According to the Dalai Lama, “the purpose of our life is to seek happiness”. Yet why are we not happier? What keeps us from being happier? There may be many reasons for this, but one reason stands out for me. We are looking for happiness in the wrong places. That is because we are deeply engrained to believe that happiness lies outside of ourselves. Our culture continuously reinforces this notion – consider the endless bombardment of media messages that flood our consciousness every day. The central theme of these messages is that if we can just get this next thing, then we will be happy. It’s like we’re all walking around with a hole in our hearts and we have to get that next object to fill the hole – to fulfill us.
The great wisdom traditions have been telling us something radically different than our conventional mode of thinking for millennia. Our happiness is within us. We don’t have to search outside of ourselves to find it. As the wonderful meditation teacher, Sylvia Boorstein, puts it, “happiness is an inside job”.
It’s not like there is anything wrong with getting the latest electronic gadget (substitute this with anything you like). It’s just that it will bring only fleeting happiness not a fulfilling happiness. Consider that real happiness does not depend on the conditions of our lives turning out a certain way. Our happiness does not depend on what’s happening but rather on our relationship to what’s happening. Let’s face it – stuff happens that is largely outside of our control; we experience loss, and misfortune, sickness and aging.
However there is a place where we do have control and that is in the way we respond to the events of our lives. At any given moment we have the choice to respond with a contracted mind filled with anger, fear, blame and worry or we can respond with an open mind filled with kindness, compassion and love. The choice is ours.
Try this as an experiment. The next time you feel irritated by something, step back for a moment and ask yourself what you can learn from this situation. What is the gift in this for me?
Just recently, I was helping my son unload a U-haul truck full of furniture into a storage room no bigger than a walk-in closet. We were trying to find a way to fit all of the furniture into storage but it just wouldn’t fit. I was getting tired carrying and moving the furniture around and I noticed that I was becoming increasingly irritable. Finally I decided to step outside for a minute. I asked myself what I could learn from this. The answer that came to me was that I can practice developing patience. To my amazement, the irritability fell away and I went back to work with a renewed sense of energy and vigor. My mind went from a contracted state to a relaxed and open state. After a few more tries, we succeeded in getting all of the furniture into storage with room to spare!
Thank you for all these beautiful, succinct essays, full of great leads to profound writers and thinkers. Fascinating and inspiring work.
I am glad that you are enjoying the essays.
David