The Buddhist Hour
Radio Broadcast for Sunday 29 September 2002
Broadcast Script
244
Today's program is entitled:
"Craving for
happiness as an oxymoron"
Glossary
Covet: to desire inordinately, to
desire wrongly.
Crave; craved; craving (verb): desire
strongly.
Craving (noun): a strong desire; a longing.
Greed:
intense or inordinate longing, especially for wealth or food;
avarice, covetous desire.
Happiness: contentment.
Oxymoron:
a rhetorical figure of speech in which markedly contradictory terms
appear in conjunction so as to emphasize the statement; contradiction
in terms.
"Craving for happiness as an oxymoron"
"The
greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not
necessarily require happiness". William Saroyan, American
Writer, 1957.
American film star James Stewart said "The
secret of a happy life is to accept change gracefully".
In
'The Real Enjoyment of Living', 1954, Rabbi Hyman Schachtel, American
Clergyman, writes, "Happiness is not having what you want but
wanting what you have."
In the Discourse on Turning the
Wheel of the Dhamma, the Buddha said that craving is the cause of
suffering.
Craving can be used as a translation of the Pali
terms tanha and raga and is synonymous with greed (in Pali;
lobha).
Greed (lobha) is a powerful mental factor that causes
great havoc in this world and is itself a root of immoral action.
Greed is not alone – it is one of the three unwholesome roots,
the other two being hate (dosa) and delusion (moha), which are the
roots of all immoral action. These three mental factors sometimes
work together in performing an unwholesome action. The opposites of
these three are non-greed (alobha), non-hate (adosa) and non-delusion
(amoha). They are called good mental factors.
Good mental
factors generate the conditions for the mind to develop virtues such
as giving, ethics, patience, effort, concentration, wisdom,
compassion and so on. From giving there arises wealth, from ethics
happiness. Patience is to forsake anger. Effort enables us to delight
in virtues and results in brilliance. Peace emanates from
concentration and liberation arises from wisdom while compassion
enables the achievement of all aims.
The simultaneous
perfection of all of these seven virtues heretofore described leads
to the attainment of inconceivable wisdom.
It becomes apparent
that retaining attachment to greed overrides any possibility of the
attainment of perfect wisdom, or indeed even imperfect wisdom. Why
then do persons grasp at objects of desire?
One of our Members
recently decided to purchase a later model car than the one she
already owned. She came very close to purchasing a vehicle which
would have been too large for her purposes. Her desire for a powerful
vehicle came close to overwhelming her sense of logic about the
usefulness of the vehicle. Even when the Member realised her error
and made a decision not to purchase the car, she felt saddened at not
being able to satisfy her greed. She became deluded about the
'rewards' of work and then realised she was becoming resentful of
having to let go of her attachment to the car.
When the mind
focuses on an object and desires that object, it becomes attached to
the object. The mind has become attached to finding pleasure. Such
attachment is a small entanglement arising from desire. When
attachment is strong however it becomes a great entanglement arising
from desire. Great desire is extreme greed gone beyond the fortune of
knowing satisfaction.
When we have greed for an object, the
greed is either satisfied, leading to further desire, attachment and
greed, or it is not satisfied, causing resentment, anger and hate
arises. In any case there can be no sense of satisfaction. Greed
feeds on itself. It can never be sated.
The kind of house or
car we already have is irrelevant. As long as we have greed, we will
always be looking toward a bigger house or a newer car. Happiness
cannot result from satisfying greed – greed cannot be
satisfied.
Abandon greed, saboteur of happiness.
The
mind that attaches to a particular state of being also runs the risk
of creating the conditions for coveting ongoing attachment.
Some
meditators think they have attained enlightenment when they achieve
pleasurable mental states. Meditators can become attached to those
associated feelings, and significances, and qualities. This
attachment creates subtle craving. This is a real defilement that
obstructs intuition (vipassana). If a meditator is attached to
certain mental states and/or their associated qualities, he or she
cannot make any progress due to coveting ongoing attachment. This
results in the generation of wrong views leading to a state of
unconscientiousness, a disregard of what is right. Grasping at
sensation or perception causes the meditator to lose balance in his
or her perception.
The new wealth resource is a flow of new
information (something more valuable than gold) which is doubling
every 20 months. It appears to be sustainable for some time. The new
wealth generated is no different from old wealth, because it can
provide the means to satisfy an increased demand for consumer goods
and leisure.
