How were people like Buddha able to achieve perfect happiness without God?

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happiness he never stops searching for. - CCC 27

Wouldn’t this be the subjective element though?

They may be lacking a happiness greater than they perceive, but they weren’t searching for that.

The CCC says they will never find what they are searching for. If they believe they found what they were searching for (which people like Buddha said they did), wouldn’t that still show the CCC passage is at fault?

Maybe I’m just taking the CCC passage too literally?

I’m not questioning whether the Beatific Vision trumps any other happiness. I’m questioning if one really can’t find a happiness they are searching for without God.
 
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What do Catholics always say? There are truths in other traditions, but the church contains the fullness of Truth.

A lot of people stop searching. Nirvana being like unto a state of nonexistence causes one to prematurely stop their search. They ignore, suppress, avoid, or otherwise move beyond all desire. That doesn’t mean that desire or urges never come.

From a Buddhist perspective, Nirvana is total detachment and a total emptying of oneself. From a Catholic perspective, true happiness requires that we detachment from the material so that we might be filled with that which is immaterial.
 
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So I just posted but for some reason my post needed reviewing by a mod before it could be published, no,idea why, maybe some quirk.

One can achieve happiness in other ways but we seek salvation first and happiness second maybe even third!

I read something, it said I want happiness, take away I, take away want, and what’s left? Happiness. But I’d say NOT necessarily salvation, and that’s the big difference. The word worship isn’t there, nor prayer etc.
 
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I lived as a Buddhist for a number of years, and my understanding (other branches of Buddhism may disagree) was that the only person who for sure achieved enlightenment/Nirvana was the Buddha himself.

That said, the question of happiness has coincidentally been one I’ve been wrestling with quite a bit in recent years. I still don’t know that I have the answer to that one.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
And some of the saints who had the closest relationships with God had miserable lives on earth that they had to overcome over time. They didn’t just go through their days of dealing with serious illnesses, pain, miserable family situations, loss of loved ones, and even just having to put up with other people who annoyed them, in a constant fog of happiness due to being so close to God. If they eventually found some happiness and peace in God, it was because they spent years working at that. Some of them were never really happy until death.
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Good point. I never put this together.

With that in mind, would this mean that the CCC 27 is talking about perfect happiness in terms of the afterlife?

If that’s true, then the teaching would still hold up because a Buddhist may have attained 100% happiness in this life, but once they die and go into the after life…party’s over. (if they died in mortal sin, of course)
 
The Church wholly adopts the philosophy of Aristotle where the final goal of man is happiness.
That does not mean “warm fuzzies” as some have derided.
It has always involved a peaceful contemplation of life which can only come about through a life well lived in harmony with the world and others.
This is clearly what Buddhists strive for.

If they find it then clearly they have also found God in some way even if they do not have explicit conscious knowledge of this or of the historical Christ.
And it would also be clear that should Christ choose to personally appear to them they would be instant friends because if they have developed great virtue and harmony with the world and with others why would such a chosen trajectory fail when The Source of perfect happiness, the unknown perfection they have always sought, appears in person to them?
No doubt this could be seen as the unknown God they unknowingly worship that St Paul speaks of.
In my mind this revelation is what they will experience at death and so enter into their reward…perhaps ahead of many lax Christians with greater opportunities.
 
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Regarding CCC 27, some saints while on earth had lives full of trials, but they were happy when they got to pray, go to Mass, spend time with God, etc. and they were comforted in their trials by knowing God was there and that when they died they would be going to be with God. You can be happy with God for a little while in the midst of trials on earth, but true perfect happiness likely only happens when you become close to God. Then I imagine it’s like being in religious ecstacy all the time. And I imagine for most people that would only happen after death. Only a few people get to experience ecstacy for a short time while on earth, and it never lasts permanently, they come out of it.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Only a few people get to experience ecstacy for a short time while on earth, and it never lasts permanently, they come out of it.
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I think we can overestimate the ecstacy thing.
After 50 years of dedication to pursuing wordless prayer in the tradition of the western mystics and eastern hesychiasts I regularly find myself in carefree and peaceful tranquility with God on my contemplative walks, fingering my old Connemara beads while walking in the mall or boring moments in company. Its up and down of course, its not out of body ecstatic but its the fruit of my labours with God over the years. What more can one desire in this life until it is deepened and continuous in heaven? Surely this is within the grasp of all Christians…and why not Buddhists in their own ways. Even they say the jhanas (extreme spiritual experiences) are fluff not essence in this life.
 
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Well, yes but you experience that on your walk. Presumably you come back down to earth when you get home and have to do the laundry or deal with some customer service person on the telephone. In Heaven we will not have to break off our communion with God to deal with mundanities.
 
A person isn’t perfectly happy until they’re with God in the Beatific Vision.

It is possible for non-Christians to attain a high degree of holiness, depending on the decisions they make in life that cooperate with the light they’ve been given and the graces God gives them. This will naturally make a person happy.
 
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I dont believe I ever left the earth, that is my small point.🙂
Ecstatic prayer is overrated and not my goal, its fluff.
Maybe you goal is different.
Jesus would not teach us to pray unceasingly if it were not possible in this life, which is largely mundane.
 
