The fundamental motivation for secular economic activities is to satisfy personal material needs and ensure economic security. The emergence of large-scale markets leads to universal development of social division of labor, which changes the nature of daily economic activities in the market economy. With the introduction of division of labor, production efficiency has been increases so that the economy as a whole could produce more and consume more. Growth of output leads to higher income and more affluent material life of the people. However, life contentment of people doesn’t necessarily increase in pace with the increase in income and output. The fact that the increase in life satisfaction is incommensurate with income growth in the market oriented industrial world casts a question of the adequacy of welfare analysis in the orthodox economics studies. Recent development of “Happiness Economics” study challenges the orthodox’s “optimization” paradigm and endeavors to incorporate socio-economic or psychological factors in the study of economic “happiness”. However, the empirical studies or survey based study of “Happiness Economics” can only provide limited information regarding the determination of “economic happiness” of people living in specific time and location; it is incapable of drawing universal conclusion regarding what is happiness and how can people attain happiness. The current study aims to bridge this gap by introducing the Buddha’s teaching on happiness and economic activities. Contrary to the secular economic study that can only provide partial information on the determination of economic happiness, the teaching in Buddhism can illuminate a universal path to the attainment of happiness in every day’s economic life.
