Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

by Matthieu Ricard

Without Marx or Jesus,

Pleasure, says the Hindu proverb, “is only the shadow of happiness.”

The fleeting experience of pleasure is dependent upon circumstance, on a specific location or moment in time.

Pleasure is exhausted by usage, like a candle consuming itself.

But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white — then melts forever.

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within. MAHATMA GANDHI

I myself have spent thirty-five years living among not only sages and spiritual masters, but also a number of “ordinary” people whose inner serenity and joy help them to withstand most of the ups and downs of life. These people have nothing further to gain for themselves and are therefore entirely available to others.

“The wise man has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy.”8

One is not born wise; one becomes it.

If there is a way to free ourselves from suffering We must use every moment to find it. Only a fool wants to go on suffering. Isn’t it sad to knowingly imbibe poison? SEVENTH DALAI LAMA

Is there any way to put an end to suffering? According to Buddhism, suffering will always exist as a universal phenomenon, but every individual has the potential for liberation from it.

The first mistake is believing that unhappiness is inevitable because it is the result of divine will or some other immutable principle and that it will therefore be forever out of our control. The second is the gratuitous idea that unhappiness has no identifiable cause, that it descends upon us randomly and has no relation to us personally. The third mistake draws on a confused fatalism that boils down to the idea that whatever the cause, the effect will always be the same.

Recognize suffering, Eliminate its source, End it By practicing the path.

A storm may be raging at the surface, but the depths remain calm. The wise man always remains connected to the depths. On the other hand, he who knows only the surface and is unaware of the depths is lost when he is buffeted by the waves of suffering.

“Don’t think you’re paying me some kind of great tribute if you let my death become the great event of your life. The best tribute you can pay to me as a mother is to go on and have a good and fulfilling life.” These words were spoken by a mother to her son only moments before her death.

“If there is a cure, what good is discontent? If there is no cure, what good is discontent?”

Using mental imagery When a powerful feeling of desire, envy, pride, aggression, or greed plagues your mind, try to imagine situations that are sources of peace. Transport yourself mentally to the shores of a placid lake or to a high mountaintop overlooking a broad vista. Imagine yourself sitting serenely, your mind as vast and clear as a cloudless sky, as calm as a windless ocean.

Understand that even if your wounds are deep, they do not touch the essential nature of your mind, the fundamental luminosity of pure consciousness.

Through compassion we take control of our own suffering, linked to that of all others, in the thought that “others besides me are afflicted by similar hardships to mine, and sometimes far worse. How I wish that they too could be free of their pain.” After that, our pain does not feel as oppressive, and we stop asking the bitter question: “Why me?”

When we feel severe physical or emotional pain, we may simply look at the experience. Even when it is crippling, we must ponder whether it has any color, shape, or any other immutable characteristic. We find that the more we try to bring it into focus, the more the pain’s definition becomes blurred.

Ultimately we come to see that behind the pain there is a pristine awareness that does not change and that is beyond pain and pleasure.

Another example is that of a man I have known for twenty years who lives in Bumthang province at the heart of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. He was born without arms or legs, and he lives on the outskirts of a village in a little bamboo hut of just a few square yards. He never goes out and barely moves from his mattress on the floor. He came from Tibet forty years ago, carried by fellow refugees, and has lived in this hut ever since. The mere fact that he is still alive is extraordinary in itself, but even more striking is the joy that radiates from him. Every time I see him, he is in the same serene, simple, gentle, and unaffected frame of mind. When we bring him small gifts of food, blankets, a portable radio, he says that there was no need to bring him anything. “What could I possibly need?” he laughs.

Training in the exchange of happiness and suffering Begin by generating a powerful feeling of warmth, loving-kindness, and compassion for all beings. Then imagine those who are enduring suffering similar to or worse than your own. As you breathe out, visualize that you are sending them all your happiness, vitality, good fortune, health, and so on, on your breath in the form of cool, white, luminous nectar. Picture them fully absorbing the nectar, which soothes their pain and fulfills their aspirations. If their life is in danger of being cut short, imagine that it has been prolonged; if they are sick, imagine that they are healed; if they are poor and helpless, imagine that they have obtained what they need; if they are unhappy, that they have become full of joy. When you inhale, visualize your heart as a bright, luminous sphere. Imagine that you are taking upon yourself, in the form of a gray cloud, the disease, confusion, and mental toxins of these people, which disappears into the white light of your heart without leaving any trace. This will transform both your own suffering and that of others. There is no sense that you are being burdened by them. When you are taking upon yourself and dissolving their sufferings, feel a great happiness, without attachment or clinging. You can also imagine that your body is duplicating itself in countless forms that travel throughout the universe, transforming itself into clothing for those who are cold, food for the famished, or shelt...

