"Normal" changes! Why is there unhappiness?

Seven (Wisdom Quarterly) Even radiant space beings (akasha devas) were eager to honor the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha, so they brought gifts and greetings (saloeurm.com).

What is normal today will not be so tomorrow. Or what they do then is not what they do now. With that in mind, we often search for absolutes. There aren't many. However, personal moral standards do not change. Ethics, societal norms, behaviors, and general conduct change year to year. But one thing is true, reliable, and very hard to believe.

ALL disappointment, misery, and distress (dukkha) comes only from four sources. It is not what happens to us but how we view and react to what we imagine is happening. How can we be happy as the UFO cover up is laid bare, in the midst of this global financial meltdown, as hypocrisy and deception reign supreme? It's easy. The guiding star is virtue (sila, kusala karma, punya).

There are four responses to seen in our reactions to emergencies: fight, flight, freeze, or faint. These are rooted respectively in aversion, fear, delusion (confusion or not knowing what to do and trying to disappear or experiencing "paralysis by analysis"), and overwhelm (also rooted in delusion when both the problem and the lack of a solution become too much to bear that "checking out" makes sense, in terms of consciousness, desiring intoxication, or leaving spiritually). Greed motivates us towards what we imagine are solutions or sources of sensual pleasure.

Mindful of that, it is easy to see when a cause of unhappiness arises and to counter it with an antidote. It's within us to do that. But it is very helpful to have a source of information. "Uninstructed worldlings" were lost for epochs, ages, and aeons before a fully Enlightened One arose to point out the Truth.

In the meantime, we had to settle for lesser sages able to discern part of the Truth and point the way to the heavens and happiness here and now.

They could not, however, point out any escape from the fundamental problems of rebirth, impermanence, and ultimate disappointment, just temporary respites (sometimes lasting aeons but always temporary). Now when the Buddha-Dharma is available, how many search it out? Few. Most prefer temporary respites and keep watering the problem.

The Causes of All Unhappiness

CRAVING: greed, selfish desire, "evil" wishes (callousness in striving for our fulfillment such as killing not out of hate but for a desired goal), lust, envy, jealousy, yearning for sensual pleasures which themselves can never be appeased by sensual experiences (but we see no other means of soothing our yearning or allaying our pain).

AVERSION: annoyance, irritation, hate, anger, ill will, ire, unfriendliness, the wish to oppose or destroy what we imagine is afflicting or frustrating us, particularly in our ambition and striving for sensual pleasures.

DELUSION: misunderstanding, intoxication, not knowing, confusion, wrong views, perversion, misperception, distortion, intoxication, nescience, ignorance, clinging to mistaken views particularly about karma and its results, or worse, the view that deeds have no results.

FEAR: a form of aversion or inverted hate that rather than seeking to destroy the object of aversion seeks instead to run from it, worry, tremble, become restless, panic, or go into paralysis.