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August 12 - September 14, 2022
If we can leave the differences aside, I think we can easily communicate, exchange ideas, and share experiences.’
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He has a penetrating intelligence, but without artifice; a kindness, but without excessive sentimentality; great humor, but without frivolousness; and as many have discovered, the ability to inspire rather than awe.
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one might act in a certain way so as to avoid an underlying fear. Without being aware of it, certain behaviors may be motivated by the desire to not allow those fears to surface in the conscious mind, so we don’t have to feel the discomfort associated with them.’
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But whether we live a day or a century, a central question always remains: What is the purpose of our life? What makes our lives meaningful? The purpose of our existence is to seek happiness.
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Both these people illustrate the essential point that happiness is determined more by one’s state of mind than by external events.
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In fact, whether we are feeling happy or unhappy at any given moment often has very little to do with our absolute conditions, but rather, it is a function of how we perceive our situation, how satisfied we are with what we have.
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In Buddhism, for instance, there is a reference to the four factors of fulfillment, or happiness: wealth, worldly satisfaction, spirituality, and enlightenment. Together they embrace the totality of an individual’s quest for happiness.
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the greater the level of calmness of our mind, the greater our peace of mind, the greater our ability to enjoy a happy and joyful life.’
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Peace of mind or a calm state of mind is rooted in affection and compassion. There is a very high level of sensitivity and feeling there.’
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The true antidote of greed is contentment.
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The second, and more reliable, method is not to have what we want but rather to want and appreciate what we have.
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You can relate to them because you are still a human being, within the human community. You share that bond. And that human bond is enough to give rise to a sense of worth, and dignity. That bond can become a source of consolation in the event that you lose everything else.’
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But once these basic needs are met, the message is clear: we don’t need more money, we don’t need greater success or fame, we don’t need the perfect body or even the perfect mate – right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.
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“Now the secret to my own happiness, my own good future, is within my own hands. I must not miss that opportunity!”
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If you maintain a feeling of compassion, loving kindness, then something automatically opens your inner door. Through that, you can communicate much more easily with other people. And that feeling of warmth creates a kind of openness. You’ll find that all human beings are just like you, so you’ll be able to relate to them more easily.
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It is felt that a disciplined mind leads to happiness and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering, and in fact it is said that bringing about discipline within one’s mind is the essence of the Buddha’s teaching.
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‘I think one factor is that I look at any human being from a more positive angle; I try to look for their positive aspects. This attitude immediately creates a feeling of affinity, a kind of connectedness.
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My precious self-reliance was a complete illusion, a fantasy.
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For example, one study of over a thousand heart patients at Duke University Medical Center found that those who lacked a spouse or close confidant were three times more likely to die within five years of the diagnosis of heart disease as those who were married or had a close friend.
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He feels that separation and interpersonal loss are at the very roots of the human experiences of fear, sadness, and sorrow.
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‘The desire for intimacy is the desire to share one’s innermost self with another.’
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The Art of Intimacy,
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But one effective means of teaching someone how to be more warm and compassionate is to begin by using reasoning to educate the individual about the value and practical benefits of compassion. And also having them reflect on how they feel when someone is kind to them and so on.
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‘Whenever I meet people I always approach them from the standpoint of the most basic things we have in common. We each have a physical structure, a mind, emotions. We are all born in the same way, and we all die. All of us want happiness and do not want to suffer. Looking at others from this standpoint rather than emphasizing secondary differences such as the fact that I am Tibetan, or a different color, religion, or cultural background, allows me to have a feeling that I’m meeting someone just the same as me. I find that relating to others on that level makes it much easier to exchange and
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Some research has shown that those who regard the initial passion and romance as essential to their relationship may end up disillusioned or divorced.
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But some part of us may still seek to regress to an earlier state of existence, a state of bliss in which there is no feeling of isolation, no feeling of separation. Many contemporary psychologists feel that the early ‘oneness’ experience is incorporated into our subconscious mind, and as an adult it permeates our unconscious and private fantasies. They believe that the merging with the loved one when one is ‘in love’ echoes the experience of being merged with the mother in infancy. It recreates that magic feeling, a feeling of omnipotence, as if all things are possible. A feeling like that is
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‘Compassion can be roughly defined in terms of a state of mind that is nonviolent, nonharming, and nonaggressive. It is a mental attitude based on the wish for others to be free of their suffering and is associated with a sense of commitment, responsibility, and respect towards others.
