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

by Matthieu Ricard

It is about freedom and meaning—freedom from mental confusion and self-centered afflictions, meaning through insight and loving-kindness.

By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

Anyone who enjoys inner peace is no more broken by failure than he is inflated by success. He is able to fully live his experiences in the context of a vast and profound serenity, since he understands that experiences are ephemeral and that it is useless to cling to them.

Nor is happiness a state of exaltation to be perpetuated at all costs; it is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind. It is also about learning how to put things in perspective and reduce the gap between appearances and reality.

Sukha is the state of lasting well-being that manifests itself when we have freed ourselves of mental blindness and afflictive emotions. It is also the wisdom that allows us to see the world as it is, without veils or distortions. It is, finally, the joy of moving toward inner freedom and the loving-kindness that radiates toward others.

Ignorance, in the Buddhist lexicon, is an inability to recognize the true nature of things and of the law of cause and effect that governs happiness and suffering.

If joy is to endure and mature serenely—if it is to be, in the words of Corneille, a “blossoming of the heart”—it must be linked to other aspects of true happiness: clarity of mind, loving-kindness, the gradual withering of negative emotions, and the disappearance of selfish whimsy.

Our inner freedom knows no limits other than those we impose on it or allow to be imposed on it. And that freedom also holds great power. It can transform an individual, allow him to nurture all his capacities and to live every moment of his life in utter fulfillment. When individuals change by bringing their consciousness to maturity, the world changes too, because the world is made up of individuals.

It’s not the magnitude of the task that matters, it’s the magnitude of our courage.

Remaining painfully obsessed with a situation or the memory of a departed loved one, to the point of being paralyzed by grief for months or years on end, is evidence not of affection, but of an attachment that does no good to others or to oneself. If we can learn to acknowledge that death is a part of life, distress will gradually give way to understanding and peace. “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.

The best gift one can thus give to a child is to manifest loving, open, and peaceful qualities oneself and to let the emotional alchemy work its way.

The “I” lives in the present; it is the “I” that thinks “I’m hungry” or “I exist.” It is the locus of consciousness, thoughts, judgment, and will. It is the experience of our current state.

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.

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). Buddhism usually includes pride and envy as well; together, these are the five major poisons associated with some sixty negative mental states.

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.

Antidotes liberation utilization

How do we reconcile this unconditional and impartial love with the fact that we have preferential relationships with certain people in our lives? Look at the sun. It shines over all people impartially even though it may be hotter and brighter to those who are nearer to it. Despite the limitations inherent in any metaphor, we get the idea that it is possible to develop within ourselves the kind of goodness that embraces all living beings. In Nepal, for example, all women older than oneself are addressed as “big sister” and those younger as “little sister.” Such open, altruistic, and caring kindness, far from diminishing the love we bear for our nearest and dearest, only increases and ornaments it.

The mind, steeped in animosity and resentment, encloses itself in illusion and is convinced that the source of its dissatisfaction is entirely exterior to itself. Our perception of being wronged or threatened leads us to focus exclusively on the negative aspects of a person or a group.

As Gandhi said, “If we practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the whole world will be blind and toothless.”

Buddhist compassion, however, is based on the wholehearted desire for all beings without exception to be liberated from suffering and its causes, hatred in particular. One can also go further by wishing that all beings, criminals included, may find the causes of happiness.

Renunciation is not about depriving ourselves of that which brings us joy and happiness—that would be absurd; it is about abandoning what causes us inexhaustible and relentless distress. It is about having the courage to rid ourselves of dependency on the root causes of suffering. To do this, we first have to identify and recognize these causes and then become mindful of them in our daily life. If we do not take the time to do this, we can easily fool ourselves by overlooking the relevant causes.

First you must clearly see its advantages and aspire to free yourself from that which you want to renounce. Once you’ve done that, renunciation is experienced as an act of liberation.

The simple person lives the way he breathes, with no more effort or glory, with no more affectation and without shame. . . . Simplicity is freedom, buoyancy, transparency. As simple as the air, as free as the air. . . . The simple person does not take himself too seriously or too tragically. He goes on his merry way, his heart light, his soul at peace, without a goal, without nostalgia, without impatience. The world is his kingdom, and suffices him. The present is his eternity, and delights him. He has nothing to prove, since he has no

appearances to keep up, and nothing to seek, since everything is before him. What is more simple than simplicity? What lighter? It is the virtue of wise men and the wisdom of saints.1

“To know how to be satisfied is to hold a treasure in the palm of one’s hand.”

According to K. Magnus and his colleagues, happiness goes hand in hand with the capacity to assert oneself with extroversion and empathy—happy people are generally open to the world.18 They believe that an individual can exert control over herself and her life, while unhappy people tend to believe themselves to be destiny’s playthings.

There is no large and difficult task that can’t be divided into little, easy tasks. BUDDHIST SAYING

“True humility is freedom from all consciousness of self, which includes freedom from the consciousness of humility. The truly humble man never knows that he is humble.”

An optimist is somebody who considers his problems to be temporary, controllable, and linked to a specific situation. He will say: “There’s no reason to make a fuss about it; these things don’t last. I’ll figure it out; in any case, I usually do.” The pessimist, on the other hand, thinks that his problems will last (“It’s not the sort of thing that just goes away”), that they jeopardize everything he does and are out of his control (“What do you expect me to do about it?”). He also imagines that he has some basic inner flaw, and tells people: “Whatever I do, it always

turns out the same way” and concludes: “I’m just not cut out to be happy.”

Hope is defined by psychologists as the conviction that one can find the means to attain one’s goals and develop the motivation necessary to do so.

Csikszentmihalyi has found that some people enter the state of flow more easily than others. Such people generally have “curiosity and interest in life, persistence and low self-centeredness, which results in the ability to be motivated by intrinsic reward.”

Contemplating the nature of the mind, for instance, is a deep and fruitful experience combining relaxation and flow. Relaxation in the form of inner calm, flow in the form of a clear and open presence of mind, alert but without tension. Perfect lucidity is one of the principal features that distinguishes this state of mind from ordinary flow. Such pure awareness does not require the subject to observe himself; here, too, there is a quasi-total disappearance of the notion of a “self.”

Nor should punishment ever be a form of vengeance, the most extreme of which is the death penalty. Revenge is a deviation from justice, since its main intent is not to protect the innocent but to hurt the guilty and to “clean” society from the offensive “enemy.” This is cowboy justice, not enlightened living. In such instances any act whose primary motivation is to inflict suffering or to kill, as in the death penalty, cannot be considered ethical.

the ethic of genuine altruism, informed by the discoveries of neuroscience, prefers to navigate the ceaseless current of ever-changing phenomena driven by the wind of benevolence. It is only by the constant cultivation of wisdom and compassion that we can really become the guardians and inheritors of happiness.

“At the start, we should fear death like a stag trying to escape from a trap. At midway, we should have nothing to regret, like a peasant who has carefully tended to his field. At the end, we should be happy, like someone who has accomplished a great task.”

It is better to learn how to profit from the fear of death than to ignore it. We do not need to live haunted by death, but we must remain aware of the fragility of existence. This understanding will help us appreciate fully the time we have left to live.

We must be the change we wish to see in the world. MAHATMA GANDHI

The Buddha told his followers: “Do not accept my teachings out of mere respect for me. Examine them and put them to the test as the goldsmith examines gold by cutting, heating, and hammering.”