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

by Matthieu Ricard

What provides the raw material for that knot and allows it to form within us is an exacerbated sense of self-importance. Anything that does not respond to the self’s demands becomes a disturbance, a threat, or an insult.

The past is painful, we are unable to enjoy the present, and we tremble before the projec...

The inability to manage our thoughts proves to be the principal cause of suffering. Learning to tone down the ceaseless racket of disturbing thoughts is a decisive stage on the road to inner peace.

As Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche explains: 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

How do we go about making peace with our own emotions? 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.

When a painful emotion strikes us, the most urgent thing is to look at it head-on and to identify the immediate thoughts that triggered and are fanning it. Then by fixing our inner gaze on the emotion itself, we can gradually dissolve it like snow in sunshine. Furthermore, once the strength of the emotion has been sapped, the causes that triggered it will seem less tragic and we will have won ourselves the chance to break free from the vicious circle of negative thoughts.

First of all, when a powerful emotion or thought arises—anger, for instance—what normally occurs? We are very easily overwhelmed by this thought, which multiplies into numerous new thoughts that disturb and blind us, and prompt us to utter words and commit acts, sometimes violent ones, that can make others suffer and soon become a source of regret. Instead of unleashing that avalanche, we can examine the angry thought itself and come to see that it has been nothing but smoke and mirrors from the start.

As you thus observe the wellspring of thoughts, it is possible to break their endless proliferation.

When you feel overwhelmed by emotions Imagine a stormy sea with breakers as big as houses. Each wave is more monstrous than the last. They are about to engulf your boat, your very life hangs on those few extra yards in the rushing wall of water. Then imagine observing the same scene from a high-flying plane. From that perspective, the waves seem to form a delicate blue-and-white mosaic, barely trembling on the surface of the water. From that height in the silence of space, your eye sees these almost motionless patterns, and your mind immerses itself in clear and luminous sky.

The waves of anger or obsession seem real enough, but remind yourself that they are merely fabrications of your mind; that they will rise and also again disappear. Why stay on the boat of mental anxiety? 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.

This reflex is far more than a mere psychological evasion. It reflects the mistaken perception that causes us to attribute inherent qualities to external objects when in fact those qualities are dependent on our own minds.

Systematically blaming others and holding them responsible for our suffering is the surest way to lead an unhappy life. It is by transforming our minds that we can transform our world.

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. To cite a personal example, I am not by nature an angry person, but over the course of the past twenty years, the times that I have lost my temper have taught me more about the nature of that destructive emotion than years of tranquillity.

It was only hours later that I came to see how destructive an emotion anger really is, reducing our clarity and inner peace and turning us into veritable puppets.

never underestimate the power of the mind, which is capable of reifying vast worlds of hatred, desire, elation, and sadness.

Rather than distinguishing between emotions and thoughts, Buddhism is more concerned with understanding which types of mental activity are conducive to one’s own and others’ well-being, and which are harmful, especially in the long run.

The easiest way to distinguish between our emotions is to examine their motivation (mental attitude and objective) and their results. If an emotion strengthens our inner peace and seeks the good of others, it is positive, or constructive; if it shatters our serenity, deeply disturbs our mind, and is intended to harm others, it is negative, or afflictive. As for the outcome, the only criterion is the good or the suffering that we create by our acts, words, and thoughts, for ourselves as well as for others. That is what differentiates, for instance, indignation caused by injustice from rage born of the desire to hurt someone.

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

The goal is not to rid oneself or transcend an emotion, not even hatred, but to regulate experience and action once an emotion is felt.4

For authors who consider when an emotional episode is dysfunctional, two issues predominate.8 In the first case, an episode is considered to be dysfunctional or disruptive when the subject expresses an appropriate emotion with disproportionate intensity. If a child does something foolish, his parents’ anger can have educational value; fury or hatred are completely disproportionate. Likewise, as Andrew Solomon writes, “grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.”9

The Dalai Lama was once asked about the best course of action to take when an intruder enters a room and threatens its occupants with a gun. He responded in a tone that was half serious and half playful: “I’d shoot him in the legs to neutralize him, then I’d go over and stroke his head and take care of him.” Although he knew full well that reality isn’t always that simple, he wanted to make it clear that vigorous action is enough and that it is not only pointless but harmful to inject hostility or hatred into it.

Buddhism takes a different position. It stresses enhanced awareness of the formation of thoughts, which allows for the immediate identification of an angry thought as it arises, and for its deconstruction the next instant, the way a picture drawn on the surface of water melts away as it is sketched. We repeat the same process with the next thought, and so on. So we need to work on our thoughts one by one, analyzing the way they emerge and evolve and gradually learning to free them as they arise, defusing the chain reactions that allow thoughts to invade the mind.

It is therefore important, from the standpoint of mental health, to be alert to the way thoughts form and to learn to move beyond their constraints, instead of developing and analyzing the endless film loop of our psychic history.

The essential point here is that we can never truly bring past events back to life. They survive only through the impact they have on our present experience. What really matters is the nature of our living experience, whether it is optimal or afflictive. If we become expert at freeing ourselves of all afflictive mental states as they take form, the actual content of the past events that might have triggered them becomes quite irrelevant. Furthermore, being able to repeatedly free oneself of such afflictive thoughts as they occur gradually erodes their very tendency to form again,

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Attachment idealizes its object, hatred demonizes it. These emotions make us believe that beauty or ugliness is inherent in people and in things, even though it is the mind that decides if they are “attractive” or “repulsive.”