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Rather, genuine compassion is based on the rationale that all human beings have an innate desire to be happy and overcome suffering, just like myself. And, just like myself, they have the natural right to fulfill this fundamental aspiration.
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These are known as the “seven-point cause-and-effect” method and the “exchange and equality of oneself with others.” The “exchange-and-equality” method is the technique that you’ll find in the eighth chapter of Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.
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the practice of Tong-Len,
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In another study done by James House at the University of Michigan Research Center, investigators found that doing regular volunteer work, interacting with others in a warm and compassionate way, dramatically increased life expectancy, and probably overall vitality as well.
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that adopting an altruistic lifestyle is a critical component of good mental health.
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Another survey by Allan Luks, conducted with several thousand people who were regularly involved in volunteer activities that helped others, revealed that over 90 per cent of these volunteers reported a kind of ‘high’ associated with the activity, characterized by a feeling of warmth, more energy, and a kind of euphoria. They also had a distinct feeling of calmness and enhanced self-worth following the activity.
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Begin by visualizing a person who is acutely suffering, someone who is in pain or is in a very unfortunate situation. For the first three minutes of the meditation, reflect on that individual’s suffering in a more analytic way – think about their intense suffering and the unfortunate state of that person’s existence. After thinking about that person’s suffering for a few minutes, next, try to relate that to yourself, thinking, “That individual has the same capacity for experiencing pain, joy, happiness, and suffering that I do.” Then, try to allow your natural response to arise – a natural
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The Dalai Lama detailed his approach to human suffering – an approach that ultimately includes a belief in the possibility of freedom from suffering, but starts with accepting suffering as a natural fact of human existence, and courageously facing our problems head-on.
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In the same way, if you confront your problems rather than avoid them, you will be in a better position to deal with them.’
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‘That’s why I believe it can be useful to prepare yourself ahead of time by familiarizing yourself with the kinds of suffering you might encounter.
Like mock interviews.
But at that moment, if you can look at the situation from another angle and realize that this very body . . .’ he slapped an arm in demonstration, ‘is the very basis of suffering, then this reduces that feeling of rejection – that feeling that somehow you don’t deserve to suffer, that you are a victim.
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On the other hand, if your basic outlook accepts that suffering is a natural part of your existence, this will undoubtedly make you more tolerant towards the adversities of life.
According to Buddhist thought, the root causes of suffering are ignorance, craving, and hatred. These are called the “three poisons of the mind.”
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Within a Buddhist context, when one reflects on the fact that one’s ordinary day-to-day existence is characterized by suffering, this serves to encourage one to engage in the practices that will eliminate the root causes of one’s suffering. Otherwise, if there was no hope, or no possibility of freedom from suffering, mere reflection on suffering just becomes morbid thinking, and would be quite negative.’
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But we also add to our own suffering in other ways. All too often we perpetuate our pain, keep it alive, by replaying our hurts over and over again in our minds, magnifying our injustices in the process.
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‘We also often add to our pain and suffering by being overly sensitive, overreacting to minor things, and sometimes taking things too personally. We tend to take small things too seriously and blow them up out of proportion, while at the same time we often remain indifferent to the really important things, those things which have profound effects on our lives and long-term consequences and implications.
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‘So I think that to a large extent, whether you suffer depends on how you respond to a given situation.
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Lusseyran stated, ‘Unhappiness, I saw then, comes to each of us because we think ourselves at the center of the world, because we have the miserable conviction that we alone suffer to the point of unbearable intensity. Unhappiness is always to feel oneself imprisoned in one’s own skin, in one’s own brain.’
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So what type of future will come about, to a large extent, lies within our own hands in the present. It will be determined by the kind of initiatives that we take now.
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‘So,’ the Dalai Lama continued, ‘often our normal tendency is to try to blame our problems on others, on external factors.
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Acknowledging our wrongdoings with a genuine sense of remorse can serve to keep us on the right track in life, and encourage us to rectify our mistakes when possible and take action to correct things in the future.
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All things, events, and phenomena are dynamic, changing every moment, nothing remains static. Meditating on one’s blood circulation could serve to reinforce this idea: the blood is constantly flowing, moving, it never stands still.
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The acceptance of change can be an important factor in reducing a large measure of our self-created suffering.
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