Talk
This is the first section of a longer talk in seven parts in which Dr. B. Alan Wallace provides an overview of the teachings of the historical Buddha about the nature and causes of mundane and genuine happiness and unhappiness, respectively. In this first section, Dr. Wallace discusses the teachings the Buddha gave about the various kinds of mundane, or stimulus-driven, happiness that are available to us as human beings, and especially lay people, which all derive from pleasant stimuli, such as wealth, power, status, and sensual pleasures. Dr. Wallace specifically highlights how much these forms of happiness are never fully in our control and are transient by nature, and why they are therefore not truly reliable as a source of satisfaction in life.
Full Talk Description
In this talk, Dr. B. Alan Wallace provides an overview of the teachings of the historical Buddha about the nature and causes of mundane and genuine happiness and unhappiness, respectively. Dr. Wallace starts by discussing a Pali discourse where the Buddha teaches how a layperson can attain the four kinds of mundane (stimulus-driven) happiness: the happiness of ownership, enjoyment, freedom from debt, and blamelessness. He then contrasts this with the three superior forms of genuine (stimulus-independent) wellbeing cultivated by a contemplative: the wellbeing of blamelessness born of ethical living, the wellbeing of mental balance gained through samadhi, and the supreme wellbeing of insight that comes from knowing reality as it is. In the second half of the talk, Dr. Wallace lays out the distinctions the Buddha himself made between the various types of unhappiness: the mundane unhappiness that he called the suffering of suffering (unpleasant feelings) and the genuine unhappiness that manifests as either the intermittent suffering of change (transitory pleasant feelings we cling to) or the ubiquitous dissatisfaction of conditioned existence. Dr. Wallace ends by applying this analysis of mundane and genuine happiness and unhappiness to our current global situation, where rising levels of mental distress are reflecting increasing imbalances in the mind that only Dharma could ultimately heal.
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