What is Happiness
To generate lasting happiness, we need to know where happiness is. Everyone is made happy in different ways, but there is a common element to each form of happiness. That common element is the key to ending anger and suffering, and enabling lasting happiness. The common element you ask, is that happiness comes from within.
Short Term Happiness
The “External World” is a form of stimulus that reacts within us allowing us to be happy. Human nature seems to be reliant upon these external factors to allow us to be happy, temporarily. As we all have experienced, there comes a time, where the thing that made us happy goes, and we are then no longer happy. There is a deeper, lasting happiness just around the corner that does not require anything for you to be happy.
Finding Lasting Happiness
As we’ve discovered, the key to happiness is within and anything external will not last. Thus, the key to cultivate our lasting happiness must align to something within also; the mind. In Buddhist practice, this cultivation is called Right Thinking(or Intention), which is part of the Noble Eightfold Path.
It’s Your Expectations That Make You Unhappy, Not Reality
When you set expectations, regardless of what they are, you will eventually become unhappy. That expectation is not reality, it is something you want or crave in your mind.
If you hope it will be a nice day and it rains, you’ll become unhappy.
If you expect a large present and you get a small one, you’ll become unhappy.
If you think you’re going to eat Thai but eat Indian, you will become unhappy.
Developing Happiness
Right Thought is the ability to see and accept reality as it is. It’s the ability to not hope, expect or desire certain outcomes. When you engage reality, with no pre-conceived outcome in mind, regardless of how it plays out, you will be happy. It’s only when you contrast reality to something unreal in your mind that you become unhappy.
Story:Tall Plant, Small Plant or A Plant?
A classic story told in the tradition to illustrate this teaching is comparison of plants. Imagine you have a single plant by itself and enjoy it for what it is. It’s everything you wanted, it’s even flowering for you. Someone then places a “bigger” plant next to it with more flowers. Suddenly your perfect tree seems less perfect, it now seems inferior. Now imagine that same someone takes his bigger plant, and replaces it with another plant. This time a smaller, almost dead plant. Your plant now looks even better then it was alone.
Conclusion
The plant has not changed at all, yet your opinion changes like a rollercoaster based on comparisons. This is not accepting reality. When you accept reality as it is and simply see the plant as nothing more or less, regardless of what is placed next to it, you will have ever lasting happiness. You will no longer be trapped in games of bigger or smaller, you will become deeply at ease simply with reality as it presents itself. This is Lasting Happiness.
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