In our lives, we are doing a lot of things. Mainly, we are working so hard to avoid two things in our life – the suffering of the body and the suffering of mind. The uneasiness, or whatever you call it.
In order to avoid bodily discomfort, many smart people do a lot of things to prevent bodily suffering. They change their diet, exercise, and try to sleep extra hours. They just sit, trying to give a rest to their body. They do acupuncture and acupressure or whatever, and have check ups. They try to take their dog out for a walk, thinking about bodily issues. When you were a very young kid, you didn’t know these things, and you treated yourself so carelessly. Look at young kids, jumping from here and there, breaking their legs, and all kinds of things. When you are older, like my age, in your forties, you realize this body is important and you need to take care of it. You don’t want to be sick, or create trouble. When people are smart, they care about their body.
But many people don’t care that much about their suffering of mind, about that uneasiness. People do yoga exercises and all sorts of things during the day, but at night they can’t sleep, worrying about things, thinking too much, thinking about all kinds of trouble. The goal to eliminate suffering is the path of finding happiness. Therefore, if you have a healthy body, you have a happy life. That is very, very basic. If you don’t have a healthy body you cannot have 100% happiness, without any problems. When there is something a little bit wrong with your body, even just a mosquito bite, you can feel uncomfortable for a long time. It is itching and some people are very sensitive to mosquito bites. But if you have a healthy body, there is still no guarantee you will have a happy life. No.
It’s not like you have a healthy body and a happy life. Some people have a healthy body. Not only that, some people have a happy family. But they are not happy. And if you ask why they are not happy they don’t even want to think about it. A lot of people are torturing themselves, suffocating themselves with invisible problems. They carry that and put it in their head. If someone asks, “Why are you doing that?” they don’t want to think about. They say, “Don’t talk about it. Mind your own business.” Then they put that trash bin in their head, because they don’t want to focus on and get rid of the uneasiness of their mind. Even though you have a healthy, strong body, still you are not necessarily happy. Even if you have a happy spouse or happy kids or family, still some people cannot find happiness. Those people are thinking, “I will find happiness when I have a nice house, a fancy car, a boat. If I have a gigantic, big boat I will be happy.”
They may not say it but they are thinking about it. Or how about a big trip all over the world? “I can do to Japan, I can go to South Africa to do a safari trip, or to Europe to see those beautiful houses, I can go here and there.” Yes, you can do those things and then you think you will be very happy. Some people think to leave everything and go to a certain place. Sit next to the beach, take a sunbath. Where nobody can find you and you will have happiness. You are maybe thinking that way. Some people think, “Oh, I wish I had a bunch of money, then I would sleep the whole day. I won’t have to work and I will be happy.” Others think, “I would like to have a very good camera and then I will make good videos and get a lot of followers on social media and I will be happy.” That is seeking happiness through outside things. A lot of people think that way and try to do it that way. These kinds of things don’t give you a guarantee for happiness. If you have a luxury boat that can run on solar power, such things don’t necessarily give you happiness. If you leave everything behind and go to a remote place, still you don’t necessarily find happiness. Or a world trip, all over the world.
A lot of people are lured by images. You see people having fun on a boat, but you don’t see how much money they spend. You don’t see how many years they have waited, you don’t see how much care they have to take for that big boat. You are just seeing that picture and think that is happiness. Same thing with a world trip. You see pictures on social media. Some people are so good at taking pictures, especially of themselves. They are posting them and you see that and think that is happiness. You see someone standing next to a big monkey, taking a nice picture. You don’t see that after taking that picture that monkey bit that person. (laughs). These sorts of things. Then you see a picture of someone in Bhutan, standing next to the Tiger Nest Monastery, a beautiful place. Nice picture, but you don’t see how hard it is to get there. So hard to get there. Fancy things and big trips, you see some friends on tour and they are on camera, but you don’t see how many times they fought on the road, how many times they almost came back home. If you think that money will bring you happiness, that nice trips will bring you happiness or that luxury stuff will make you happy, that is wrong. If you go on a trip with good friends, that is happiness. But that’s not because of the trip. It is because of the friends you are spending time with.
Even a teddy bear on your couch can destroy your happiness. You cannot throw it out, you cannot keep it. You put it on your left side, but “oh my God, that doesn’t work, I have to put it somewhere else.” Then in your house you couldn’t find a place to put that small teddy bear, you try to put it here and there, even in the garage and you also cannot throw it away. Then some people have a boat. Still they have no problem, they can handle it. Others cannot handle a small teddy bear. So it is not about having money or not. It’s about the mind. Your mind can handle it if you have patience, if you have the capacity to handle things. I told you the story earlier, if you have a bunch of money and you think that you will sleep the whole day. That’s totally not true. If you have a bunch of money you cannot sit at home. You will do all sorts of crazy things. I have seen people who got a bunch of money do crazy things after that. Some people win the lottery and disappear. They go everywhere.
So it’s the mind. Some people have money but can still sit on their chairs and drink a cup of coffee at Panera Bread. So in our life I think almost everything should be created by ourselves. Same thing with happiness. We have to create it. We cannot buy it. If you go to Hawaii and sit on the beach, to go from Ann Arbor to Hawaii is really far. You need money and energy to go and sit there. You could just go to a small lake. How can you measure that happiness? Going to Hawaii is not necessarily much better than going to that lake in your backyard. You get the happiness that you create.
