Here are some extracts from the esoteric literature on a topic dear to all out hearts, happiness and how to find, maintain and eventually transcend it. No use being happy one minute and unhappy the next and a permanent state would be the ideal. Just as for ethical behaviour and an untroubled soul it is ignorance that would be the enemy, a failure to perceive ourselves and our world as they really are.
“It is possible to live in a state of stable happiness only when we are completely free of ignorance. Awakening puts an end to unconscious rebirth, and then the conditions and causes of painful effects disappear. This is the realization of a state of happiness which no longer depends on our external circumstances, nor on our emotions.”
The Dalai Lama
Reflections from the Journey of Life (2002)
“It would be absurd to think that happiness begins and ends with the living-body: happiness is the possession of the good life: it is centred therefore in Soul, is an Act of the Soul – and not of all the Soul at that: for it certainly is not characteristic of the vegetative soul, the soul of growth; that would at once connect it with the body.
A powerful frame, a healthy constitution, even a happy balance of temperament, these surely do not make felicity; in the excess of these advantages there is, even, the danger that the man be crushed down and forced more and more within their power. There must be a sort of counter-pressure in the other direction, towards the noblest: the body must be lessened, reduced, that the veritable man may show forth, the man behind the appearances.
Let the earth-bound man be handsome and powerful and rich, and so apt to this world that he may rule the entire human race: still there can be no envying him, the fool of such lures. Perhaps such splendours could not, from the beginning even, have gathered to the Proficient; but if it should happen so, he of his own action will lower his state. If he has any care for his true life; the tyranny of the body he will work down or wear away by inattention to its claims; the rulership he will lay aside.
While he will safeguard his bodily health, he will not wish to be wholly untried in sickness, still less never to feel pain: if such troubles should not come to him of themselves, he will wish to know them, during youth at least: in old age, it is true, he will desire neither pains nor pleasures to hamper him; he will desire nothing of this world, pleasant or painful; his one desire will be to know nothing of the body. If he should meet with pain he will pit against it the powers he holds to meet it; but pleasure and health and ease of life will not mean any increase of happiness to him nor will their contraries destroy or lessen it. When in the one subject a positive can add nothing, how can the negative take away?
But suppose two wise men, one of them possessing all that is supposed to be naturally welcome, while the other meets only with the very reverse: do we assert that they have equal happiness? We do if they are equally wise.”
Plotinus
Enneads I, 4
On Happiness 14-15
“True happiness does not depend on any external being or thing. It only depends on us.”
The Dalai Lama
Reflections from the Journey of Life
“Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice a small thing in order to obtain a greater one. If the circumstances are favourable, and we are led to choose between our own happiness and the greater happiness of other beings, then we should not hesitate to choose the latter.”
The Dalai Lama
Reflections from the Journey of Life
“We should never confuse happiness with pleasure.”
The Dalai Lama
Reflections from the Journey of Life
“Suppose the soul to have attained: the highest has come to her, or rather has revealed its presence; she has turned away from all about her and made herself apt, beautiful to the utmost, brought into likeness with the divine – by those preparings and adornings which come unbidden to those growing ready for the vision – she has seen that presence suddenly manifesting within her, for there is nothing between: all distinction fades: it is as lover and beloved here, in a copy of that union, long to blend; the soul has now no further awareness of being in body and will give herself no foreign name, not man, not living being, not being, not all; any observation of such things falls away; the soul has neither time nor taste for them; This she sought and This she has found and on This she looks and not upon herself; and who she is that looks she has not leisure to know. Once There she will barter for This nothing the universe holds; not though one would make over the heavens entire to her; than This there is nothing higher, nothing of more good; above This there is no passing; all the rest however lofty lies on the downgoing path: she is of perfect judgement and knows that This was her quest, that nothing higher is. Here can be no deceit; where could she come upon truer than the truth? and the truth she affirms, that she is herself; but all the affirmation is latent and is silent.
In this happiness she knows beyond delusion that she is happy; for this is no affirmation of an excited body but of a soul become again what she was in the time of her early joy. All the she had welcomed of old – office, power, wealth, beauty, knowledge – of all she tells her scorn as she never could had she not found their better; linked to This she can fear no disaster, nor even once she has had the vision; let all about her fall to pieces, so she would have it that she may be wholly with This, so huge the happiness she has won to.”
Plotinus
Enneads, VI. 7,
How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-Forms Came into Being; and on the Good
The World Knot 