Golux

As I see it there are two ways in which one may attain that ultimate goal of fulfillment. Either you fulfill your desires and thus creating happiness or you remove all desire from your life and create an inner peace. (a la Zen Buddhism (Thank you ARTelevision)) The question I posit to you is, is one form of happiness equivalent to the other? It will be very hard for us as creatures with desires to understand what a lack of all desire will be like since I am pretty sure that none of us have attained this inner peace.

If happiness through the fulfillment of your desires is only creating happiness because you no longer have a need for that object, then I would say that the two forms of happiness are equal. Otherwise, having desires and having them fulfilled can create a greater happiness than simply not having the desire in the first place.

If one has no desires to be fulfilled, one is complacent, not seeking anything because they have no reason to. The argument for this type of happiness is that one can never truly attain complete happiness since no one ever gets exactly what they want all the time, however if what you want is nothing, then you can always fulfill that desire.

What do you think?