So how to create happiness? In any situation you can create problems or stress, or you can also create happiness. It is in your hand. There is no such thing as 100% trouble or 100% solution. You can create happiness by changing your mind, changing your perspective. You can have happiness without having a fancy house, a fancy boat. You can have happiness without traveling all over. There are a lot of happy people who never leave their own state or sometimes their city. You can have happiness without a bunch of money, working every day. So how can this happen? I think it depends on if you have contentment. Contentment is a very, very special feature that human beings can have.
In New York, restaurants can make any kind of breakfast you wish. You can find a lot of different foods. I enjoyed breakfast, sometimes going out and finding the best breakfast place. On Saturdays, you can go late and have a big breakfast with sausages, bacon, eggs, as you want them: poached, scrambled, sunny side up or whatever you want. There can be nice weather and you want to sit outside and there is nice coffee and all sorts of things, different sorts of bread, biscuits or whatever. You can enjoy all of this. Then two years ago, those foods didn’t go well with me and my breakfast was turning into peanut butter and bread, or oatmeal with blueberries. Give me bread and peanut butter, that’s all I need. Then I have those things and I enjoy this simple breakfast, with some fruit. Earlier with those fancy things compared to the breakfast I am having now, I never feel that I miss those things or that my breakfast is not good enough. No. I really enjoy these simple breakfasts. It’s all about your mind.
I am not saying I am a person who doesn’t need anything. But I am saying that as I know I cannot have those foods, but I can still enjoy the food that I can have. That’s my thing. If I didn’t have problems with other foods I might think, “Peanut butter and bread, that’s boring, there are other things, why not have eggs?” But once you cannot have those foods, the contentment comes. There is nothing else you can eat. That’s a kind of contentment. It’s not a helpless thing. If you train your mind to have more contentment then you can even enjoy peanut butter and bread. Also you can enjoy your backyard, you can enjoy some flowers you have in a pot as your garden. Then most importantly, preserve your peaceful mind. Peace in your mind, I think that is the source of happiness. If you travel around and have nice views and nice sightseeing and then if you maintain your peaceful mind, then that is happiness.
Otherwise you can go all over, have nice photos and videos, but the whole week, if your mind has no peace, there is no happiness. After a while you see the pictures of yourself with your friends next to the Sphinx in Egypt. You look at the picture but you don’t remember a happy moment. You think, “Oh, when we took that picture we had that problem, we fought over something and you took my money and didn’t give it back.” Those bad things are there and that means your vacation was completed in terms of traveling but you did not get happiness.
Therefore, by maintaining peace in our mind, then you can enjoy your boat. In any situation, find a way to enjoy and have happiness. Some people when they go to a restaurant and order food, first they want to see what’s wrong with it. You should look for what’s good in there, instead of saying this or that food is yucky or tastes bad. You should find another food that’s nice. Or you watch a TV show, anything you can enjoy, enjoy those things. Then you can criticize. Same thing in any situation. I am not saying there are no hard situations. There are a lot of hard times and difficult situations in your life. But if you look through, there are always things you can enjoy or you can appreciate some things.
Therefore, I feel that the dream of buying happiness – surely, nobody is saying: give me money and I will give you happiness – but you are thinking, “I will spend this money and then I will be happy.” That is the dream of buying happiness. Sometimes these turn into plans of buying trouble. You think, “If I have money I will spend that money and I will be happy.” But sometimes you spend that money and you are feeding a plan of lots of trouble. Sometimes, I notice that people who are fed up with western culture and the life in the west want to go somewhere where they don’t need to worry about that. Many of them end up in Asian countries. They think that the east is better than the west. They come to Asia with their money that they can spend there. Surely, everything is cheaper there and they become like ascetics. They live very simply, and they go to the mountain areas. I have seen a lot of them in Dharamsala. They go all the way up there and they smoke – not cigarettes, but weed and other things. Then they sit there and think they can find happiness.
At that point, for the first few months or a year it seems they are happy. They found relief from their job and everything, but after a while it is not happiness. They become like those monkeys on that mountain. They stay away from people but just sitting there is not happiness. Why? Because if you have nothing to do with the outside world, but have nothing developed inside, then it is like an empty box. These people think that just staying away from normal life is happiness. But it’s not. You have to have a spiritual practice. Then sometimes they go to see an ashram and go here and there in places like Dharamsala and attend His Holiness’ teachings. Then some of them find, “Oh there is something in my life, I can meditate, I can practice. I can develop my mind.” Some people then do find happiness. Some of them come back to their countries and can live happily, have meaningful lives. They can work and so on.
The point is that when in my own mind I think, “I will earn money and go on a big trip and I will be happy”, or “I will earn money and buy this and that and then I will be happy”, that is not going to work. It could be wishing to create your happiness, but that’s not the actual method to find it. Even if you earn money and go on a big trip, if you work hard and buy a big house or a boat, those things I feel it’s not sure that you will find happiness. The point is that some outside factors help to have happiness, but the main cause is through the way of your thinking: reducing your expectations, increasing your contentment and practicing patience and being able to handle and understand different situations. That’s not easy, but it’s not something that we cannot do.
That’s what I am thinking, and surely you and I and many others shop on Amazon, I buy things from there and think that I can have some fun. But sometimes I buy things that sit on my table and become extra garbage and not do anything, unless I work hard. Therefore, for happiness you have to work hard. If you work hard, even if you don’t spend that much money, still you can have great happiness.
Happiness (Demo Rinpoche – Ancient Wisdom. Modern Times. #212 July 14, 2024)
