The problem with human nature: why can't we get satisfaction?

The first and the second noble truths delivered by the Buddha constitute the diagnosis of the human predicament. The first noble truth states that the suffering exists (dukka = suffering or no satisfaction). The second noble truth says that the cause of suffering is clinging and craving for things, which in other words means you keep trying to get satisfaction, but never can.

A rather old, but still very good study on monkeys and the dopamine levels in the brain (1) shows that pleasure is not everlasting. It also shows that the craving gives us pleasure than the actual thing we crave for. From our own experience, we know that if we want something very much and then we get it, we kind of see that the craving was something that gave us pleasure and not the thing itself. After we inquire the item, the pleasure soon starts wearing out. We start seeing flaws in our inquired item and start wanting something new very soon. We are not satisfied again.
Such craving is explainable from the point of view of natural selection. Craving allowed us to reproduce and survive. If the pleasure lasts forever, we wouldn’t be looking for food or for a mate. Such everlasting pleasure and satisfaction would eventually lead to our extinction.  
So are we ill-fated to keep craving forever? Buddhist third and fourth Nobel truths state that is not the case. There is a way out: a path to your own evolution without going extinct. 


References
1. Schultz, W, Apicell, P. and Ljungbergb, T. 1993. Responses of Monkey Dopamine Neurons to Reward and Conditioned Stimuli during Successive Steps of Learning a Delayed Response Task. The Journal of Neuroscience, 13(3), 900-913. 

Life is full of surprises

Life is full of surprises.
Photo Silvija Budaviciute

We often say and hear: the life is full of surprises, but we are not always convinced it is true. Thankfully some of those surprises help us to stop the train of thoughts and remind us to acknowledge the joys of now.

This morning my husband and I, we wanted to do something to enjoy the starting day. A park my friend recommended was closed today. We couldn’t go anywhere far as our car requires maintenance. Thus, we decide that perhaps we should take a bike ride and check the path I don’t yet know, but I was planning to take to visit my friend tomorrow. So we did.

We just started riding the bikes downhill as my husband, being slightly ahead of me, abruptly pressed the breaks. I followed with the same response and pressed my breaks…a bit too much. The rest you can imagine. In a slow motion: I am on concrete, the bike flying over me, the back wheel now touching my right arm and the whole bike finally lands on me. Unable to move and in pain, only very few things come to my mind: 1. I need to get that bike of me, 2. My knee and elbow hurt and 3. Why my husband is so serious?  After the pain passed, we started to laugh; that was a salto mortale, but I am alive and nothing is broken. Just yesterday I worried about so many things, but not a single time did I think I would crash my bike. Yet, that is what happened. Isn’t that a surprise?! All my worries I thought as important yesterday were just images produced by my mind and none of them might ever become true. Yet, I spent my time worrying about them, while life kept happening and presenting its own solutions for me.

I am grateful for life for such surprises. They return my wondering mind to present. I am not saying I like such experiences (would prefer not to have a tire markings on my arm). I prefer nice surprises, but only unpleasant ones can teach you something. Today's experience reminded of the following things:

1. I am grateful to be alive.
2. I don’t like bad things happening to me, but I have no control over them.
3. I don’t have control over good things either.
4. I can choose how I respond to bad things.
5. I can train my mind to respond to bad experiences with joy (Pīti in Pali).
6. Both bad and good things end (some earlier, some later).
7. There will always be surprises in life. I don’t use this one to depress myself that there is something lurking in a corner. Just to remind myself that we have no control over the most of the events in our lives. The only thing we can do (whatever happens) is to remember the points above (1 – 6) and choose our response.

Beware of a surprise behind the corner.
Photo: Sergey Gerasimenko

Talking about surprise behind the corner, as we continued our ride (now with some of my limbs slightly bleeding) we found this little fellow lurking in the shadows of a construction site.

Perhaps life is like this little creature, suddenly appears surprising and presenting itself in the most peculiar ways when you least expect it.

Exploring happiness. Reflection on the Awakening Joy workshop with James and Jane Baraz

Am I happy and am I grateful for all the things I have in my life? Do I make my happiness a number one priority in my life and if not, why not? These were the questions I asked myself after I left the Awakening Joy workshop with James and Jane Bazar in Helsinki today. Have I answered these questions after the workshop? Of course no, but I feel I am one step closer answering them. In every event, retreat or workshop I learn something new that help to deepen my practice. The rest I just let go. 

James Bazar opened the workshop by quoting Dalai Lama: ” The purpose of life is to be happy” and continued by saying that everything we do, we do because we want to be happy. We are even grumpy, because we want to be happy. We walk with a fake smile and try to please everyone around us, because we want people to like us and we want to be happy. However, this is the happiness outside ourselves and unfortunately it is usually not long lasting. But can we turn to ourselves and look for happiness inside us? Bazars’ say it is exactly where we need to look for it and be open for it when we find it.

If the only thing we do to be happy - just to look inside ourselves - why are so many of us still unhappy? We often look for and remember only bad things happening to us. As Jane Bazar says: “our mind is designed to grasp and keep bad experiences in our memory, because the ones that were only thinking everything will be good didn’t make to these days”. I agree with Jane, evolution likes jokes like these. We are watching out all the time, but we can also train our minds to notice good things. I really liked James’ idea we can incline our minds towards anything we want by just thinking that way. So you want to be grumpy and see bad things around you – think that way. If we always look for something bad to happen, we train our mind to notice more and more bad things around us. But if I try to look for good things then of course we will tend to observe more good in our life. Jane very accurately pointed out: “it takes practice for our mind to notice good things and positive experiences”. I couldn’t agree more.

We all have happiness inside us; we were born with it. James brings this point home nicely by showing everyone a photo of a happy baby. “That is why we like babies so much,” - says James. “They remind us of us”. To be happy you need to want to be happy. You need to find gratitude for good things and practice it. Practice happiness, don’t these two words resonate? Practice happiness. Practice happiness. Intention is what takes us to be happy. It really struck me how simple and yet difficult is to be happy: all you need is want to be happy.  Funny things is that we not always know what we really want.

I asked James:“ have you met people who can really say they know what happiness is? He asked me back: “what do you think” ? I don’t think many people know what it means to be happy. I certainly cannot always understand what it really means to be happy myself. “The highest happiness is peace” – says James. At the workshop, we were asked to imagine what happiness is for us and think about that as my happiness. People gave really many explanations what they think happiness is. All of the descriptions were unique and I must say rather abstract. Nobody said: having enough gold is my happiness (though I must say James tried to provoke us with the photo of the pretty women covered in gold). But then again, in different setting and context the answers might have been different. For me, happiness is hard to describe in one word. But if I try to describe what happiness is for me it is a feeling of stillness, calmness. It is like you are standing on the top of the mountain and overlooking a wonderful landscape of fall colors sinking into the calm rich clouds. It is like boundary between you and the experience was dissolved; you are one. 

Many interesting topics were discussed at the workshop. With some of them I fully agree and with others I am somehow more skeptical, but nonetheless I enjoyed the workshop. I hopeful I will be inspired to explore these topics in more detail in future. For now, the message I took home was that things will fall apart, you will get sick and bad things will happen to you, but if you are genuinely happy you will be alright. Suffering exists and you are not suffering because you are not good enough. Everyone suffers, but those who process the suffering they are not afraid of it. These people can see goodness in themselves and in others. If you practice kindness towards yourself and the world, you will find gratitude in everything and you will be happy.