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Tuesday 6 January 2015

The Pursuit of Happiness is not a Pursuit


Happiness is something we learn to hold, rather than something that we must strive for. Spiritual practice teaches us how to hold happiness for longer and longer times. Without a spiritual practice, happiness spills through our fingers and is gone forever. Happiness is in abundance everywhere in our lives, in the beauty of nature, in the goodness of relationships, in the way the world embraces us with love each moment. So there is no need to go looking for it, or to try to gain it in some way. Rather, by living a spiritual path, we develop the capacity to experience happiness.

Most of us are not being accustomed to the feeling of contentment, because we are taught from a young age that we must suffer and strive, work hard and constantly try to be better. We do not recognize that happiness is what we yearn for. Spiritual practice develops the capacity to hold and experience happiness, like a tea cup or chalice, the Holy Grail.

Happiness is that quality which we all wish for in one way or another. We all want to feel fulfilled, joyful, content. However, recent studies have shown that people who crave happiness are less likely to achieve it. (The Pursuit of Contentment, Spirituality and Health, January/February, 2015),Seems ironic that the one thing we all run after is so illusive.

Perhaps it would help to really consider what it is that we yearn for so much. Happiness, fulfillment, joy are the opposite of trying to be happy, fulfilled or joyful. There’s the paradox, the more that we try to be happy, the less we will actually experience happiness.

Happiness is a complete state, it is a place where we are not comparing (I’m only a 6/10 on the happiness scale, not a 10), it is fully 10 out of 10 because to be happy is to be complete in the moment. There is not striving, trying to fix anything or anyone (most importantly oneself), it is devoid of ego thinking, it is all-inclusive, blissful and without criticism or thought. It is a whole (holy) expression of our god-self, in the moment, recognizing that what arises is enough. The thoughts about trying, ambition, criticism, comparing, discernment are all let go in an instant and we are simply fulfilled-there and then. This is the only way that happiness can arise.

Happiness is not given to us when we achieve something, some goal, some degree of achievement, or
recognition or wealth. Of course, as with all the stages of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs triangle, each level must be fulfilled to a satisfactory level before we can progress onto the next level. It is difficult to be happy when you are sleeping on a sidewalk in the winter. We need the basics first-good nutritious food that feeds our bodies and souls, homes where we can feel safe and comfortable, expectations that we will work and contribute in meaningful ways in our families and communities. However too attention at any level will imbalance your being and block the possibility of happiness in the same way that too little at any level will block good feelings.

If this one truth were more widely known our world, the wanton destruction of our environment would change in an moment. We are literally eating up our world, or rather our hungry ghosts are eating up the environment. For many are stuck at one of lower levels. The more they think they are deserving of happiness the less likely they will be happy. The more imbalanced they become in their surfeit collection of various feel-goodies , the less they are actually able to be content.

Many traditions have argued about how we can prepare for the experience of happiness. In Zen, two schools of thought duked it out for centuries, The Soto school one believed that the individual had to work really hard to achieve enlightenment (another word for happiness). The other school, Rinzai,  believe that happiness came in a flash without preparation or reason. Of course, both are correct-we have to struggled with all the work of being on a spiritual path and we also have to let go sometimes and just be our essential nature, fulfilled in the moment. The Buddhist eight fold path, is a highly structured practice of preparing the mind to receive light (enlightenment). But there are many stories about how after exhausting all the spiritual tasks of becoming a better person, the individual suddenly experienced great spontaneous joy which seemed to be independent of all their work This is because happiness is complete and does not compare past and future. It simply is.

Rick Hanson is an excellent writer on this subject and I encourage anyone who is interested in doing/not doing  the work that is needed to develop happiness go to his website or read his book, Hardwiring Happiness(2014).
Try This!
1.      Commit some time every day during the next week to your own happiness, developing the calm abiding mind that nurtures feelings of contentment and joy.

2.      Decide where and when you will do this. For example, every morning for five minutes while I’m drinking my first coffee, I will sit for five minutes and just feel blissful. Then do it, even if it feels weird.

3.      If feeling good as a theme less state is difficult, try feeling grateful. Grateful feelings are identified by brain research as the most flexible state of mind and new neural pathways are more easily created and maintained in a state of gratitude.

4.      During the day, catch little moments when you feel happy. They may slip by so quickly, like dreams, and because your mind state is habitually anxious or negative, you may dismiss these feelings as soon as you become aware of them. What was that? Yipes was I happy just then?


5.      For the next week, journal three times every day whenever you catch yourself being happy. Write about the quality of your mind in this state. I was walking along the board walk in the sun, and realised that I was perfectly content, not really thinking about anything. Noticing the warm sunshine was what  really propelled me into that experience.

6.      Don’t be deceived by the busy mind into thinking that being happy is this simple. It is simple and it is a lifelong work of noticing, focusing, clearing the mind of obstacles and living with right intentions and actions-all elements of a  spiritual path.


Joy in the journey!

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