The first thing people usually learn about Buddhism is that it’s aimed at ending human suffering. This is what newcomers like to discuss online when trying to deepen their understanding. And this is what one Redditor did when he asked, “If life has suffering, why not just try to numb yourself with goals (seeing beautiful places, sex, etc.)?”
The question has sparked a lively discussion in the Buddhist subreddit with members of the community offering advice and thoughts on the subject.
Here’s what the original post said:
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I had recently gone to Switzerland and felt a great deal of happiness there. It felt like a dream and now it is a good memory which I cling to. I genuinely feel happy whenever I think about the places I visited.
I think the same feelings occur for other happy events. We feel good during the event and when we think about it later.
Now, why not just accept that suffering is a part of the process and work towards the next goal for happiness?
Why not try to achieve goal after goal? Why not try to minimize the time of the process / “suffering”? In that way you will just feel happy a majority of the time.
In the comments, one Redditor wrote:
Pleasure is not the same as happiness. Drug addicts are experiencing pleasure frequently and are far from happy. Numbing yourself with treats is not a way to solve the root cause of pain and unhappiness.
Also, your pleasure baseline will adapt very fast and you will be always looking for the next thing. Like walking through a desert towards an oasis that is just an optical illusion
Adding to the sentiment above, another responded rather ominously:
Every junkie in recovery will tell you that doesn’t work.
Some terrible shit is on its way. Shit that a trip to Switzerland will never paint over. You have to learn to deal with it. Things will happen where mentally drifting back to the Alps is [not] going to cut it anymore.
Even though there are people who are unlucky enough to have enough happy places in their mind that they never learn this lesson, it’s a massive risk for most of us.
A third offered this vivid image:
It’s a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Sure you can keep filling it… until for some reason you can’t, and then what?
For what it’s worth as I understand it, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a moment, so long as you can let go of it when the time comes. It’s the desire to chase new moments, the attachment to achieving goals, that’s going to become a source of suffering.
Another mused:
Trying to achieve happiness is craving for life to be different than it is – this IS suffering, not the absence of what we think of as pleasure.
When we follow the Buddha’s path, we begin to see all this clearly and we see the fleeting nature of each moment of happiness – and also of each moment of suffering.
Over time, the craving to achieve that ideal happiness fades away as we realise that when we stop that clinging attachment to happiness, we find that it is already there, whatever is going on in our lives.
One Redditor observed:
Your life isn’t a non-stop series of vacations, sex, and other pleasurable things. And even if it were, we often see that … people who are able to live that kind of lifestyle soon feel those diversions to be empty too.
Perhaps they move to stronger and stronger diversions, like harder and harder drugs. Or maybe, ideally, they look hard at the thing they’re trying to run away from …, to actually get to the root of the problem.
[…]
Typically, the cause is attachment to the way you would like things to be. To fully realize that, and to let go of that attachment, is to starve that problem of fuel, and to be able to experience bliss in your living room just as readily as you might in the Alps.
You can read the full discussion here. Complement with “What the Buddha Taught” by Walpola Rahula and then revisit our articles on how to live in the now and have future goals and why you should read “Flow” by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi.
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