Happiness is not the endless pursuit of pleasant experiences – that sounds more like a recipe for exhaustion – but rather the transformation of the mind to a state of inner peace and fulfilment.
It is about cultivating a way of being that allows us to weather life’s ups and downs with equanimity.
Matthieu Ricard, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill
We all feel that health is the natural state of the body.
Why do we not feel that happiness is the natural state of he mind?
Rupert Spira, You are the Happiness you Seek
The key to our deepest happiness
lies in changing our vision
of where to find it
Sharon Salzberg, Finding your Way
This is where we run into trouble in terms of being fulfilled… You have to make your own happiness, wherever you are.
Your job isn’t going to make you happy, your spouse isn’t going to make you happy, the weather isn’t going to make you happy… You have to decide what you want, and you have to find that way of doing it, whether or not the outside circumstances are going to participate in your success… You have to be able to create your own happiness, period.
Jonathan Fields, American author, in interview with Debbie Millman on the GoodLIfe Project
Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It’s like a vivid rainbow which you pursue
without ever catching,
or a dog chasing its own tail.
Although peace and happiness
do not exist as an actual thing or place,
it is always available and accompanies you every instant.
Don’t believe in the reality of good and bad experiences;
they are like today’s ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.
Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax
this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there –
open, inviting and comfortable.
Make use of this spaciousness,
this freedom and natural ease.
Don’t search any further
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.
from a ‘vajra poem’ by Lama Gendun Rinpoche, 1918-1997, Tibetan Buddhist teacher
Your notions of happiness may be very dangerous. Happiness can only be possible in the here and now. Go back and examine deeply your notions and ideas of happiness. So let go of what you believed yesterday. Let go of what you thought last week you needed to be happy. The conditions of happiness that are in your life now are enough.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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