Hi.
This is a little piece on the idea and practice happiness.
I would like to start off with a few questions. The questions I'm going to ask you are very, very simple., and I promise you'll be able to answer these.
Your first questions is -- Are you having a good day? Alright. My second question for you is: Why?
If you're having a good day, why are you having a good day? Or if you're having a bad day, why are you having a bad day?
So, I have one more question for you.
This should be the easiest one of all. My last question is: Tomorrow, would you rather have a good day, or would you rather have a bad day?
What about the day after tomorrow?
Would you like to have a good day or a bad day on Monday? Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? Friday? This time next week? A good day or a bad day? So that last question, like I said, is probably the easiest one for us to answer, because we know the answer to that, don't we? We want to have a good day, everyday. Did anyone by chance answer, "Yes, I want to have a bad day on Monday"?
Of course not.
We all want to have a good day everyday. So this is really speaking to the type of happiness that we all wish for in our heart of hearts. We have a good day when we're happy, and we want to be happy everyday. There's never a day when we don't want to be happy. But whether or not we have good days or bad days really depends upon how we answered the second question. Do you remember the second question? What was the second question? "Why?" Why am I having a good day? Why am I having a bad day?
Note this: "Much of the time our mind is like a balloon in the wind, blown here and there by external circumstances." Do you know that feeling?
When things are going well, when they're going our way, we feel happy. But then if something goes wrong, for example, if we're forced to work with someone we dislike, or if something doesn't go our way, then our happy feeling disappears.
So as long as our answer to the question "why am I having a good day?", or "why am I having a bad day?" As long as our reasons for why we had a good day are a list of external conditions, then we're not going to have this stable happiness that we all want.
Does that make sense to you?
Because if that's what our happiness actually depends upon -- because we cannot control people and circumstances every single day -- then our happiness will be in the hands of others, won't it?
It'll be at the whim of our circumstances. So if you really wish to have a good day everyday, we've got two things we need to do. So the first thing that we need to do is we need to stop outsourcing our happiness and outsourcing our unhappiness on the people and circumstances.
In other words, we need to stop attributing our happiness to what's going on externally, and we need to stop blaming others, -- especially blaming others -- for our unhappiness.
As long as we do that, as long as we're making it the job of people and circumstances to make us happy, or as long as we're making it their fault when we're unhappy, our happiness will be very unstable, and illusive.
Our second job is to actively cultivate a source of peace and a source of happiness coming from inside our own mind.
Here's something I want you to commit to memory:
Happiness and unhappiness are states of mind; and therefore their real causes cannot be found outside the mind
So if we have a peaceful state of mind, we will be happy regardless of people and circumstances. If our mind is unpeaceful or agitated, then even if we have very good circumstances, we'll find it impossible to be happy.
In other words, it's not what is happening that is making us happy or unhappy; it is how we are responding to those things that determines whether we're happy or unhappy.
It is what our state of mind is like that determines our happiness or unhappiness.
So how are we going to do this?
We can all understand this intellectually. It's not rocket science, is it? It's not hard to understand. And maybe, to a certain extent, as I tell you these things, you're like, "Yeah , I knew that already."
How do we cultivate this stable peace of mind that we can rely upon, regardless of the external circumstances?
This is really where meditation comes into play.
Meditation is a mental action. It's the mental action of concentrating on a peaceful positive state of mind.
If we concentrate on a peaceful positive state of mind, then we can say we're meditating.
It's only meditation if I'm actually focusing on a positive peaceful state of mind. This is called formal meditation. But we can also learn to do this all the time in our daily life.
Are you up for it? Just a short meditation....
So now, I'll ask you to just sit comfortably, and place your feet flat on the floor, and your hands within your lap. And then you can lightly close your eyes and become aware of the sensation of your breath, at the tip of your nose. And as you breathe out, you can imagine you're breathing out any agitation, any mental busyness, any frustration or unhappiness in your life.
Breathing it all out, like dark smoke. And as you breathe in, you can imagine and believe that you're breathing in a clear, bright light, which is a very nature of inner peace.
And you can imagine that this clear, bright light fills your entire body and mind.
And for a few seconds, simply enjoy this inner peace coming from within.
Now, as we finish, just be determined to bring this inner peace with you into the rest of your day to benefit yourself and others.
Now, we rise from meditation.
Try this a few times, or many times,, It's all to your own benefit, and our collective benefit.
Thank you very much for reading