mobile phone with touch-screen and it moves you. You want to possess it desperately now. It’s very costly. You start saving money for it. The desire is so strong that you can’t wait to own it. The thought of not being able to own it puts you in distress. Such desire to own or posses something is a psychological pain; it won’t let your mind rest.

After a couple of months you have saved enough and you go buy the new phone. The desire is satisfied, the pain ends. As a result, a temporary state arises which you would call the state of immense happiness. This is the same state which you had experienced when you bought your simple black-and-white screen mobile phone too, and you had called it happiness then. If that was happiness, then what is it now?

The fact is that it was a temporary state then, and it is a temporary state now. Wait for a couple more months and the new mobile phone too will become just another thing you own, losing all its charm. The temporary state of mind called happiness will fade away and the life will slip into the state of neutrality – until you give way to another pain.

This shows that what we call a state of being happy is nothing but a temporary state after the pain is ended. Soon the happiness would fade away and it would become the state of neutrality – from where you can either give way to another pain and enter the endless cycle of sorrow and happiness OR find contentment in it, latter one being the essence of life.

The essence of life is not happiness but the state wherein there's neither happiness nor pain but contentment; because happiness is anyway not real, and pain is what no one would want.

More than the physical pain, it’s the pain of the mind that has made human life so miserable today.

Enlightened is the one who has transcended the human experiences as pain and happiness. He would not be moved by worldly pleasures, nor be hurt by broken expectations. He is in perfect bliss which is contentment.