Content/Authors/Shashank Rajesh/Drafts/Project Empyrean (2).md
Happiness
Wallowing in pleasure, one is free of all trouble. Typically no though arises to him that may object to the experience; he is very much content. So long as the experience is maintained, no complaint arises. Wherever his mind is focused, he finds great joy right there. Immersed in varied streams of delight, he is staid to be utterly happy.
Its like quenching one’s thirst with a cold glass of water over and over again with the aquisition of diversified streams of gratfication.
Content/Authors/Shashank Rajesh/Drafts/Project Empyrean (2).md
A Conservative and Liberal Definition of Happiness
The conservative definition is quite well known: any state of experience satisfying the following conditions:
- Emotional distress below a threshold
- Pleasant feeling above a threshold
The liberal definition omits the second condition. Thus, bare happiness may exist with an experience of intense pain, but since there is little to no distress in response to it, it counts as happiness.
Is a conservative happiness superior to a liberal one even if the first factor is identical?
Content/Authors/Shashank Rajesh/Drafts/Project Empyrean (3).md
An Inverse Quantification of Happiness
Happiness is measured as the absence of unhappiness. Why? Because it is only in the case of displeasure that one feels afflicted, not in the case of the other two.
Content/Project Empyrean Draft.md
Happiness
Two kinds: constructed happiness formed by desire and pleasure. Unconstructed by the absence of desire.
Anything that feels bad implies aversion. Anything that feels good implies attraction.
In brief, any experience with undesirable constructions below a threshold.
Content/Authors/Shashank Rajesh/Drafts/Project Empyrean (3).md
The Displeasure of Happiness
Displeasure arises even in the aquisition of pleasure via the
Content/Authors/Shashank Rajesh/Thoughts copy.md
Happiness
It seems to me that wallowing in pleasure is happiness, and writhing in pain is sadness. Pleasure itself is not happiness, nor is pain sadness. The involvement therein is what qualifies the emotion. To be free of both states is indeed the highest of all bliss.
Content/Authors/Shashank Rajesh/Thoughts copy.md
Satisfaction Above a Standard
Two types of satisfaction:
- Fulfilment of desire
- Absence of desire
Timeline
Modeling the magnitude of thirst over the axis of time, we seek to control that thirst in various ways, in this order of preference:
- Complete cessation of thirst, forever.
- Nirodha
- Maintainence of thirst under a threshold
- Subsequent heavenly existences, maintained through diligent action.
- As above, but with short spikes underneath a secondary threshold
- Human-deva cycle
Content/Authors/Shashank Rajesh/Thoughts copy.md
Type of relief
Certain and sustainable relief, pursuit of its permanance and completion.
Four kinds of relief:
- Eternal & complete (mOkSa, nirvANa, etc.)
- Eternal & incomplete (Abrahamic heaven?)
- Temporary & complete (temporary nirvANa?)
- Temporary & incomplete (varied, from mundane pleasures to at least the lower jhAnas)
For the temporary and incomplete, sustainability and maximization is sought.
Content/Authors/Shashank Rajesh/Thoughts copy.md
Suppression and Cessation
There are two forms to the reduction of discontentment. The first and most conventional is that of satisfaction. When one gets what they want, their wishes fulfiled, craving satiated, that person is said to be happy and content. Posessing whatever is sought after, accompanied by pleasant feelings, their craving is temporarily abated. Whatever forms of pleasure and enjoyment exist, this is the satisfaction of craving which results in the reduction of discontentment — mundane happiness. The second is in the form of relinquishment of that craving itself, direct elimination of the root cause of discontentment.
All solutions to this fundemental problem operate on these two mechanics. Profound contentment can be attained by having much and wanting little. But with the complete cessation of craving all together, stainless and without a trace left over, there comes an even greater possibility of complete liberation from all strife and objection, supreme happiness that is permanant and measureless.
Content/Authors/Shashank Rajesh/Thoughts copy.md
Beyond the Ideal
- The total cessation of all craving — permanant happiness.
The essence of one potential ideal is attained through the total fulfilment of either of the factors governing discontentment. Getting exactly and whatever one wants immediately, there is the total fulfilment of satisfaction. And yet want nothing at all indefinitely, there is the total fulfilment by relinquishment. With the knowledge of the attainment and maintainence of this ideal state, acting in accordance whenever there is an opportunity for volition, one exists with supreme happiness in perpetuity.
Related topics (AI recommended)
The distinction between satisfying desire and ending it connects enjoyment with renunciation. Human existence examines the limits of sustaining happiness in a human body.
The relationship between happiness and unpleasant feeling is clarified in the current resolution.
The further clarification includes equanimity, the absence of identity formation, unconsciousness, and nirvana within happiness.
The threshold for nominal happiness concerns subjective complaint, rather than the supposed amplitude of happiness.