chapter 2 - Why are we not happy?

We are not happy generally is because we are not happy about ourselves; not happy with our lives, with other people and the happenings in the world. We are discontented about something or everything. We have lots of fears and worries. We want to appreciate and enjoy life, but we don’t really know how?

We cannot even please our own self because our mood and wants are changing all the time, and thus, it is impossible to please everybody in this world of diversity.

Most of the time, we don’t know what we really want and don’t want.

We are afraid of losing "this" if we decide to choose "that", and vice versa. Indecisive is a common reason why people are not at peace, being troubled and unhappy in life.

And egoism deriving from ignorance, is the main cause for all the unhappiness in us. Anger, hatred, jealousy, greed, pride, arrogance, attachment, craving, aversion, low confidence, low self-esteem, loneliness, meaninglessness, fears and worries are derived from the ego and egoism under the veil of ignorance.

We are not happy because we don't have wisdom or right understanding at the moment. It doesn't matter if we had went through higher education or had read a lot of books, and had attained lots of various knowledge, qualifications and certificates, or have many skills and talents and achievements.

Mainly it's because the knowledge that we attained from school education did not teach us how to be happy. Or, it has given us a huge wrong idea that our happiness is to be achieved through worldly success, wealth, title, fame, physical and mental abilities and achievements, material enjoyments and sensual pleasures.

All the knowledge that we could get from this world is conditioned and limited. These knowledge, skills and talents that we have cannot and do not guarantee us happiness. In fact they have empowered the pride and arrogance in us, empowering our ego, and thus make us more unhappy and discontented in life.

The more that we learn, the more that we realize that we are so ignorant and don't know much actually. This will make us become slightly more humble, which is good. But if we attached to the ego strongly, this will make us feel low self-esteem, low confident, dissatisfaction and also will generate envy or jealousy towards other people who are better than us or know more than us.

And hence, we are unhappy and dissatisfied with ourselves. We will try to remove this dissatisfaction by trying to acquire more worldly knowledge and achievement in life. Again, this further empowers our ego, pride and arrogance, and makes us more unhappy.

It is like a snowball that rolls down a hill full of snow and attached itself with more and more snow, and become bigger and heavier.

The knowledge that we learn from school education certainly will benefit us to a certain extent; for us to be able to read and write; to communicate with others; and to have some living skills for finding jobs or doing business to make some living.

But this worldly knowledge cannot give us salvation, or remove our ignorance. It doesn't take away the pain; the suffering; the unhappy feelings; the negative thinking; the anger; the hatred; the jealousy; the greed; the fears and worries; the illness; the old age and death that everyone has to go through at one stage in life.

Look at so many people who are unhappy and even have gone crazy losing their mind. Many of them are well educated and some of them are highly intelligent and materialistically successful and wealthy people.

They may be educated, smart and intelligent, knowledgeable and wealthy, but it doesn't help them to transcend ignorance, egoism, greed, discontentment, painful sorrow, fear and suffering. The more that they know and the more wealth that they have, the more emptiness and meaninglessness that they feel, because they know that we all are going to leave all these knowledge and wealth behind due to impermanence. We cannot forever own this success and wealth that we have now and we cannot forever be with the people and objects that we love very much. And also, knowledge and wealth cannot buy us true love or give us permanent true happiness.

Because of lack of wisdom, we all don't know how to be unattached, or detached and let go.

And wisdom is entirely different from worldly knowledge.

It allows us to realize the Truth of all the things in this world that we perceive under the function of the mind through the senses, and enabling us to understand what is happening in us that is making us unhappy and suffer.

Wisdom gives us the true confidence that has nothing to do with the knowledge in the world and how much that we know about everything, and true confidence is not determined or affected by the ever changing phenomena of impermanence, or the judgment, praise and criticism from other people.

It helps us to be able to detach from worldly objects and the suffering caused by attachment. It also let us to be able to detach from duality that gives rise to likes and dislikes, cravings and aversions, which is the cause for irritation, frustration, dissatisfaction, disappointment, painful sorrow and suffering.

It helps us to be able to let go our likes and dislikes, the past and the future.

It helps us to deal with the impermanent feelings and emotions; the anger; the hatred; the jealousy; the negative thinking and evil thoughts.

It gives us the courage and strength to withstand all the discomforts that arise due to the selfless function of our physical body, our thinking mind, the ego, the intellect and the senses.

It gives us unconditional peace and true happiness. It removes painful sorrow, hurts, fear and worries.

It is the key to our salvation and self-realization.

When there is wisdom, there is no unhappiness or suffering.

When there is wisdom, there is no fear.

May we all attain wisdom in this life, and be happy.