The Sense World Is Unsatisfactory

The sense world is unsatisfactory, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

When we attach to it, it takes us to despair because attachment means that we want it to be satisfactory; we want it to satisfy us, to make us content, happy and secure. But just notice the nature of happiness – how long can you stay happy? What is happiness? You may think it’s how you feel when you get what you want. Someone says something you like to hear and you feel happy. Someone does something you approve of and you feel happy. The sun shines and you feel happy. Someone makes nice food and serves it to you, and you’re happy. But how long can you stay happy? Do we always have to depend on the sun shining? In England the weather is very changeable: happiness about the sun shining in England is obviously very impermanent and unsatisfactory!

Unhappiness is not getting what we want: wanting it to be sunny when it’s cold, wet and rainy; people doing things that we don’t approve of; having food that isn’t delicious and so on. Life becomes boring and tedious when we’re unhappy with it. So happiness and unhappiness are very dependent on getting what we want or what we don’t want.

But happiness is the goal of most people’s lives; the American constitution speaks of the right to ‘the pursuit of happiness.’ Getting what we want, what we think we deserve, becomes our goal in life. But happiness always leads to unhappiness because it’s impermanent. How long can you really be happy? Trying to arrange, control and manipulate conditions so as always to get what we want, always hear what we want to hear, always see what we want to see, and never have to experience unhappiness or despair, is a hopeless task. It’s impossible.

We feel happy when we’re healthy, but our human bodies are subject to rapid changes and we can lose our health very quickly. Then we feel terribly unhappy at being sick, at losing the pleasure of feeling energetic and vigorous. Happiness is unsatisfactory; it’s dukkha. It’s not something to depend on or make the goal of life. Happiness will always be disappointing because it lasts so briefly and then is succeeded by unhappiness. It is always dependent on so many other things.

Thus the goal for the Buddhist is not happiness because we realize that happiness is unsatisfactory. The goal lies away from the sense world. It is not rejection of the sense world but understanding it so well that we no longer seek it as an end in itself and no longer expect it to satisfy us. We no longer demand that sense consciousness should be anything other than an existing condition which we can use skillfully according to time and place. We no longer attach to it or demand that sense-contact should be always pleasant or feel despair and sorrow when it’s unpleasant.

Nibbāna isn’t a state of blankness, a trance where you’re totally wiped out. It’s not nothingness or annihilation; it’s like a space. It’s going into the space of your mind where you no longer attach, where you’re no longer deluded by the appearance of things. You no longer demand anything from the sense world. You just recognize it as it arises and passes away.

This reflection by Ajahn Sumedho is from the book, Ajahn Sumedho Anthology, Volume 1—Peace is a Simple Step, Chapter 19, “Happiness, Unhappiness, and Nibbana,” (pdf) pp. 152-154.