A Dangerous Narrative: "I am looking for happiness."

One of our, call it "epistemic," mistakes is to attribute sentience to our sense of self. To ascribe sentience, as such, to any phenomenon is an error that continues to support the erroneous notions of free will, substantial self-nature, and a denial of the conditioned nature of all phenomena. Sentience--or awareness, or whatever the most apt metaphor one uses at the time--is a distinct non-phenomenon that is a necessary aspect of all experience. One would not be wrong in saying that sentience is pure subjectivity. 

Allow me to add, that this "understanding" demonstrates the simple, yet often difficult to realize, fact that no one gets free nor does anyone get enlightened. It is simply, but not obviously, a matter of a sort of recognition that awareness has never been, nor will it ever be identified with appearances (phenomena). As such, awareness is and what remains the actual freedom that we paradoxically search or yearn for. One might even say that freedom is what is already the case for awareness, or pure subjectivity, and is not and cannot be an attribute of a person. The search for personal happiness is grounded in a misunderstanding of Buddhist or, dare I say, "authentic" spiritual teachings/teachers. Personhood, or selfhood, is a phenomenal and as such an ephemeral appearance only. Like sound or a candle flame, the so-called self or person is merely an apparition. This ephemerality of self-appearance is, in its appearing disappearing. If one cultivates a watchfulness regarding this phenomenon, one may detect the distinct nature of consciousness and realize that "it" has always abided in freedom. The biographical narratives, so prevalent in our cultural-historical reservoir (alaya-vijnana), have a tendency to "hook" consciousness making it appear that sentience belongs to the narratives. So, if the narratives declare that one is unhappy, miserable, suffering illnesses, etc. then the process of identification with phenomena leads to "personal" suffering instead of distinguishing the sky-like nature of awareness from the narratives and, surprisingly, the pain we suffer. (Of course this latter usually requires great skill and yogic practices that most of us have not cultivated. However, there are some few gifted who realize this constitutionally.) The "take-away" for us average folks is "Beware of Biography."