Everytime I log onto the SDMB I’m Happy.
I hope I don’t die Happy, but I guess if I did, I’d be surrounded by intelligent dopers.
Sometimes I’m Happy at work, but I’m sure my bosses would put a stop to that if they knew how often I was Happy.
In my day-to-day life no one even knows I’m Happy. I hide it well. My girlfriend doesn’t even know I’m Happy.
Since becoming Happy, I’ve learned quite a bit. But, I’m afraid, I’ve more times than not made an ass of myself whilst being Happy. I must learn to control my impulses.
Sometimes I’m Happy when I’m naked, but I’m not always naked when I’m Happy.
I think I’ve shared too much.
Best of luck, grasshopper.
Happy
The suggestion of IThinkNot reminds me of the Stoic position. Actually Stoicism has many similarities to Buddhism. The idea is that you live your life as a normal human being, but that you keep in mind that things are fleeting and temporary. So you should not get too hung up on things material and mortal.
Still I would not completely recommend stoicism. Especially in some of its later variants (Epicurus) it seems to distanced from real life to be attractive. Epicurus said (paraphrasing): if you see your wife or your child, think: this is a human being, so you won’t be so upset when they die. That is not the kind of life I would like to lead (being influenced by Martha Nussbaum’s The fragility of goodness, a great read if you like not-too-heavy philosophy and are not adverse to reading a lot of pages). You’d have to choose for the amount of passion and attachment you want to admit in your life: the more you let in, the more vulnerable you become. You cannot really have it both ways.
I still think there’s a misunderstanding from the OP on exactly what Buddhists seek. And of course there is more than one flavor of Buddhism.
To take a page from the Therevada Buddhists:
Life is inherently full of suffering. A wife and kids and a “normal” life will not bring you happiness - just the opposite, in fact. You will be heartbroken when your kids are sick, when your wife dies. The cause of all suffering is attachments - to your wife, your kids, your job, your physical comfort. The way to end all suffering and achieve true happiness is to end all attachments. And the way to end all attachments is to follow the Eight-Fold Path.
Merely dying, by the way, is insufficient to break free of suffering. You will be reborn, your attachments dragging back to this world of suffering for another go 'round.
The only way to break free of this cycle is to free yourself from all attachments. This will end the cycle of rebirth, and enable you to reach nibbana. Don’t confuse this state with a ‘heaven’. This is merely the cessation of all being. As the Buddha responded when asked what happens to a person who has reached nibbana: “What happens to the flame when the candle is extinguished?”
It is perfectly possible to be a Buddhist and not seek this end. In fact, Buddhists distinguish between “householders” - those who live ‘normal’ lives - and renunciates, those who are casting off things in an effort to free themselves from attachment.