What is Happiness?

by His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa, Jigme Pema Wangchen

What does happiness mean to you? What does it look like? How does it feel? Is happiness eating an ice cream on a sunny day or holding hands with the one you love? Is it being very successful in your work and gaining the admiration of others or material things? Is it an experience – a fleeting, sensory moment; or do you feel like it is some kind of mirage – elusive, seemingly just out of your reach? Could happiness perhaps be something deeper, more meaningful, something that might infuse your whole life and way of being with joy and contentment? Might it create a foundation of strength, positivity and kindness from which you can go about your day and which you could bring to your choices, words and actions as you make your way along life’s path? Could happiness be the reason things come together, rather than just the end result?

Life can seem very complicated, full of difficult choices and expectations, pressure to be this, that or the other. But at the heart of each day, for each and every one of us, there is the hope that we will be happy and free from pain, both here in this moment and within our lives as a whole. We want to be rid of the nagging feeling of ‘not yet’ happiness – that somehow if we can get all the conditions in our life just right, then we will be able to put our feet up and finally be happy. We want to feel good and r relaxed in ourselves; we don’t want to feel that underlying nervousness or sense that somehow, things aren’t quite right. If we could just stop running around, we have a feeling that happiness might well find us, and yet we can’t help but worry that if we stand still for a moment, we might not know what to do with ourselves.

Why do we seem to find so many obstacles in the way of happiness? And is happiness just a luxury anyway – something that it is selfish for us even to think about?

I don’t think I have to convince you that happiness matters. I only have to ask you to look into your heart. And it’s really quite a wonderful thing because one person’s happiness has the potential to make another person happy, and the more people who are happy, the more chance we have to make the world a better place. Happiness affects all aspects of our lives: it gives us an advantage in our work, it helps us to be more healthy, it deepens our love for those close to us, it makes us more friendly to our environment, it makes us kind and caring people. These are all the extra bonuses that come with happiness; and happiness itself is a benefit of becoming closer to our inner nature, when we peel away all the layers of opinion, pride, self-criticism, expectations, hopes and fears that have built up over time. The tools offered later in the book all help to cultivate a happy state of mind and may be applied to all aspects of our lives, from being able to see situations from another point of view, to freeing the mind of comparison or complaint.

And the best news of all is that you are your own boss when it comes to happiness, however much you might think that other people pull the strings. It might take a bit of practice, but when you realise the true source of your happiness, then you can become great friends with it and share it with those around you. It can become a catalyst for great change, great love and great kindness.