How can there be no self and there be happiness? Who is the one who is being happy if there is no self?
You are no longer attached to trying to achieve it. It comes as a result of letting go of attachments. It is a natural state of being. Total bliss.
When I die, my body will become one with the earth, but that’s not something to write home about, and is nothing to look forward to. And it’s no more attactive a concept that my mind and whatever elements there are to my spiritual nature would dissolve and become one somehow with an unseen realm.
In Buddhism, the body matters not. We are all a part of the whole. We are not the whole. Imagine a bicycle. Take the gears for instance. Are the gears the bicycle? No. But they do however make up part of the bicycle. The gears, along with the spokes, wheels, etc. make up the bicycle. Separately they are not the bicycle, but together they make it up. This is how Buddhists view existence. We are not separate. We are a part of everything.
The Apostle Paul say that in God we live, move, and have our being. From the Christian perspective, we are and always will be a separate thing, but there is still a “oneness,” but one of uniting, and not one of annihilation as seems to be with the belief as stated here
And from a Buddhist perspective, we are not separate. It is not annihilation Thomas. This is a misconception. When we see ourselves separately, there is ego attached. We define ourselves by this and that. We need to shed this and that. We see ourselves as a part of a much bigger picture. There is no end. We are constantly changing. Nothing is permanent. Our bodies are not permanent. They are just a vehicle. They dissolve, when we die, to become once again part of everything. I think this is a beautiful way to look at life and death. Once we no longer cling to life (usually the final attachment) we are able to end the cycle of rebirth and achieve our ultimate goal of bliss or Nirvana. We no longer try to find ‘things’ to bring us happiness. Happiness comes naturally. We just are happy without trying.
Again Thomas, The Buddha has cautioned us from trying to articulate exactly what Nirvana is. He said we cannot, as humans, put it into words. Much like Christianity when you reach Heaven. Do you know heaven? You can imagine what it may be like, but it is difficult at best to try to explain.
How can a person be “all”? If I reach Nirvana and you reach Nirvana and Joe Blo reaches Nirvana, then are there three who are happy? If so, then there is not true “oneness,” and if not, then someone isn’t happy, because someone no longer
If all three of the above reached Nirvana, for them it is bliss. And again, you are trying to dissect this too much. Of the three, if they reached Nirvana. not one of them are without bliss. No one is unhappy as they’ve reached their goal. Existence is not permanent. If we were unhappy because we no longer exist, we would not have reached Nirvana.
My mind has changed many times. I was born with no beliefs, no knowledge. I then learned to walk and talk. Then I went to school and I learned to read and write. Then I went to high school, and I learned Science, English, Maths, French, Geography, PE, Music. I then went to college and I learned advanced science, advanced maths and advanced computing. I then went to university and I learned Philosophy and Logic. In terms of beliefs I was born Sikh, I went to the temple with my parents and prayed to god. Then I left Sikhism and became an atheist. Then I rejected atheism and became a spiritualist. Then I reject spiritualism and became a Hindu.