This is related to a confusion I often observe between "being happy with how your conditions are" and "finding a happiness that doesn't depend on how your conditions are." I think Buddhism is fundamentally about the second thing. Maybe achieving the second thing requires cultivating the first thing to some extent, and/or maybe produces the first thing to some extent. But the end goal is not fabricate delight in saṃsāra. It's to have a something that, because of being unfabricated, delights independently of the specific conditions one has. I've always liked this discourse between Śāriputra and Udāyin, in which Śāriputra explains that nirvāṇa is bliss because saṃjñā and manasikāra are actually analogous to pain.
He says that to someone absorbed in the first dhyāna, the saṃjñā and manasikāra associated with sensuality appear analogous to ordinary pain from the perspective of absorption in sensuality; to someone absorbed in the second dhyāna, the saṃjñā and manasikāra associated with the first dhyāna are likewise analogous to pain for them; and so on going up to the absorption in the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception. All of these are states the enjoyment of which can be threatened by particular kinds of saṃjñā and manasikāra associated with lesser ones. But nirvāṇa is bliss because it cannot be threatened in this way, consisting in a "dimension," as it were (the nirvāṇadhātu as one sometimes sees it described) in which saṃjñā, vedanā, manasikāra, and so on, have no footing at all. Thus, it does not depend on maintaining some kinds of saṃjñā and manasikāra and avoiding others, as sensuality and all forms of dhyāna do.
Yes, that's a helpful distinction. I think East Asian Buddhism starts to blur it a bit – there's more there about being happy with your conditions – but it's always good to be aware of those sorts of distinctions. People get into all sorts of trouble when they read East Asian Buddhism onto South.
This is related to a confusion I often observe between "being happy with how your conditions are" and "finding a happiness that doesn't depend on how your conditions are." I think Buddhism is fundamentally about the second thing. Maybe achieving the second thing requires cultivating the first thing to some extent, and/or maybe produces the first thing to some extent. But the end goal is not fabricate delight in saṃsāra. It's to have a something that, because of being unfabricated, delights independently of the specific conditions one has. I've always liked this discourse between Śāriputra and Udāyin, in which Śāriputra explains that nirvāṇa is bliss because saṃjñā and manasikāra are actually analogous to pain.
https://suttacentral.net/an9.34/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=linebyline&reference=none¬es=none&highlight=false&script=latin
He says that to someone absorbed in the first dhyāna, the saṃjñā and manasikāra associated with sensuality appear analogous to ordinary pain from the perspective of absorption in sensuality; to someone absorbed in the second dhyāna, the saṃjñā and manasikāra associated with the first dhyāna are likewise analogous to pain for them; and so on going up to the absorption in the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception. All of these are states the enjoyment of which can be threatened by particular kinds of saṃjñā and manasikāra associated with lesser ones. But nirvāṇa is bliss because it cannot be threatened in this way, consisting in a "dimension," as it were (the nirvāṇadhātu as one sometimes sees it described) in which saṃjñā, vedanā, manasikāra, and so on, have no footing at all. Thus, it does not depend on maintaining some kinds of saṃjñā and manasikāra and avoiding others, as sensuality and all forms of dhyāna do.
Yes, that's a helpful distinction. I think East Asian Buddhism starts to blur it a bit – there's more there about being happy with your conditions – but it's always good to be aware of those sorts of distinctions. People get into all sorts of trouble when they read East Asian Buddhism onto South.