Sukha means happiness, pleasure, ease, joy or bliss, in Sanskrit and Pali. Among the early scriptures, 'sukha' is set up as a contrast to 'preya' meaning a transient pleasure, whereas the pleasure of 'sukha' has an authentic state happiness within a being that is lasting. In the Pāli Canon, the term is used in the context of describing laic pursuits, meditative absorptions, and intra-psychic phenomena.
Etymology
According to Monier-Williams, the etymology of sukha is "said to be su + kha and to mean originally 'having a good axle-hole'...." Thus, for instance, in the Rig Vedasukha denotes "running swiftly or easily". Sukha is juxtaposed with dukha, which was established as the major motivating life principles in early Vedic religion. This theme of the centrality of dukkha was developed in later years in both Vedic and the offshoot Buddhist traditions. The elimination of dukkha is the raison d'être of early Buddhism.
In the Pali Canon and related literature, the term is used in a general sense to refer to "well-being and happiness" in either this present life or future lives. In addition, it is a technical term associated with describing a factor of meditative absorption and a sensory-derived feeling.
General life pursuit
In the Pali Canon, the Buddha discusses with different lay persons "well-being and happiness" "visible in this present life" and "pertaining to the future life", as exemplified by the following suttas.
Anana Sutta
In the Anaa Sutta, the Buddha describes four types of happiness for a "householder partaking of sensuality" :
the happiness of earning wealth by just and righteous means
the happiness of using wealth liberally on family, friends, & on meritorious deeds
the happiness of debtlessness be free from debts
the happiness of blamelessness, to live a faultless and pure life without committing evil in thought, word, and deed
Of these, the wise know that the happiness of blamelessness is by far the greatest householder happiness. Economic and material happiness is not worth one sixteenth part of the spiritual happiness arising out of a faultless and good life.
Kalama Sutta
In the Kālāmā Sutta, townspeople ask the Buddha how they are to ascertain which spiritual teaching is true. The Buddha counsels that one should "enter and dwell" in "things" or "qualities" that are:
skillful,
blameless,
praised by the wise, and
when put into practice, are conducive to well-being and happiness
Using the latter criterion, the Buddha then asks the townspeople to assess greed, hate and delusion whereby it is agreed that entering and dwelling in non-greed, non-hate and non-delusion lead to well-being and happiness. The Buddha states that, given this understanding, a noble disciple pervades all directions with lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity ; and, by doing so, one purifies oneself, avoids evil-induced consequences, lives a happy present life and, if there is a future karmic rebirth, one will be born in a heavenly world.
Dighajanu Sutta
In the Dighajānu Sutta, Dighajānu approaches the Buddha and states: In a manner somewhat similar to his exposition in the aforementioned Anaa Sutta, the Buddha identifies four sources that lead to well-being and happiness in the current life:
productive efforts in one's livelihood,
protective efforts regarding ones wealth in terms of possible theft or disaster,
wisdom, having insight into the arising and passing of things.
Mettā practice
As indicated above, in the Kālāmā Sutta, the Buddha identifies the practice of the four divine abodes as being conducive to one's own well-being and happiness. The first of these abodes is mettā which is, for instance, classically expressed in the Pali canon's Karaniya Mettā Sutta by the sincere wish : Similarly, the Pali commentaries explicitly define mettā as "the desire to bring about the well-being and happiness " Thus, in Buddhism, to dwell wishing for others' general happiness is conducive to the development of one's own happiness.
Feeling attribute
In the Buddhist frameworks of the five aggregates and dependent origination, "feelings" or "sensations" arise from the contact of an external object with a sensory organ and consciousness. In the Pali Canon, such feelings are generally described to be of one of three types: pleasant, unpleasant, or neither-unpleasant-nor-pleasant.
Absorption factor
In Buddhist meditation, the development of concentrative absorption is canonically described in terms of the following five factors:
applied thought
sustained thought
joy/rapture/happiness
happiness/pleasure/bliss
equanimity
As illustrated in the table above, both pīti and sukha are born of bodily seclusion and mental quietude. The Visuddhimagga distinguishes between pīti and sukha in the following experiential manner: Providing a bare-bones conditional chain of events that overlaps the above more narrative exposition, the Upanisa Sutta states that sukha arises from tranquillity of the body and mind, and in turn gives rise to concentration. Citing traditional post-canonical Pali literature related to this discourse, Bodhi adds the following functional definition of sukha:
As a characterization of awakening
entails the foundational extinction or "blowing out" of the processes of unwholesome desire, aversion, and delusion. From the perspective of awakened experience, the latter deleterious processes are appreciated as "agitations" of the mind. In comparative contrast to such agitation, sukha and its cognates are at places in the Pali Canon used to characterize the calm of Nibbāna, the "Unconditioned," as a bliss:
Sanskrit literature
In the Yoga Sūtras, Patañjali uses the word 'sukha' when he defines asana as the balance between "Sukha" and "Stirah".
Neuroscientific basis
Some researchers have proposed that a "shift" in the activity of the medial prefrontal cortex is what supports a state of inner fulfillment and equanimity.
