It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

by Sylvia Boorstein

In this book, the principal tool, mindfulness, is invisible. Mindfulness, the aware, balanced acceptance of present experience, is at the heart of what the Buddha taught. This book is meant to be a basic Buddhist primer, but no one should be daunted. It’s easier than you think.

People had relationship problems, problems with aging parents; someone’s child had a very serious illness; someone else was dealing with a difficult kind of loss. And yet everyone said some variation of “I’m pretty much all right” or “I’m pretty content.” And it didn’t mean that they weren’t struggling with what was happening to them. It did not mean that they had transcended their stories and that they were fine because they felt no pain from them. They were struggling and often in quite a lot of pain and concern, but still, they were all right.

I’m pleased to think of myself as managing gracefully. It’s a whole lot better than ten years ago or twenty years ago when I was managing tensely or fearfully.

The First Noble Truth declares unflinchingly, straight out, that pain is inherent in life itself just because everything is changing. The Second Noble Truth explains that suffering is what happens when we struggle with whatever our life experience is rather than accepting and opening to our experience with wise and compassionate response. From this point of view, there’s a big difference between pain and suffering. Pain is inevitable; lives come with pain. Suffering is not inevitable. If suffering is what happens when we struggle with our experience because of our inability to accept it, then suffering is an optional extra.

I once heard someone say that a sign of enlightenment was the ability to say (and mean it) in any moment, “Well, this isn’t what I want, but it’s what I got, so okay.”

There is no way to be in a body, in a life, without pain.

The notion of suffering and the possible end of suffering is the central teaching of Buddhism. The Buddha himself said this to one particular student. The student, according to the legend, challenged the Buddha. He complained the Buddha had not taught him the cosmology or the philosophy he had hoped he would. The Buddha is said to have replied, “I come to teach only one thing—suffering and the end of suffering.”

It is possible to live happily. It is possible to cultivate a mind so spacious that it can be passionate and awake and responsive and involved and care about things, and not struggle.

When the Buddha taught his path, he said it had a specific number of constituent parts; people could be sure they were going the right way if they saw any one of eight special markers. These signposts are: Right Understanding, Right Aspiration, Right Action, Right Speech, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Concentration, and Right Mindfulness. Travelers seeing any of the signposts will know they are headed in the direction of happiness.

Whenever people talk about the Buddha’s formula for happiness, they start by talking about Right Understanding. Right Understanding means believing, at least a little bit, that even though life is inevitably disappointing, it is still possible to be happy.

I knew she was sad, but she appeared at ease. “Aren’t you upset?” I would ask. “I’ve done all I could about it,” she would say, “so there is no point in being upset.”

If things are painful and we cannot change them, we can, at least, be confident that our pain will not last forever. Often, it is the thought that pain will never end that makes it seem unbearable.

Right Aspiration is what develops in the mind once we understand that freedom of choice is possible. Life is going to unfold however it does: pleasant or unpleasant, disappointing or thrilling, expected or unexpected, all of the above! What a relief it would be to know that whatever wave comes along, we can ride it out with grace. If we got really good at it, we could be like surfers, delighting especially in the most complicated waves. What Right Aspiration translates to in terms of daily action is the resolve to behave in a way that stretches the limits of conditioned response. If I want to build big biceps, I need to use every opportunity to practice lifting weights. If I want to live in a way that is loving and generous and fearless, then I need to practice overcoming any tendency to be angry or greedy or confused. Life is a terrific gym. Every situation is an opportunity to practice. In formal Buddhist language, this is called the cultivation of nonhatred, non-greed, and nondelusion.

“I really don’t like these steps, Grandma.” “You don’t have to like them, Collin. You just have to go up them. Hold my hand, and we’ll do it together.”

Codes of ethics are most often associated with prohibitions: Don’t do this, don’t do that. All the spiritual traditions I know have more or less the same list of don’ts. This makes sense, since all the don’ts elaborate on the awareness that if we are not alert, our naturally arising impulses of greed and anger might lead us to do something exploitive or abusive. The fundamental rule is, “Don’t cause pain.”

Behavioral prohibitions are only half of Right Action. The other half is taking every opportunity to alleviate pain.

Right action is a permanent call. There is no balance point, where we’ve evened the score. If action is required and wholesome action can be taken, it needs to be taken.

“So-and-so is a very successful person” often means “So-and-so has accumulated a lot of money.” It doesn’t necessarily mean So-and-so is ethical or moral or happy. The Buddha’s teachings on Right Livelihood didn’t preclude affluence—he taught everyone, including kings—but it wasn’t based on wealth. It was based on wholesomeness.

Traditional instructions for Right Effort are straightforward. The Buddha used the special terms wholesome and unwholesome to mean that which leads to happiness and that which leads to unhappiness. The guidelines are: Notice when wholesome feelings such as friendliness, compassion, or generosity are present in the mind, and encourage them to grow. Practice acting on those feelings as a way of generating happiness. Notice, as well, when unwholesome feelings like anger and greed arise in the mind, and try not to encourage them to grow. Furthermore, the instructions suggest that such unwholesome feelings be put out of the mind.

Concentration practice strengthens and softens the mind. That’s not a paradox. It’s true.

Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of present experience. It isn’t more complicated than that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.

Mind states come and go. Even quiet mind states.

