The Road to Lasting Satisfaction

If one examines the life of a human being, he sees that everything they do is aimed towards gaining happiness. But why does one search for happiness? What is the driver of it?

On some level, every person lives a life of dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction is so pervasive that it invades everything they do. It may even disguise itself as something as seemingly innocuous as positive thinking.

This dissatisfaction creates in the person a desire for escape. The greater the dissatisfaction, the greater the desire for escape becomes. Since the only escape from dissatisfaction a person knows is through a fleeting sense of happiness, this is what they seek. The tragedy is that they unwittingly agree to search for happiness for the rest of their life.

The unexamined assumption is that these fleeting experiences of happiness will accumulate into something that lasts. The evidence that this doesn’t work is all around you. Lack of quality cannot be compensated for by excessive quantity.

The real solution is found in a truthful exploration of the problem. One must overcome the reactionary attempts to escape from dissatisfaction in order to see it for what it is.

Dissatisfaction is a product of thought. It lives entirely in the domain of the mind.

Even as I write this I can hear people voicing their follow up question: “So I have to quiet my mind?”

You’re welcome to try. Good luck.

The more you attempt to quiet your mind, the noisier it will become. Thought cannot be suppressed. Fighting your thoughts only strengthens their hold over you.

It isn’t about fighting anything. It isn’t about not fighting anything.

There is nothing you can do. There is nothing you can refrain from doing.

It is simply about seeing things for what they are.

Dissatisfaction is a product of thought. It exists nowhere other than the mind.

If something exists only in the mind, it is not truth. It is manufactured.

It is therefore the case that lasting satisfaction is without a cause. Only dissatisfaction is caused.

When the causes of dissatisfaction are removed, satisfaction will be there waiting for you.