Happiness and Beyond the Happiness: Buddhism Viewpoint

Presenter Information

Hideki Takei

Document Type

Oral Presentation

Campus where you would like to present

SURC 202

Start Date

17-5-2012

End Date

17-5-2012

Abstract

Many people have tried to define own happiness and be happy for so many years. It is true that there is not a single definition of happiness since each one of us has different desires, goals, interests, and values. Therefore, it is very important for each one of us to develop own definition of happiness. Then, one can finally seek for the happiness in one’s life. However, defining our own happiness is very difficult task because not only complexity of happiness itself but also our sense of spiritual materialism. The spiritual materialism tends to mislead us to wrong or materialistic sense of happiness. Especially, we can be easily misled if we can observe the materialism through mysticism, idolatry, and exclusionism. As a result, we may not be able to be truly happy because we will miss more spiritual sense of happiness. In this paper, we reassess philosophy of the ancient Buddhism, generally accepted Buddhism bibles, and current issues in spiritual materialism in the Buddhism in order to discover spiritual sense of happiness and something beyond the happiness such as selflessness and nirvana from the Buddhism viewpoint.

Faculty Mentor(s)

Hideki Takei

Additional Mentoring Department

ITAM

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May 17th, 8:30 AM May 17th, 8:50 AM

Happiness and Beyond the Happiness: Buddhism Viewpoint

SURC 202

Many people have tried to define own happiness and be happy for so many years. It is true that there is not a single definition of happiness since each one of us has different desires, goals, interests, and values. Therefore, it is very important for each one of us to develop own definition of happiness. Then, one can finally seek for the happiness in one’s life. However, defining our own happiness is very difficult task because not only complexity of happiness itself but also our sense of spiritual materialism. The spiritual materialism tends to mislead us to wrong or materialistic sense of happiness. Especially, we can be easily misled if we can observe the materialism through mysticism, idolatry, and exclusionism. As a result, we may not be able to be truly happy because we will miss more spiritual sense of happiness. In this paper, we reassess philosophy of the ancient Buddhism, generally accepted Buddhism bibles, and current issues in spiritual materialism in the Buddhism in order to discover spiritual sense of happiness and something beyond the happiness such as selflessness and nirvana from the Buddhism viewpoint.