Contentment is the greatest because it isn't!!!!!!!!!

I had it, and now I have it some more - except i don't!!

The master of my old temple used to say that "the wise value peace greater than pleasure" and that was the one thing I knew I didn't understand - I wasn't wise.

The thing is its obvious that the greatest thing we can ever attain is contentment because what are we seeking through all this pleasure, passion or suffering (passio = suffering)? We are seeking the bliss of contentment?

And what is contentment? It is not wanting anything MORE.

We experience this for brief moments after experiences of great pleasure and satisfaction. "My Muse" gave me this feeling, but then it used to go, and now I mourn its complete extinction.

And why does it go? It goes because we start looking for MORE. We may do this for a number of reasons - boredom being my worst, but also because we start to look at what we have got and compare it with others and so we start to see there is MORE.

Happiness only lasts as long as we haven't noticed it. As soon as we notice it we start to look at what made us happy and what we have got and suddenly it doesn't seem so much anymore.

We have a car or computer which does what we want and we feel satisfied, until we have a closer look at what we have. We give it a name and a price and then we see there are other things out there with better names and bigger prices so then we want MORE.

MORE is the driving force of the wheel which keeps us in motion and keeps our lives turning around and around forever. MORE is TIME.

A paradigm shift and suddenly the clock stops and we are content - yet nothing has changed? What was boring is now bliss!

When we accept what we have, when the garden was as fascinating as the whole world is today, and we don't put a name on it, and we don't rank it along side what "everyone else 'HAS'". When all things are like our own mother and father ... then the clock stops.

Emptiness is boring! Emptiness is neither better than other things and neither worse than other things because emptiness only exists when we don't compare it with other things. Differ'a'nce, difference, is what makes the world and it is what makes the wor'l'd unsatisfying. Try to give a name to emptiness and it suddenly seems like "NOTHING" and then we are unsatisfied and bored.

It is not that what we have is bad - it is that we tend to give it a name and a price and so compare it with others. Hugh Heffner is not a bad man, he is a monk, that is if he does not compare himself to others and think he has done well and is satisfied. Likewise the ascetic wandering shaman is not a monk if he looks at Hugh Heffner and thinks he has more or less. Each is content when he has no need of MORE.

It is not what we have, but the existence of the attitude of MORE which is unsatisfaction, which is suffering.

Turning away from what lies outside our life and our reach and turning namelessly into what is within is that path to peace and that we must believe is the true path - for each movement out to check our neighbours lives and wives just to check they have not found something better and are not more happy is the moment of doubt which starts the wheel turning and the work and passion begins.

Very soon when everything we have has no name and no price, when it is just what it is and we care for it only in that it is boring and part of the furniture - that is when we are securely on the path to everlasting happiness and the highest attainment. Every moment of doubt that there is some mystery treasure that you may be missing out on, that is a moment of suffering, ignorance and poverty.