What is Happiness? (ritual, choice, spiritual, Abraham)

[person1121]

Many people believe that the most important reason to live is to be happy. However, happiness differs among everybody, as different things make different people happy. So my question to you is what makes you happy? How can happiness be achieved? Are you happy? (please be as thorough in your explanation as you'd like).

[lizskid]

For me, happiness includes a variety of things....feeling safe, feeling loved, loving, feeling in balance with life in general (which includes spiritual aspects for me), doing something productive/contributory to the world. I don't know, it's a lot of stuff, but adds up to happiness for me.

[Hacker]

Originally Posted by person1121

Many people believe that the most important reason to live is to be happy. However, happiness differs among everybody, as different things make different people happy. So my question to you is what makes you happy? How can happiness be achieved? Are you happy? (please be as thorough in your explanation as you'd like).

Here's my humble opinion, happiness is a very difficult attainable emotion(as I call it) because I feel that the ego's desire's can be so overwhelming to the point .....okay for example, say like I say something like "I'll be so happy when I get that car!" Then after I get it, I'm not as happy as I thought I'd be. But I think once we are aware of this realization of not relying on material needs for happiness, and learn how to tame that, and eliminate ego/materialistic desires, happiness prevails!

[Random]

Happiness is living in the embrace of truth.

[Buttercup]

Originally Posted by person1121

Many people believe that the most important reason to live is to be happy. However, happiness differs among everybody, as different things make different people happy. So my question to you is what makes you happy? How can happiness be achieved? Are you happy? (please be as thorough in your explanation as you'd like).

As soon as people realize that happiness is not a thing that is achieved in a perpetual state, the happier you will be. Happiness is usually fleeting or comes in waves and doesn't stick around in a concrete clump. Also, we musn't feel it's our right to have perfect happiness every moment of every day. Like most things in this life....we have to grab happiness for ourselves. Very seldom does it arrive unannounced. It usually comes with some hard work of our own such as through helping others or in deciding to be happy. One of my favorite quotes from Abraham Lincoln, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."

[Ozzie]

Happiness for me is realised knowledge of impermanence. A byproduct, of meditative practice is peace and contentment that I would describe as happiness.

[AllMantra]

Happiness seems a difficult word to define universally. The Upanishads say "Infinite Joy or Finite Pleasure, that is the choice one is to make always..." Joy to me is somehow separate, yet compatible, with the pleasures of the senses. Meditation, contemplating scripture, consecrated action, journaling, fellowship with positive friends --- These things have provided me with stability and happiness, though it remains ever tainted by its fickle nature.

[Kungfuzed]

Happiness is chemicals in the brain. It can be made naturally or artificially. It's best to find it natrually but there's pills for those who don't.

[Ozzie]

Originally Posted by Kungfuzed

Happiness is chemicals in the brain. It can be made naturally or artificially. It's best to find it natrually but there's pills for those who don't.

What about if you recognize happiness in others? Do you think it is reasonable to describe what you see as chemicals in their brain?

[Bouncing Ball]

Happiness for me was playing a tactical game with my girlfriend (wich I am way better in than her), making an aliance with her and both start eliminating our enemy.. Then after a while when we both have great armies, she breaks up aliance and start attacking me out of nowhere, crushing me on all sides! when I look up to her I see her sweating, holding her eyes only on the game not daring to look at me, smashing me to all the corners of the field. After being done, she almost falls crying into my arms because she is so exhausted from being nervous and victorious at the same time..

Now THAT is happiness!