The first phase of that analysis is to identify the way in which the emotions arise. This requires the cultivation of watchful attention to the unfolding of our mental activity, along with mindfulness of the distinction between destructive emotions and those that nourish happiness. This analysis, undertaken over and over again, is the critical prelude to the transformation of a state of mental disturbance. To accomplish this, Buddhism prescribes rigorous training in introspection, a practice that involves stabilizing the attention and heightening clarity of thought.

When our discursive thoughts have been calmed through practice and our mind is clear and focused, we can examine the nature of our emotions and other mental states with great efficacy.

Buddhism’s sole objective in treating the emotions is to free us from the fundamental causes of suffering.

How do we strip the alienating emotions of their power without becoming insensitive to the world, without draining life of its richness? If we merely consign them to the depths of the unconscious, they will reemerge with renewed force at the first opportunity, continuing to strengthen the tendencies that perpetuate inner conflict. The ideal, contrarily, is to allow negative emotions to form and dissipate without leaving any trace in the mind. Thoughts and emotions will continue to surface, but they will not proliferate and will lose their power to enslave us.

One might argue that the conflictive emotions—anger, jealousy, greed—are acceptable because they are natural, and that there is no need to interfere with them. But disease is a natural phenomenon too. We do not resign ourselves to it or welcome it as a desirable ingredient of life. It is just as legitimate to act against afflictive emotions as it is to treat disease.

lasting well-being arises from cultivating positive emotions and wisdom.

By systematically allowing our negative emotions to express themselves, we develop habits to which we are vulnerable every time the emotional charge reaches the critical threshold. In addition, the threshold will gradually become lower and anger will erupt ever more easily. The result will be what is commonly called a bad temper, accompanied by chronic suffering. From the physiological point of view, arterial tension diminishes if we prevent anger from openly expressing itself, but it increases when we fly into a rage.2

It does not follow, however, that we need to stifle our emotions. Preventing them from expressing themselves while leaving them intact, like a time bomb in a dark corner of our mind, is both a stopgap and an unhealthy solution. Psychologists aver that suppressed emotion can cause serious mental and physical damage, and that we should at all costs avoid turning our emotions against ourselves. On the other hand, the unbridled and extreme expression of emotions can also give rise to grave psychological conditions. We can die of a stroke in a fit of rage or consume ourselves in obsessive desire. In all such cases, it is because we haven’t been able to establish the right dialogue between our intelligence and our emotions.

You might think that ignorance and negative emotions are inherent to the flow of consciousness, and that trying to rid yourself of them is like fighting against a part of yourself. 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 experience of introspection shows, on the contrary, that the negative emotions are transitory mental events that can be obliterated by their opposites, the positive emotions, acting as antidotes. To that end, we have to begin by recognizing that the afflictive emotions are harmful to our well-being. This assessment is based not on some dogmatic distinction between good and bad, but on observation of the short- and long-term repercussions of certain emotions on oneself and on others.

Indeed, meditation is not about sitting quietly in the shade of a tree and relaxing in a moment of respite from the daily grind; it is about familiarizing yourself with a new vision of things, a new way to manage your thoughts, of perceiving people and experiencing the world.

Buddhism teaches various ways of making this “familiarization” work. The three principal ways are antidotes, liberation, and utilization. The first consists of applying a specific antidote to each negative emotion. The second allows us to unravel, or “liberate,” the emotion by looking straight at it and letting it dissolve as it arises. The third uses the raw power of emotion as a catalyst for inner change. The choice of one method over another will depend on the moment, the circumstances, and the capacities of the person using them. All share a common aspect and the same goal: to help us stop being victims of conflicting emotions.

It is not a question of suppressing hatred but of turning the mind to something diametrically opposed to it: love and compassion. Following a traditional Buddhist practice, you begin by recognizing your own aspiration to happiness, then extend that aspiration to those you love, and ultimately to all people—friends, strangers, and enemies. Little by little, altruism and benevolence will saturate your mind until it becomes second nature. In this way, training yourself in altruistic thought can offer lasting protection against chronic animosity and aggression.

Desire can fully develop only when it is allowed to run rampant to the point where it monopolizes the mind.

Make no mistake—there’s no question here of ceasing to love those whose lives we share, or of becoming indifferent to them. When we stop projecting the insatiable demands of our attachments onto people, we are able to love them more and to feel genuine concern for their true well-being.

As for anger, it can be neutralized by patience. This does not require us to remain passive, but to steer clear of being overwhelmed by destructive emotions. As the Dalai Lama explains: “Patience safeguards our peace of mind in the face of adversity. . . . It is a deliberate response (as opposed to an unreasoned reaction) to the strong negative thoughts and emotions that tend to arise when we encounter harm.”

Attachment, desire, and possessiveness often accompany love but are not love.

With introspection we will be able to distinguish between the emotions that enhance our joy in living from those that diminish it.

You are overwhelmed by a sudden tide of anger. You feel as if there’s no choice but to let it sweep you away. But look closely. It is nothing more than a thought.

The experience of anger is like having a high fever. It is a temporary condition, and you do not need to identify with it. The more you look at anger in this manner, the more it evaporates under your gaze, like white frost under the sun’s rays.

Unless we pursue this investigation, we end up being fixated on the object of anger and overtaken by destructive emotion.

More often than not, we come to understand this only after the crisis has passed. It is at the very moment of anger’s emergence that we must recognize its empty nature. That understanding will strip thoughts of their power to build into a stream of obsession and oppression.

This technique can be used for all mental afflictions; it helps us to build a bridge between the exercise of meditation and our daily concerns.