Happiness; Pure Land on Earth; Buddhism; East Asia
摘要
The current study aims to explore the determinants of happiness in the worldly life, with special interest on the association between religion and subjective life satisfaction. This paper first makes empirical investigation on the determinants of secular life satisfaction and tries to expose whether religion enhances life satisfaction. Given the empirical findings, this paper then discusses the general conditions associate religion and happiness and endeavors to illustrate the path to happiness in Buddhism.
On the empirical part of the study, this paper uses the data of 2012 East Asian Social Survey (EASS 2012), conducted on the societies of China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, to investigate predictors of adult life satisfaction and employs the methodology of ordered logistic regression (OLOGIT) in the empirical investigation. The empirical results indicate that religious people tend to be happier than non-religious. Moreover, biological characteristics of age, sex, and education attainment are not statistically significant predictors. However, personally perceived biological and socio-economic factors, such as self-placed social status, relative income compared with others, and self-rated health condition, are significant predictors of subjective life satisfaction. Furthermore, personal traits toward people and life correlate significantly with life satisfaction; that is, people who trust in the goodness of human nature and/or are willing to contribute to the society tend to be happier. With respect to employment status, unemployed persons tend to reveal lower life satisfaction whereas employed persons with part-time jobs tend to be happier than those who work full-time. Marital status also matters; married adults tend to be happier whereas people who are divorced tend to reveal low score of life satisfaction.
The last part of this paper discusses why there is positive correlation between religious belief and worldly life satisfaction, especially the efforts is to illustrate the Buddha’s teaching on the path to happiness. For the Buddhist, the Five Precepts and Ten Virtues are the foundation to secure worldly happiness; the Eightfold Noble Path and Six Paramitas is the guideline for happy livelihood. The Ultimost Bliss in Buddhism is accomplished by practicing cessation and clear observation (śamatha-vipaśyanā) to attain purification of mind, so that “Pure Land on Earth” is realized in worldly life.
