or satisfaction), but about the lack of desire. It arrives when you have no
urge to feel differently. Happiness is the state you enter when you no longer
want to change your state.
However, happiness is fleeting because a new desire always comes
along. As Caed Budris says, “Happiness is the space between one desire
being fulfilled and a new desire forming.” Likewise, suffering is the space
between craving a change in state and getting it.
It is the idea of pleasure that we chase. We seek the image of pleasure
that we generate in our minds. At the time of action, we do not know what
it will be like to attain that image (or even if it will satisfy us). The feeling
of satisfaction only comes afterward. This is what the Austrian neurologist
Victor Frankl meant when he said that happiness cannot be pursued, it must
ensue. Desire is pursued. Pleasure ensues from action.
