Why Do Many People Live Very Happily and Not Feel Suffering?

Sentient beings have been drifting in the sea of suffering since beginningless kalpas and have long grown accustomed to it; they have never experienced true bliss, and without a basis for comparison, they have no awareness or awakening. The more ignorant sentient beings are, the less they know suffering, and they do not know their own ignorance either; thus they often take suffering to be bliss. To know suffering is the awakening of a Dharma practitioner, and the awakening of most Dharma practitioners comes from the Buddha's teachings. As long as one knows suffering, one will yearn for cessation and cultivate the path (nirodhābhiprāya-mārga-bhāvanā); sooner or later, one will exhaust suffering and its accumulation, thereby transcending birth and death and attaining liberation. Ignorance is the heaviest of all afflictions, and ignorant people are the hardest to deliver. No teachings enter them, no words do they understand, all exhortations are useless, and all skillful means and methods are rendered ineffective—they are like a stubborn stone that no salt or sauce can penetrate. Because of their ignorance, they have few other afflictions, few delusive thoughts, and few mental notions, but they also do not know to seek liberation. For such people in the human realm, if they cultivate meditative concentration (samādhi), they may perhaps quickly enter the stage of concentration of the desire realm, free of scattered thoughts, but deeper meditative absorption will be beyond them, because their ignorance and afflictions are heavy and do not correspond to the higher realms.