First we conceive the “I” and grasp onto it. Then we conceive the “mine” and cling to the material world. Like water trapped on a waterwheel, we spin in circles, powerless. I praise the compassion that embraces all beings.

“For the lover, a beautiful woman is an object of desire; for the hermit, a distraction; for the wolf, a good meal.”

There is no intrinsic quality in a beautiful object that makes it beneficial to the mind, and nothing in an ugly object to harm it.

These two basic feelings, attraction and repulsion, are the fonts of a whole sea of conflicting emotions.

The truth is, we are fundamentally interdependent with other people and our environment. Our experience is simply the content of the mental flow, the continuum of consciousness, and there is no justification for seeing the self as an entirely distinct entity within that flow.

When we see the self as a mere concept and not as an autonomous entity that we must protect and satisfy at all costs, we react in completely different ways.

The egocentricity that places the self at the center of the world has an entirely relative point of view.

The only way out of this dilemma is to consider the self as a mental or verbal designation linked to a dynamic process, to a series of changing relations that incorporate the perception of the outer world, sensations, mental images, emotions, and concepts. The self is merely an idea.

Seen from afar, the mirage of a lake seems real, but we would have a hard time wringing any water out of it.

Like a shooting star, a mirage, a flame, A magic trick, a dewdrop, a water bubble, Like a dream, lightning, or a cloud — Consider all things thus.

So it’s worthwhile to devote a few moments of our life to letting the mind rest in inner calm and to understanding, through analysis and direct experience, the place of the ego in our lives. So long as the sense of the ego’s importance has control over our being, we will never know lasting peace.

When we are unhappy, we can’t help thinking that certain images are armed with claws and stingers to torture us with.

Happiness is bound up with distress when we lack adequate inner resources to sustain certain basic elements of sukha: the joy of being alive, the conviction that we still have the ability to flourish, an understanding of the ephemeral nature of all things.

These trains of thought and states of mind are constantly changing, like the shapes of clouds in the wind, but we attach great importance to them. An old man watching children at play knows very well that their games are of little consequence. He feels neither elated nor upset at what happens in their game, while the children take it all very seriously. We are just exactly them.3

In vain he flees his troubles on a horse — They share the saddle and see him on his course.

First, we have to focus our mind on the raw power of inner suffering. Instead of avoiding it or burying it away in some dark corner of our mind, we should make it the object of our meditation, without ruminating over the events that caused the pain or reviewing every freeze-frame from the movie of our life.

Thoughts emerge from pure consciousness and are then reabsorbed in it, just as waves emerge from the ocean and dissolve into it again.

To familiarize yourself with this method, when a thought arises, try to see where it came from; when it disappears, ask yourself where it went. In that brief moment when your mind is not encumbered by discursive thoughts, contemplate its nature. In that instant when past thoughts have fallen silent and future ones have yet to emerge, you can perceive a pure and luminous consciousness unadulterated by your conceptual constructs. Proceeding by direct experience, you will gradually come to understand what Buddhism means by the nature of mind.

Look at what is behind the curtain of discursive thoughts. Try to find a waking presence there, free of mental fabrications, transparent, luminous, untroubled by thoughts of the past, the present, or the future. Try to rest in the present moment, free of concepts. Watch the nature of the gap between thoughts, which is free from mental constructs. Gradually extend the interval between the disappearance of one thought and the emergence of the next. Remain in a state of simplicity that is free of mental constructs, yet perfectly aware; beyond effort, yet alert and mindful.

Make your mind as vast as the sky and you will find that the waves of afflictive emotions have lost all the strength you had attributed to them.

It is easier to work with the disturbing effects of a strong emotion when we are in the midst of experiencing it, rather than when it lies dormant in the shadow of our unconscious. At the precise moment of the experience, we will have an invaluable opportunity to investigate the process of mental suffering.

Every region in the brain that has been identified with some aspect of emotion has also been identified with aspects of cognition.1 There are no “emotion centers” in the brain.

“One with compassion is kind even when angry; one without compassion will kill even as he smiles.”

“Take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves,”

Whatever the case may be, the best means of analysis is introspection and self-observation.

That is particularly true for the three mental processes considered to be basic mental “poisons”: desire (in the sense of craving or tormenting greed), hatred (the wish to harm), and delusion (which distorts our perception of reality).

But the most fundamental aspect of consciousness, the pure faculty of knowing — what has been called the “luminous” quality of the mind — contains no hatred or desire at its core. A mirror, for instance, will reflect both angry faces and smiling ones. The very quality of the mirror allows countless images to arise, yet none of them belongs to the mirror.