Happiness

by Ringu Tulku Rinpoche

The word “happiness” seems to have many different meanings. Opinions about it change from place to place and person to person. For some of us happiness may be wealth, for others it could be good health or success. In countries all around the world, there are people who are happy simply to be safe from violence and attack. For those of us who are fortunate to have the basic necessities of life and security perhaps happiness is having no emotional problems, but how do we solve all our problems?

Our attempts to achieve happiness in the past have generally been motivated by self-interest and self-protection. We have followed the path of desire and attachment. This path is chosen from ignorance and it has many liabilities. Our desire for happiness can never be separated from our fear and dislike of unhappiness. The compulsive search for pleasure always includes aversion to any pain or discomfort. When we say, “I want to be happy,” we are also saying, “I do not want to be unhappy.” Everybody is like this. We are all running after good things while running away from unpleasant things. It is this dilemma that we are trying to overcome with Mind Training.

So much of our distress and suffering comes from the unrealistic expectations and negative reactions produced by our own mind. Our desire creates possessiveness and grasping as we fasten on to certain objects, people, or experiences for gratification. When objects satisfy us we become attached to them. The stronger our attachment, the tighter our grip and the more anxious we feel about defending our territory and possessions. Whatever we care about is idealised and must be kept safe. If our craving for something is frustrated or disappointed, we respond with aversion. When an object does not satisfy us, we angrily reject it. Deciding that it was the wrong thing all along, we set off again in pursuit of a different objective: something else, something better, something new.

Our attachment and aversion produce other negative emotions. We feel pride when our expectations are met or jealousy and envy if we do not achieve what we hoped for. The aversion we feel when we cannot get what we want or keep what we think we need arouses fear. Fear is a basic element in unhappiness. The more aversion, the stronger our fear. We can try to avoid the things that annoy or frighten us but the aversion continues. Aversion emerges from past memories and in anticipation of the future. Even if we have no worries now, we expect trouble to appear once again and mistrust what lies ahead of us. Negative reactions remain in our mind after a disagreeable experience is over and we are always able to recall hurts from the past. There is no escape because aversion is our own creation and trying to eliminate upsetting things only makes the aversion more relentless.

The external situation alone is never the deciding factor in our unhappiness. It is our inner attitude that determines whether we will suffer. If we felt no aversion towards anything, there would be no suffering. For example, when we walk into a room and judge that it is too warm or too small or badly furnished, we have defined the room as uncomfortable and made ourselves unhappy. The room itself is unimportant. It is the mind’s aversion which produces our dissatisfaction.

The root of aversion is our faulty thinking and this can be corrected. We can improve our attitude by adjusting our way of seeing things. Our joys and sorrows are not outside us and beyond our control. Happiness comes from inside us. We create it ourselves by learning to react more positively to the challenging things we encounter in life. It is our decision whether we are going to be happy or not. Being happy is a habit we can learn.

As we activate positive feelings, they grow stronger and more positive. A story which illustrates this very well tells about a Chinese lady who cried all the time, all day, every day. If it was sunny, she cried and when it rained she cried. Her friends asked her why she was always in tears and she replied, “Because I am sad!” They could not understand what she was so unhappy about until she told them, “I worry about my two daughters. One sells paper sun umbrellas and the other sells rain boots. When it is sunny, I cry because my daughter who sells boots will go out of business and I am afraid her children will starve. When it rains, I cry because my girl who sells sun umbrellas will have no customers and no money to feed her family.” One of her friends said to her, “That’s crazy. You should think of your daughter who sells rain boots when it rains and remember the other daughter who sells paper umbrellas when it is fine.” She had never looked at it that way before and from then on she was content.

The positive attitude and habits which we develop through this practice are very fragile at the beginning. We have to slowly open to them. It takes time, but steadily we can begin to discard the negative patterns which have stood in the way of our happiness for so long.