Happiness and Beyond the Happiness: Buddhism Viewpoint
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.
Recommended Citation
Takei, Hideki, "Happiness and Beyond the Happiness: Buddhism Viewpoint" (2012). Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 3.
https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/source/2012/oralpresentations/3
Additional Mentoring Department
ITAM
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.
Faculty Mentor(s)
Hideki Takei