Consumer goods in and of themselves do not cause
greed (lobha), just as it is the 'love' of money, rather than money
itself, which is perceived as the root of all evil. A mind with greed
is never satisfied, regardless of the volume of material wealth.
Greed feeds on itself, creating the conditions to covet more and more
goods. This is the condition and the spirit of capitalism. Wanting
and desiring material products and services generates wealth, and in
turn that wealth feeds on itself, nurturing a nice healthy appetite
for more material goods and more services.
Our brand "Chan
Academy Australia" means respect for scholars and
scholarship.
We teach financial prudence.
It is common
in Australian society today for people to seek better and more
expensive housing and other trappings of the materialistic lifestyle
that supports Western capitalism, to satisfy their greed, leading to
the need to work longer hours in more highly paid, and naturally
stressful, occupations, in order to sustain the 'greed cycle'. People
then hold the perception that they suffer stress because of a lack of
income. In many cases, the solution to a stressful life is not to
increase income, but to decrease consumption.
From the
Buddhist perspective, it is clear that the underlying causes for
recent events are greed for what has been termed "easy money"
or "something for nothing".
Our brand "Chan
Academy Australia" teaches methods for overcoming greed.
We
take recent financial issues in the modern world and analyse the
theoretical foundations on which they are based.
We know that
financial ideas have reached the mainstream when books about planning
include sections on them.
Complex instruments for professional
financial use have entered relatively straightforward ranges of
products issued by institutions.
Each country maintains its
financial markets as developed are unique.
A reason for
questioning this claim to financial uniqueness has to do with the
development of the Internet, where a plethora of good information
allows persons to arrive at positions independently of professional
guidance.
The Internet allows a person to track their
financial interests quickly and cheaply. Considerable diversity has
developed.
The price of attainment of scholastic opinion on
Canonical texts is one of the major influences on the views or
opinions that seekers of such information hold.
Many religions
have been funding their scholars to investigate the orthology
("correctness of language") of their Canonical texts and
have translated this into modern sanctions or financial positions
that are validated through the hierarchical control of the official
face of their religions.
Some religions specify the maximum
interest that ought to be charged. To avoid interest formulae the
economic world started to trade on derivatives.
Day-traders
purchased and sold shares on a time span where a "long-term"
meant 4 o'clock on the same day.
In Australia and elsewhere,
many tradesmen quit salaried employment to become day-traders, in
response to ubiquitous advertisements for share-trading programs.
In
March 2002 AXON instruments (makers of cellular neuro-science
software and instrumentation) hit the share market screens at more
than eight times its share issue price.
The era of the
day-traders who bought and sold within a 24 hour period is largely
gone.
In Australia we saw the day trader phenomenon for only
a few months.
"Derivatives" securities - options and
warrants - give traders the right to buy or sell a much larger parcel
of shares and punt on whether shares will rise or fall.
The
basic difference between options and warrants is that the latter are
"alive" for longer and are not issued by the stock
exchange, but by a third party (usually an investment bank).
The
latest products in the marketplace, contracts for difference (CFDs)
and spread-betting, simplify the process of taking a short-term bet
on the direction of the share market.
In spread-betting, a
financial bookmaker quotes its own spread over a share price or an
index value. The investor uses this price to bet on the direction of
the share price of index value. For the would-be day trader, this
makes buying actual shares seem as old-fashioned as analogue mobile
phones.
Historically, share markets have always recovered from
crashes.
The key question is not how peaks are regained, but
how long it will take to regain them.
The US and Australian
markets do not always have the same recovery time.
It took
Australia just five years to recover from the 1929 crash. It took the
US twenty-five years.
Yet the financial loss and human loss of
confidence in the job markets in both countries was almost beyond
measure.
In the financial year just completed, the medium
return from pooled superannuation trusts in Australia was minus
4.1%.
In Australia, the wide spread investments, people's
capitalism and disappointing results have resulted in many persons
becoming hesitant about their investment prospects and their
potential to build a substantial nest-egg for retirement.
At
casinos in Australia, there has been a vast increase in gambling,
causing much financial hardship for ordinary families.
Worries
of a financial nature occupy most persons' minds and lead to symptoms
of stress.
