In one of his Buddhist Geeks interviews from a few years ago, Kenneth Folk talks about how the mainstream Buddhist culture as practiced in the meditation centers was focused on making great human beings, and that he and others in the hardcore/pragmatic movement wanted to change the conversation to talk about technologies of awakening and getting the actual thing done.

Now that admirable progress has been made on this front - to the point where we have an internet forum now where lots of stream-winners (and beyond) are talking about their experiences and giving advice, to the point where stream-entry appeared in the New York Times a few weeks ago - perhaps we could change the conversation again and give more attention to the wide, complex topic of human happiness.

Last year, Thanissaro Bhikkhu gave a talk, Equanimity Is Overrated, in which he went after the idea, made popular by MBSR and books like Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance, that the key to ending unhappiness/stress was to place one's bare attention on the present moment and take everything that happens in an equanimous way. According to Thanissaro, there are two problems with the equanimous approach to happiness:

1. Equanimity is not the summum bonum of Buddhist practice. Nibbana is. Equanimity is merely a tool (amongst many) for getting there.

2. The Buddha offers many active ways we can deal with stress, not just passive acceptance or treating everything equally. Thanissaro then goes on to offer some of the Buddha's suggested techniques, such as working with the breath or fabricating a more positive experience using the power of thinking.

(And besides, equanimity is a fabricated state, too. Happiness, according to the Buddha, comes from reaching the unfabricated, which we accomplish by fabricating in a particular, skillful way.)

But the Buddha's message in the suttas is but one of many. It's striking - maybe even a bit overwhelming - how many spiritual messages of happiness there are out there. "Do X if you want to be happy." "Don't do Y if you want to be happy." Then you open another book, and there's a completely different message. And then you think you're following a particular path - like the Buddha's - only to find out that what you're doing is something else, so there's anxiety about not being authentic enough, and so you're told to just do "whatever works", but since you've never actually sat down to think about what it is you really want to accomplish and why, the injunction to "just practice" can actually lead to more unhappiness, not less.

I'm starting to come up with a new approach to cut through all of this: Find someone who has realized the change you want to realize, and learn everything from that person. There are a lot of problems with this approach, but it simplifies things. All you need to know is what you want and to find someone who has done it. Maybe that's not an easy thing to do, but it is simple. You don't have to bother with "what did the Buddha really mean?" or "what's authentic?" Just find someone who seems happy in the way you want to be happy, and copy what they did. If the ideal of the tradition you're working in is a monk, then you had better want to be much more like a monk than you are, because that's where the practice leads. If that's not what you want, then you should do something else.

What do you think?

I think that sounds reasonable, with the caveat that each of us has a different personality, background, psychology, intellect etc so that doing exactly what someone else did to achieve XYZ may or may not work the exact same way for another person. That may result in some frustration. If the other person says "do this exercise and get this result" and you do the exercise and don't get the exact same result, then what? Are they an idiot? Are you an idiot? Do you just need to work harder at it until it finally works? Who knows? You can run 100 people through the same 5 year program with the same guru and get 100 different outcomes - some who thought it was shit, some who woke up, some who got stuck somewhere along the way, some who go crazy.

But still, probably best to choose a practice/path that appeals to you in terms of goals and methods, if only because if you don't buy into it you won't apply yourself.

The caveat you raise is part of what prompted me to think of this approach. Despite all the warnings in MCTB about the emotion models, my guess is that most people who dive into this practice really think in the back of their minds that they will be happier once they reach 4th path or whatever. Some people are just drawn to far-out stuff, but I bet a lot of people think “Kenneth Folk’s depression went away at 4th path, so maybe my problem X will go away, too.” And maybe it will, and maybe it won’t. Do we have enough samples at this point to say something like that will happen for every person? How much do you have to be like Kenneth (or whoever – he’s just one example) to get that result?

I think happiness is what's advertised ("the happiness that is not dependent on conditions"), although there is still an emotional range within that. And both Kenneth and Daniel (and others) seem to be finding further levels of insight or liberation or whatever it is that they're finding. I haven't heard of anyone continuing to experience chronic depression beyond fourth path. Have you?

There is bound to be some trial and error, creativity and experimentation in everyone's path. In the beginning, practice is directed by craving or ambition. I find it becomes more open-ended as I go along, and I like that. It's less about getting what I want and more about discovery. It's more fun. But what do you want? Who has realized the change you want to realize?

I don't assume I know what people here - fourth path or otherwise - are going through or what's in their hearts.

No, of course not.

I think this is reasonable too. But personally I can relate better to a flip-side version of this: find those aspects or qualities of my own experience which are most authentic, clear, kind; which I therefore would like to live out on a moment to moment basis rather than living out other less authentic, clear and kind qualities; and then investigate deeply the dynamics in my own ways of being that lead to living out these different sets of qualities.

These two approaches are two sides of the same coin: finding those who already exemplify a lifestyle and way of being that express those qualities and capacities certainly can be an inspiration. Reading about or conversing with them about what they've learned of the unfolding process can be helpful.