...No, You Really Don't Want Nirvana

Buddha believed in ultimate happiness. He believed that to find Nirvana you must free yourself from desire. This, of course, is complete bull. To quote the great philosopher Will Young, losing desire means you "lose the highs to be spared the lows." As such, all that can truly be experienced is an ultimate state of "meh." Besides, based on his depictions, Buddha was a fat, jolly man and a thin, serious one, making him a schizophrenic and about as trustworthy as Fox News.

We ourselves are proof that ultimate happiness is impossible. Our smiles last for only a moment, normally a reaction to something good, such as a funny joke or even a brilliant Bridget blog. However, this state of "good" lasts only a small amount of time. If it didn’t, each subsequent thing would have to be better than the last in order for us to feel as good about it, until the world became one happy, bouncy ball of bunnies and page three models, at which point there would be nothing to strive for. Everything would be good. And we would all be bored out of our freakin' minds. With nothing to make us feel bad we would have no reason to feel good at all. And as a loud noise eventually fades into the background, so too our good feelings would become dull and invisible. Plus, everyone smiling all the time would be just plain disturbing.

Finally, it is impossible to define the "ultimate" anything; one man’s trash is another man’s Holy Grail (Sorry for the poor analogy, what can I say I've been watching Monty Python!) Ultimate happiness means different things to everyone; one person becoming happy would mean another could not. At the very most only 50% of the world could be happy at any one time, at which point we'd have to take it in turns and be happy every other week. And this would be far from anyone's idea of ultimate happiness... unless, of course, they were a little bit Buddha.