Truth of Happiness

Upon reading the ambassadors recent post about happiness, I couldn't help but think of the Buddhist word "metta," which roughly translates as love, or lovingkindness.
In Sharon Salzbergs book Lovingkindness she discusses not only metta and how it differences from passionate love and especially from desire, but also about practices of metta. She suggests certain phrases to repeat to oneself while meditating. They start with wishing happiness and peace et cetera for oneself, and move on the wish these things for your friends, aquaintances and eventually enemies.
I'm trying not to be overly verbose with this post, I plan to move onto Ideologies of a Visual Culture shortly for my next post, but I felt what the ambassador said was enlightening and must be acknowledged. So I will try to sum up what Salzberg says quickly, I do suggest people read it however.
Anyway, Buddhism also has a strong understanding of the oneness of everything, and it seems that if we attain happiness for ourselves we can some how share that happiness with the rest of the world.
Important to keep in mind is that metta is not desire. It seems that desire leads to material things and as the ambassador was saying, that is far from an eternal happiness.
Lastly, I want to draw attention to ignorance being bliss and see if I can combine a Taoist thought with a Buddhist thought.
The Tao Te Ching repeated tells us that the enlightened one is least versed in text book type knowledge (if you will, cutting many corners here). It is through a lack of structured learning and knowledge that one becomes a "sage."
Metta tells us that happiness will not come from desire and objects or even activities that last a short while, but instead will come through an understanding of impermanence and unconditional love for everything.

-the colonel