The confused heart, having lost joy within itself, seeks…..consolation outside.
The more it seeks exterior goods, the more it lacks the interior joy to which it can return
Hugh Feiss, osb
Category: Look for Happiness
Being happy today 1: Joyfulness is in our own hands
Joy isn’t dependent on getting things, or on the world going the way you want, or on people behaving the way they should, or on their giving you all the things you like and want. Joyfulness isn’t dependent upon anything but your own willingness to be generous, kind, and loving. It’s that mature experience of giving, sharing, and developing the science of goodness. Virtuousness is the joy we can experience in this human realm. So, although what society is doing or what everyone else is doing is beyond my control -I can’t go around making everything how I want it – still, I can be kind, generous, and patient,and do good, and develop virtue. That I can do, and that’s worth doing, and not something anyone can stop me from doing. However rotten or corrupted society is doesn’t make any difference to our ability to be virtuous and to do good.
Ajahn Sumedho
All directions have a meaning
No matter what stories our mind may tell us in times of difficulty, all things are ordered and return to their home. We are calm deep down when we realize that our days have meaning in an overall rhythm and we are not isolated but have a place in the overall “family of things”
The wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver
What happiness is not…
Many people today assume that happiness implies the absence of suffering and struggle, as if a life of meaning, service to others or tormented but creative accomplishment is not also a happy life. Another misconception is that happiness must be sought and acquired, as if it were something special that is apart from ordinary, everyday life. It must be attained by fulfilling some requirement – perhaps by making more money or finding a new relationship – or by following some prescribed method or program of self-improvement. But happiness is right before our eyes, immediately available to us if we surrender to what this very moment offers, to what fate has put on our table right now. The happiness complex consists of the hope that happiness will come, if only….
Michael Gellert, The Way of the Small
The key to getting balance in our lives
Our task is to find a balance, to find a middle way, to learn not to overextend ourselves with extra activities and preoccupations, but to simplify our lives more and more. The key to finding a happy balance in modern life is simplicity
Sogyal Rimpoche, Glimpse after Glimpse
……and find joy in them
When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
Rumi
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