NOTHING MAKES US HAPPY EXCEPT SENSATIONS IN THE BODY

We fall into a subtle trap with our pleasures and desires. Nothing actually makes us happy except sensations in our bodies and
brains. We don't enjoy cookies, we enjoy the dopamine which is released. We don't enjoy getting a huge success at work, we enjoy the way it makes us feel. We can go only desire these sensations, not actual goals or achievements.

However, the feelings we experience upon attaining some object of our desires is actually the absence of desire, not pleasure itself. The absence of desire is itself the ultimate pleasure, and the more relative pleasures are only enjoyable because they afford us a momentary gap in our constant search for something else.

It's a bit like Heat and Cold.

Cold does not exist, there are only places lacking heat.

Similarly Happiness/Satisfaction does not exist there is solely the absence of desiring and grasping.

The abscence of desiring and grasping is itself Happiness and Satisfaction.

Steven Lubka