---
tags:
  - primordial confusion 
---
# happiness

- primordial confusion
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recognizing [nirvana](nibanna.md) is not creating a perfect state where everything is perfect and blissful

sources of happiness can cause suffering, if you cling to them

for example if you have someone over for dinner who is wealthy and spoiled and serve them a spam sandwich they might suffer

if you ask them if they liked their spam sandwich they might respond, "i'm used to eating lobster"

often people keep struggling to raise the bar for their standard of happiness and it can cause constant suffering

## Fire Sermon

the Buddha teaches that craving and attachment are like a fire that burns within us and causes suffering.

!!! bug "Adittapariyaya Sutta"
    Bhikkhus, all is burning. And what is the all that is burning? The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.

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