I don't get people who say buddhism is all about bliss and joy

To have a hope of becoming free of hell, you need to abandon all of the mundane pleasures; no more sex, enterteinment, music; no more humanity. The act of abandoning all those habits that brought so much joy for you during your life is so painful that you may end up secretly wishing that Buddha was just a liar or that all he said about hell and renunciation were things that were needed for that period and culture to mantain order in the sangha

I think you may not be understanding what the Buddha says. We view these habits as things that bring joy, when in reality they bring suffering. Or rather, it's more accurate that being dependent on them bring suffering.

Let me ask you this. Who is more secure in his happiness? The one who has to eat good food to feel happy? Or the one who no matter what he eat, can feel contented as long as it nourishes his body? What happens to the first guy when there's nothing good to eat?

The Buddha teaches that when you see matter, you have to see the matter to the conclusion. It's like if you pick up the handle of the cup, the whole cup must follow. Why does he teach people to contemplate impermanence? Because when you pick up something, you have to see how the thing you pick up changes. Ajahn Chah has a really apt analogy. Take a snake for example. Take one pair of the four pairs of worldly concern: pain and pleasure. Pain is the head of snake. Pleasure is the tail. If you pick up the tail of the snake, it will turn back and bite you.

Similarly, when you pick up sensual pleasure, what happens? You experience this very brief pleasure. But looking at it deeper, why did you even feel so compelled to experience that pleasure in the first place? Because you felt unease. Why did you feel unease? Because there was this craving inside you that threw a tantrum, disrupting the energy in your body. But what happens when you feed it? It comes back more often. It's like there's this stray cat and you feed it once. You see it come back more and more frequently. When you don't feed it, it goes and ruins your yard, so you give up and feed it some more. At some point, it causes so much trouble that you don't know how to deal with it--feeding it or leaving it alone, it feels like you just lose.

To have it make more sense from our perspective, consider a cigarette addict. When he feels unease, cigarette suddenly makes him feel better. But what causes him to feel unease in the first place? It's his addiction. When he first picked up that temporary dose of pleasure that's a cigarette smoke, the rest of the suffering followed. Meanwhile, he goes and wrecks his body in a misguided attempt to gain ease. The only difference between us and him is that our addictions are considered normal, and not only normal but are encouraged.

But if you consider the matter more closely, the issue started earlier than that. This body of ours is hungry all the time--all you can do is feed it. It gets dirty and smelly all the time--all you can do is wash it. It takes so much trouble to maintain. It carries illness and pain. Despite all our effort, it goes ahead and decay, causing much pain, suffering, and sorrow in the process. How did it all start? Because we picked up birth. That burn on your body feels painful because you picked up the body. The Buddha teaches that the body is not self so that we can see these points.

I often recommend The Five Contemplations to people. The reason is this. Without being mindful of aging, illness, death, separation, and karma, you get intoxicated by youth, health, and life, and are not heedful of changes and consequences, just to nourish the things that are temporary rather than the things that bring you long-term welfare.

In any case, it's not like the Buddha told us to just drop our addiction, because it doesn't work that way. If you just tell a cigarette addict to quit cold turkey without having him replace the habit with something, he'll just rebound back. Similarly, the Buddha laid down a graduated training. But the first point is that you have to see the danger in your habit and the benefit of weaning off that habit. You have to see this point: you don't need those things to be happy--there are better things.

This weaning off process is summarized in this Ajahn Chah's quote: "The teaching of Buddhism is about giving up evil and practising good. Then, when evil is given up and goodness is established, we must let go of both good and evil." You gradually give up selfishness, pride, covetousness, malice, sensual pleasure, etc., by nourishing yourself with the happiness found in generosity, metta, meditative stabilization, etc. You give up tobacco and donut because a balanced diet of vegetables, rice, and beans are more nourishing and conducive to long term well being. That's the first step. The process should be gradual.

Why is sila the foundation in Buddhism? For two reasons. The first is that like a body weakened by un-nourshing food can't do much work, the mind needs good nourishment to do its work--that's from the ethic component of sila. The second is that even if you gain a little bit of bliss or happiness in meditation or through good thoughts or good act, without the discipline component in sila as the foundation, you just lose it right away as you go through daily life because your habit is to pick up something that causes you to lose ease.

/r/Buddhism Thread