Our difficult mind states become a problem only if we believe they are going to go on forever.

it’s just the nature of the mind to scan the horizon for possible pleasant experiences and then dwell on them. It’s part of our conditioning.

Sometimes the mind seems saddened or frightened or angry with no discernible external event as a precursor; sometimes anger seems to arise just on its own. Sometimes we start the day, and the mind feels as if it got out of bed on the wrong side. It is the mind in a bad mood, the mind spoiling for a fight. There is some cause, of course, since everything is conditioned, but it need not be an external event. Perhaps we had a bad dream. Perhaps we didn’t sleep enough. Perhaps there was some hormonal shift in the body. Perhaps it’s the phase of the moon.

Sloth and torpor, when they are used in the context of one of the five difficult mind energies, are meant to describe a mind state of low energy. Because mind energies are always changing and fluctuating, low-energy mind states are part of everyone’s experience. Some people, for who knows what reason, find low-energy mind states a frequent experience for them. It does not mean that they are lazy people.

Sitting isn’t meditating. Sitting is sitting. Sitting with mind composed, with attention alert, and the faculty of investigation receptive to the awakening of understanding—that’s meditation.

Meditators with lots of sloth and torpor mind states don’t need to stop meditating. Recognizing that their mind state is just a temporary and transient experience, they can do all kinds of skillful things while they wait for it to pass. They can open their eyes. They can take deep breaths. They can sit up straight. They can do walking meditation instead of sitting meditation, because nobody falls asleep walking. Most important, they can not identify with the mind state as if it’s a reflection of them or their character in any way. They are not slothful people but people for whom low energy in the mind is a familiar experience.

We can, with practice, begin to decondition the mind from its unconscious reactivity. Even without changing the habitual tendencies, we can be alert to them and work around them. If the mind is clear and steady, we can recognize filters as being just filters and choose the most wholesome response.

One of the ways we build intimate relationships with other people is by sharing our fears with them, telling them the things that still frighten us. We learn to say to each other, “I’d like you to know this is my alarm button about being left, and I had it installed at a time when my mother wasn’t there to protect me from my fear of abandonment.” Our partners in relationship, as we begin to describe our own alarm wiring, can begin to acquaint us with diagrams of theirs. “As long as you showed me your alarm wiring scheme, here’s a blueprint for mine.” When we begin to appreciate the ways in which people have been frightened in their lives, we can be compassionate toward them rather than angry. Instead of saying, “Oh, I’m so angry I’m stuck with this person the whole rest of my life,” we can begin to feel, “Oh, I’m very sad that this person whom I feel so tenderly toward has all these awful buttons. How terrible it must have been for her or him to have needed to install all these alarm buttons for protection.”

“I’m okay” is self-esteem. “You’re okay,” nonjudgmental tolerance, is friendliness and probably comes from mild genes and kind parenting. “The universe is okay,” cosmic contentedness, we call faith.

You can’t see wisdom, but you can see its reflection. Its reflection is happiness, fearlessness, and kindness.

Spiritual practice cultivates the ability to hold the far-out view in mind, even when we are close-up and personal.

Lovingkindness, an awkward and somewhat quaint term in English, is the translation of the Pali word metta, which means complete and unrestrained friendliness. The Buddha taught that when the mind is at ease, it is friendly, congenial, well-wishing. The mind at ease likes nearly everybody. Even people who, because of who they are or what they do, are very hard to like, the mind at ease accommodates with compassion.

It might seem, at first glance, that metta practice, friendliness practice, is on behalf of other people. It is equally on behalf of ourselves. Friendliness is not hard. We don’t need to learn to be friendly. We need to remember to be friendly.

My friend Bob recently discovered that the penguins in the Galapagos are friendly, because they don’t feel threatened. “How am I feeling threatened?” is the question I ask myself when I’m not feeling friendly toward someone. There is always something.

Mindfulness is clear understanding of current experience, and my clear understanding was that I was alarmed.

Remembering the sphere-of-the-cosmos point of view, remembering earthrise from the moon, remembering the interconnectedness of all beings–all these remembrances make it possible to look more directly at pain. Perhaps it’s the necessary perspective for seeing pain clearly, for being able to stand it. Remembering our own special affinities, our own kinship feelings, our own heartbreaks in our personal stories, which seem so real and important, keeps us in this world, not out of it, caring deeply and acting kindly.

I have five grandchildren. For them, I would not hesitate a minute about a cliff decision. I’m not even especially proud of that because it’s not a big deal. Not doing it would be impossible. What would be a big deal for me is the next step, which is to remember always that everyone’s grandchildren are mine. Anyone’s grandchildren are everyone’s grandchildren.

I have become more passionate, not less. When I am delighted, which is often, I am ecstatic. When I am sad, I cry easily. Nothing is a big deal. It’s whatever it is, and then it’s something else.

I had two messages to deliver in this book. The first is about spiritual living. I think it’s plain. Ordinary people do it, and they don’t even know they are doing it. In the middle of plain lives, with regular joys and griefs, they live with grace and kindness and are happy. The second message is about wisdom teachers. They are all over the place. I noticed as this book evolved that many of my teachers were people in airplanes. I briefly considered some esoteric symbolic significance like, “airplanes move you to new places” or “airplanes rise up high,” but I knew that was extra mind-embroidery. I have many airplane teachers because I’m in airplanes a lot. Everybody is a teacher. “Pay attention to everyone always,” I think, “because everyone is something of a Buddha.”