Robin Woods:
Apologies if this is kinda naive, but how much happier has serious meditation made you?
A similar question bugs me all the time. I hear about all the things practice involves, and all the bits and pieces of attainments (jhanas and stuff) but I've found it very hard to get an answer (that I can understand) to the question, "Yes, yes, yes, but what Is the
point?"
I realize you're being much more specific than that, but I think I was equating "end of suffering" with "happiness", and that's why I'm seeing our questions as being similar. You may already have grasped that they're not the same thing.
ANYWAY -- a recent attempt to get to what I reckoned to be the heart of the matter was in
this thread. Unfortunately, my injudicious choice of the words "joy and excitement" initially got it heading off on a tangent. However, when I finally got my actual meaning out, I think one of
the most succinct answers came from Nick.
Basically, I asked:
Based on what it has cost you -- time, effort, whatever -- and what you have attained, how much would you recommend it? Is it really worth practicing as if my hair was on fire?
To which he replied:
I would not trade one day of this for a 100 years of being pre-all these brain changes. ... I would recommend actual non-stop practice of certain approaches and techniques ... It is worth practicing like your hair is on fire.
Hard to get a better endorsement than that.
Was he talking about "happiness"? Is that what he has "achieved". Dunno. The more I read, the more I practice, the more I wonder if the only way to know what "it" is, is to work towards and hopefully reach it. Could I describe, such that they "got it", the experience of love to someone who has never felt it? Or the experience of pain to someone who had forever been pain free? Or the experience of redness to someone born blind?