Happiness

One of my previous posts, Guide to Happiness – Di Zi Gui, draws the most visits among all of my posts. This reflects a fact that people all over the world are keen to secure happiness, or are not so happy that they seek for ideas on the web.

I write post on happiness. This does not necessarily mean I am happy or I am a doctor of happiness. Instead, I am like the most of those happiness seekers, I do sometimes Google “happiness” for ideas of pursuing real happiness. With lots of reflection on this issue, I have gained some knowledge about it.

First I conclude the cause of being unhappy is that we do things in a self-centred mind.

Unfolding from the self-centred mind setting we will subsequently and naturally trap in thoughts that arise to defend for this Self. These thoughts urge the Self to go ahead fighting for the desired result even if harming others is necessary. This process ends up in an exhausted body and mind no matter the desired result is achieved or not.

Example: An office guy is overly self-centred. He is ambitious to be promoted. We can predict how is he going to behave, what is he going to do, what will he be thinking. He is likely to do anything to impress his boss. He tends to tell tale of his prospective competitors. He will deliberately show off his skills whenever he can. The end result of his ambition could be like this. He wins in the competition and gets his promotion. He is happy for some time, then he finds so many of his colleagues dislike him. He has achieved something but is unhappy about some other things.

All the day-to-day things we experience are in this pattern – we achieve something and be happy a bit but at the same time we find some other things annoying arise. If we allow this self-centred mind setting to remain or even to grow bigger, we suffer; we experience the sense of being unhappy.

Now that we agree the cause of being unhappy is from being self-centred, is it easy to get rid of that kind of mind setting? The answer is positive. The evidence is the historical Buddha, the prince of ancient India, Siddhattha Gotama, and numerous spiritual sages and teachers.

But folks, it is never an easy task to completely reverse the self-centred mind setting to become the other-centred one. To say is always easier than to be done. It took the Buddha eons of time to achieve the goal. He is on the extreme end of the happy scale, let’s say, the ultimate 100% achievement. The rest of the real happy sages and spiritual teachers fall on the scale from 70% to 99%, I estimate. Thus if we are able to achieve a 10% other-centred and a 90% self-centred mind setting, we should begin to feel a sense of genuine happiness arising.

What is the formula of the self-centred to other-centred transforming process?

As I am a Buddhist, so I believe the formula is in Buddha’s teachings recorded in all the sutras. They say the Buddha has taught 84 thousand methods of the transforming technique to suit each unique individual happiness seeker.

I would like to conclude this post by a verse taught by Master Yin Guang, thirteenth Patriarch of Pure Land Buddhism. He says if one can endeavour to comply with the life attitude set out below one is not far from Buddhahood, the ultimate blissful state.

• 敦倫盡份 閒邪存誠 諸惡莫做 眾善奉行。Play your role well and fulfil your responsibility; Disable the evil thoughts and remain the purity; Refrain from all bad deeds; Put hands on all good deeds.