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

by Sylvia Boorstein

life is difficult and painful, just by its very nature, not because we’re doing it wrong.

“Every mind moment conditions the next.”

The second way to understand how practice works is that the very practice itself deconditions the mind from its habitual pattern of running from discomfort. One sits (or stands or walks or eats or whatever), hour after hour, practicing remaining calm and alert through the whole range of body and mind states that present themselves—all the while not doing anything to change experience but rather discovering that experience is bearable. Thus one comes to see that the practice itself is an antidote to the usual flurried reaction of the mind to each new moment.

In traditional Buddhist texts the five energies of Lust, Aversion, Torpor, Restlessness, and Doubt are called “Mind Hindrances.” They are called hindrances of the mind because they obscure clear seeing, just as sandstorms in the desert or fog on a highway can cause travelers to get lost. They hinder the possibility of us reconnecting with the peaceful self that is our essential nature. They confuse us. We think they are real. We forget that our actual nature is not the passing storm. The passing storm is the passing storm. Our essence remains our essence all the time.

“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.

Nothing Stays Comfortable Long

Becoming aware of fragility, of temporality, of the fact that we will surely all be lost to one another, sooner or later, mandates a clear imperative to be totally kind and loving to each other always. People sometimes say about a critically ill person, “Her days are numbered.” All of our days are numbered. No one knows what number we are up to. Literally, we haven’t a moment to lose.

Every pain is important pain to whomever is feeling it.

Everybody is a teacher. “Pay attention to everyone always,” I think, “because everyone is something of a Buddha.”