The Art of Happiness - the very advice from a great thinker

 

“I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness.  That is clear.  Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life.  So, I think, the very motion of our life is to seek happiness …” - The Art of Happiness, Dalai Lama

Thanks to this contemporary great thinker, the Dalai Lama, who reminds us the aim of our life, is to seek happiness and seek something better in our lives. 

We think we all know this simple principle, do we?  We are all confident that it is happiness we are pursuing for, right? 

…… Are we really so sure?  If we are so sure, why we are still miles away from happiness?

Dalai Lama’s happiness is not the simple materialistic pleasure or sensual satisfaction, it refers to the returning to the basic and pure state of our mind without negative thought.   It is in this state that we could retrieve our gentleness, feelings of love, kindness, compassion, closeness and affection in our human nature.  It is in this happiness state we could help others, grow friendship and share our love.

It is our mind who is always playing the tricks on us, creating negative thoughts, worse scenarios, bad feelings, etc., for ourselves.  As a basic setting to fight for survival, our minds always drive us to to something dangerous, some crisis, some unhappy thinking such that we could prepare for the worse.  This mind could not be eliminated, but we have to aware of it and understand what tricks it is playing on us.  For all the negative thoughts and feelings our mind created for ourselves, 99% of those are unnecessary and damaging to us and all people around us.  And it is this state of mind which separates us from happiness.

Dalai Lama, in his book, “the Art of Happiness”, suggests to us that we need to discipline our mind and to train our mind everyday, to bring in more positive thinking.  He advises us: “… transforming your mind takes time.  There are a lot of negative mental traits, so you need to address and counteract each one of these.  It isn’t easy.  It requires the repeated application of various techniques and taking the time to familiarise yourself with the practices.  It’s a process of learning.”

Maybe I could share with you some of my own tips on how to train our mind towards happiness:

• every morning, reminding ourselves that we would live a better day today, we feel happy and empowered
• reminding ourselves to be appreciative and thankful to all the beautiful things on world and to all the people and artists creating all the beautiful things for us
• reminding ourselves to be kind and gentle, love and compassionate, deep down from our hearts
• reminding ourselves not to say “no” and “I can’t” to challenges, try to say “why not” and “great! let’s do it!“

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Related posts:

• Parable of Narcissus: the myth of falling in love
• Let go

Filed under self improvements, spiritual, philosophy, happy |