Thich Nhat Hanh, in The Heart of the Buddha's
Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy and Liberation,
1998, mentions craving in the context of the Discourse on Turning the
Wheel of the Dhamma and the Twelve Links of Interdependent
Co-Arising.
According to the teaching of Interdependent
Co-Arising, cause and effect co-arise and everything is a result of
multiple causes and conditions.
The Buddha taught twelve
links in the chain of Interdependent Co-Arising: ignorance,
volitional action, consciousness, name and form, the six sense
organs, contact, feelings, craving, attachment, coming to be, birth,
old age and death.
The Buddha expressed Interdependent
Co-arising very simply: "This is, because that is. This is not,
because that is not. This comes to be, because that comes to be. This
ceases to be, because that ceases to be."
In the sutras,
this image is given: "Three cut reeds can stand only by leaning
on one another. If you take one away, the other two will fall."
One
cause is never enough to bring about an effect. A cause must, at the
same time, be an effect, and every effect must also be the cause of
something else. Cause and effect inter-are. The idea of a first or
only cause, something that does not itself need a cause, cannot be
applied.
If we practice identifying the causes of our
suffering, we will see that sometimes it is due to our craving and
sometimes its due to other factors.
We need to say. "The
basis for this suffering is such and such affliction," and then
call it by its true name. How else will we find the cause of our
suffering and the way to heal ourselves?
As happiness can be
true happiness or deception, we have to look into its substance and
go beyond attachment.
In the Samyutta Nikaya V, 326 the
Buddha taught the truth of "dwelling happily in things as they
are" (drista dharma sukha vihara).
To succeed in Buddha
Dhamma practice, we must stop trying to prove that everything is
suffering. In fact we must stop trying to prove anything. If we touch
the truth of our suffering with mindfulness, instead of looking for
diversions, we will be able to recognise and identify our specific
suffering, its specific causes and the way to remove those causes and
end our suffering.
Deceptive happiness brings temporary
pleasure and helps us forget our suffering, but it is not of lasting
benefit and can actually be harmful, like a cigarette or a glass of
wine.
If you want to be happy you must accept the truth. The
truth is the real happiness as emptiness is the supreme happiness.
Buddha taught that there is no other happiness than liberation. This
is because our mind is no longer the slave of defilements such as
craving. Our mind is completely free from desire of all kinds. As a
result we enjoy the complete happiness we have been looking
for.
True happiness has benefit in nourishing both ourselves
and others.
May all beings understand the causes of true
happiness.
May all beings abandon greed.
May all beings
know true happiness.
May all beings be well and
happy.
Written and edited by John D. Hughes Dip. App. Chem.
T.T.T.C. GDAIE, Anita M. Hughes RN Div 1., Sharon Carlton, Leanne
Eames B.A. M.A., Jason Glasson B.A. Hons and Pennie White, B.A.,
Dip.Ed.
References
Brown, Leslie (1993) The New Shorter
Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Dunn,
James (2002) "Leverage is alive and well", The Australian
Newspaper, The Australian Business Surveyor Series 12: Risk Reward,
26 September 2002, p. 4.
Green Johnathan (complied by) (1982)
A Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations, David & Charles, Newton
Abbot, London. p. 144.
Hughes, John D. and Anita M. (2002) Our
Brand Positioning, Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.,
Melbourne, Australia.
Keller, Kevin Lane., Sternthal, Brian.
and Tybout, Alice. (2002) "Three Questions You Need to Ask About
Your Brand", Harvard Business Review, Volume 80, No. 9,
September 2002, p 80.
Manivong, Ajarn Chanhphy (1994) The Way
You Are Looking For: A Manual of Insight Meditation, p.
68.
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Document
Statistics
Counts
Words: 2137
Sentences:
127
Paragraphs: 70
Syllables: 3393
Averages
Words per
sentence: 16.8
Sentences per paragraph: 1.8
Percentages
Passive
Sentences: 20
Readability Statistics
Flesch Grade Level:
11.6
Coleman-Liau Grade Level: 11.9
Bormuth Grade Level:
10.3
Flesch Reading Ease Score: 54.6
Flesch Kincaid Score:
9.6
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Flesch Reading Ease Score Flesch
Grade Level
Reading Difficulty
90-100 5th Grade Very easy
80-89 6th Grade Easy
70-79 7th Grade Fairly easy
60-69
8th-9th Grade Standard
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