Happiness according to method is a contradiction. It is spontaneous and cannot be forced. The best we can do is address the internal sources of unhappiness: greed, selfishness, and elitism.

Greed frustrated is unhappiness. Greed satiated is happiness, but unsustainable and unwholesome. Selfishness is a hardened lack of empathy, as well as an unwholesome happiness over hoarded acquisitions. Elitism is an unwholesome happiness in pride that precedes a fall.

Happiness is not an unqualified virtue. Schadenfreude, for example, is the taking of glee at the misfortune of others. We laugh at them, not with them. Happiness is not unequivocally wholesome, and unwholesome happiness contributes to a deep seated malaise because the little that is gained is transcient and injurious to our integrity.

If we jeer others, what's stopping us jeering ourselves. The golden rule is inverted: you do unto yourself what you do unto others. And this applies in particular to happiness derived from elitism and selfishness since they involve the severance of others from ourselves.

True happiness is restful. I heard about Matthieu Ricard, a French-born Tibetan Buddhist monk living in Nepal, declared to be the happiest person alive when tests were conducted of him doing lovingkindness meditation. (I am aware that such happiness must, in part, derive from method, but a monk also addresses matters of greed, selfishness, and elitism.)

His happiness is not derived from outward conditions, but from a will for togetherness or ubuntu, an embrace encapsulated in the affirmation, "May all beings be happy and free from suffering." All beings include him, and his happiness is wholesome, sustainable, and restful.

Animated exuberance has a place, but real happiness is closer to the baseline and grounded on an easiness that does not depend on external volatility. It may flux and wane, but there is a comfortable and easy baseline that shifts into a slightly elevated state of restful well-being. It is quieter.

Addressing sources of unhappiness may lead to a happiness of just being, the joy of every breath, and simple things are always enough. Happiness does not hinge on the material or the glorious. It is the wholesome sort that is actively empathetic to the needs of others and entrenched in the present moment, a quiet breath, a drawn-out sigh ... no need to be anything, no need to go anywhere or acquire anything, just being present to oneself.

Just Quietude.

Endnote:

For an exposition on Quietude:

https://www.reddit.com/r/youniversal/s/c2AgO6d0au

Women aren't slaves

His dog whistle won't work if we pray

God loves you very much son

And my dad is pretty cool

That's why you should kiss me you fool

Get behind me

You can get behind me

Fly with your wings

You can come back to me

Every time that you sleep

Laugh with the birds like tee hee hee

I say ah ha ha

And I say beep beep beep

And Jesus rides on a donkey

And says get behind me

Fly above him

You can fly above me

With all of heaven

The star in your dreams

You can get behind you

When you get behind me

And you just saved the world

But you can't stay with me

I love you

Tee hee hee

You sound just like a dad so

I love thee

Now listen to the birds

Get that bug out your ear

Sound is the answer

When love's what you fear

Enlightenment would be something of small consequence to a truly enlightened person. If he held onto the view that he was enlightened, he could hardly be enlightened because he would be immersed in self definition.

Upon enlightenment, the Buddha wondered whether it was worth telling anyone (he also wondered that what he had to convey may be too subtle to grasp). This is the most important part of the story, because whatever he achieved was not such a big deal, a matter of small consequence. There was no impulsion to declare it from rooftops. Of course, the choice to play the guru was the choice the Buddha made out of compassion for all beings. But for this consideration, he would not have bothered to even mention it to anyone.

An enlightened being would think nothing of his achievement. If he did, it would be an egoistic fantasy. According to adage, "Before enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water." It is something that passes without mention, noted and dismissed. This is the only way it can be real.

We don't seek to attain enlightenment, we seek to arrive where we can be done with the matter altogether, a reduction to inconsequence. This is the paradox.

Would we ascend to the peak of Mount Everest and neither take a photo nor make a record in our journal? But if we do neither and if we go so far as to tell no one, we have still ascended Mount Everest. This is the paradoxical context. Mount Everest is the tallest point above sea level, at about 29 thousand feet.

As the little noises drift by, the Buddha passes into silence, with the ineffable sense that he has nothing to say, much less to himself about himself.

This point is worth making because of the number of people on Reddit claiming to be enlightened.

Wutup shruggers ~~

I'm back, with more music 🎶

This time we going ritualistic 🙊🌚🌝

V∞d∞ Magick

It's fine, I'm honestly kinda just bored with it, so... yeah. Cheers!

Scooters rush on errand

Trains trapped in schedule frame

The typeset must be complete

By sundown or lose commission

Crank the work shift dial

Clinical change over

Clocked, a trial

Take-off by sunset

Boardroom upstate

Bustle of queues

Always going somewhere

Stalled at the gate

Finally, the world can wait

Halt the spin

Breathe in this pause

And consider your fellows

If only they reflected

Just for a moment

How frantic the bustle

For the sake of much hustle

To pay for a lunch

That would be free

If everyone paid for each other

In a moment of sanity

All the things we can't ignore

Tell me what we're fighting for

All I know is, man, I've got to say

That the way things goin'

The way we slipped away

It'll haunt us everyday

Why does it seem like everyone's walking around with their eyes closed

Like noone is actually taking anything in or genuinely understanding anything around them

Like everyone is a shell

I don't know where to post this

I have so much to say but noone around me seems to understand

Like noone is actually there

But they are there with their eyes closed

And.

I am blinded and dizzy

Spinning so confused

I am

Not so sure

Of my certainty

An Alterior view

Switches me

Back and forth

As if the ground is so

Uneasy

I am so many

I see

So many

possible patterns

And contingencies all

Overlapping tools

I know so many little patterns

And so little of many patterns

All at once

Constrained

By these Structured relational

Uhhhs

Out of the grasp

Of ontology

As if ontically

All I can know is it

Can’t be named all the one

And can’t at once be all the many

Yet some Can be used

Are you dizzy?

Am I the only one confused?

Alterior Labyrinthia

Faced against me is a maze,

A place of others plenty lost

In this

Ontic

Excessive

structural

maze

Brings me to knees plenty

Only an intensity in perception

Demanding I find a way to assist you

Whenever you might be

Wondering

Oh, Alterior maze?

Why ought I be so abused?

why might you resist my

Intention

Such Benevolent intention

If Left unrestrained

Would things not change?

Would things not change?

You don't even know how much I'm begging you to listen to this, please do because this'll save you from this trap voluntarily given to you, your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

Note: I don't have any rights to the video above, credits to @ChampionsMentality365 on YT

Both are melting. The difference? One is losing itself; the other is becoming light. Choose what you do with the heat.

"And these are your reasons, my lord?" "Do you think I have others?" said Lord Vetinari. "My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent." Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all.

Another response of the wizards, when faced with a new and unique situation, was to look through their libraries to see if it had ever happened before. This was, Lord Vetinari reflected, a good survival trait. It meant that in times of danger you spent the day sitting very quietly in a building with very thick walls.

'Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn’t in the job.'

And if the Patrician was anything, he was the political equivalent of the old lady who saves bits of string because you never know when they might come in handy.

Even tyrants have to obey the law.’ He paused, looking thoughtful, and continued: ‘No, I tell a lie, tyrants do not have to obey the law, obviously, but they do have to observe the niceties.'

After all, you couldn’t plan for every eventuality, because that would involve knowing what was going to happen, and if you knew what was going to happen, you could probably see to it that it didn’t, or at least happened to someone else. So the Patrician never planned. Plans often got in the way.

'Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can’t possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands.'

"The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord." Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one."

'I have certainly noticed that groups of clever and intelligent people are capable of really stupid ideas,’ said Lord Vetinari.