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There is no “perfect happiness” while on this earth. Those who claim to have found “perfect happiness” without God are kidding themselves.

True happiness, total happiness, perfect happiness, is eternal and is only found in Him.
 
I’m not sure how this became about “my goals”. I don’t sit around trying to achieve ecstatic prayer. I’m not that presumptuous to think God would give it to me even if I did.

Many Western mystics didn’t try to achieve ecstacy either. It’s a gift that some of them received totally unexpectedly from God, a little foretaste of heaven that they were given for a while. For example, St. Bernadette Soubirous would go into ecstasy briefly when seeing the Blessed Mother appear at Lourdes. Bernadette was at a very low level of Catholic learning and it’s highly unlikely she had any sort of spirituality goal, or any goal really except just doing the work expected of her and trying to help her impoverished family get through the next day and next week. Her experience is hardly “fluff” but it is also not something she caused herself or worked for herself in any way. God just decided to choose her to receive visions.

So I really think we are talking about apples and oranges here.

Anyway, I’m out because I think I have said what I wanted to say about Buddhists and happiness, and I’m not really interested in debating about prayer.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Then I imagine it’s (happiness) like being in religious ecstacy all the time
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My experience suggests heaven may not be about continuous ecstacy as sometimes happens in this world that is all. You may be right too…who knows 🙂.
 
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Sophie111 said:
My experience suggests heaven may not be about continuous ecstacy as sometimes happens in this world that is all. You may be right too…who knows
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You are probably right:
Some people come to Zen expecting that Enlightenment will be the Ultimate Peak Experience. The Mother of All Peak Experiences. But real enlightenment is the most ordinary of the ordinary. Once I had an amazing vision. I saw myself transported through time and space. Millions, no, billions, trillions, Godzillions of years passed. Not figuratively, but literally. Whizzed by. I found myself at the very rim of time and space, a vast giant being composed of the living minds and bodies of every thing that ever was. It was an incredibly moving experience. Exhilarating. I was high for weeks. Finally I told Nishijima Sensei about it. He said it was nonsense. Just my imagination. I can’t tell you how that made me feel. Imagination? This was as real an experience as any I’ve ever had. I just about cried. Later on that day I was eating a tangerine. I noticed how incredibly lovely a thing it was. So delicate. So amazingly orange. So very tasty. So I told Nishijima about that. That experience, he said, was enlightenment.

Source: Zen is Boring, Brad Warner
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rossum
 
I have always found the following saying helpful myself…
Before enlightenment chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment…chopping wood and carrying water 🙂.
 
Per the first post, Buddhists claim there is no God. In theory, they do. It certainly is interesting how in a way, they have a figure comparable to the Virgin Mary, that being Kwan Yin. Of all things, George Harrison described Hinduism as being a manifestation of the same religion when people talked about comparing it to Christianity.

Buddhism might have just the Buddha per one post above but they have the Bodhisattvas which seem like Saints.

And despite there central belief that the Dalai Lama has expressed as their being no God, I’ve heard “common people” who follow Buddhism say something like their God…that was the way, this Southeast Asian saw it and told me.

It’s certainly not a simple manner, I would in some ways, see Nirvana as striving to be nothing, you live a perfect life, you go into nothingness, you achieve Nirvana, if you don’t, then, you come back reincarnated (which respectfully, is not something I believe in, it doesn’t seem to fit into Roman Catholic faith).

Long post, I knew these Pureland Buddhists (one might look up the City of 10,000 Buddhas in Northern California). They certainly put a lot of emphasis on chanting.

But I’ve got to add in one more thing, their Monks, they beg for alms, it is my understanding that this is what some monks, even St. Francis of Assisi did, was ask for alms, accept food from wherever it came and that seems to be another odd parallel of Buddhism with Christianity, Monks!. And Monks largely taking a vow of poverty.
 
Victoria33 said:
Per the first post, Buddhists claim there is no God. In theory, they do. It certainly is interesting how in a way, they have a figure comparable to the Virgin Mary, that being Kwan Yin.
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Buddhism has tens of thousands of gods, see the first chapter of the Lotus Sutra. However those gods are not important. If you want to win the lottery then by all means pray to one of the gods. The Buddha isn’t interested in that sort of thing since you don’t need to win the lottery to attain nirvana. If anything all that money would be a distraction.
But I’ve got to add in one more thing, their Monks, they beg for alms, it is my understanding that this is what some monks, even St. Francis of Assisi did, was ask for alms, accept food from wherever it came and that seems to be another odd parallel of Buddhism with Christianity, Monks!. And Monks largely taking a vow of poverty.
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Historically there were contacts between Alexandria and Ancient India for trade. Indian artifacts have been excavated in Alexandria and Buddhist king Asoka is known to have sent missionaries to Egypt and the west. Poverty and begging for alms are characteristic of Indian monks (Hindu, Jain and Buddhist) as is the use of beads, usually 108 rather than the half-size 54 in a Christian rosary. It is worth noting that Christian monasticism seems to have started in Egypt, given its contacts with Indian culture.

rossum
 
They achieve happiness by stealing your own happiness. Reaping you of anything good about yourself for their own profits. Do not attempt to trust them. Try a serious prayer around them or just keep repeating the hail Mary prayer in your heart you will see how they will run .
 
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