Seriously Happy

We all want happiness. We want it so much that you’d think people would be more systematic about trying to find it—in other words, trying to get good advice, looking around to see who might be qualified to give that advice.

But for the most part, people just go by their feelings. Random thoughts come into the mind. Something that occurs to you in childhood can take over the whole rest of your life.

The Buddha’s recommendation is that you find someone who really knows—those who really know, of course, are those who have attained awakening—and you go and you ask them, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?”

The question in and of itself, as the Buddha said, is the beginning of discernment. It shows some discernment in how it’s framed. You realize that happiness is going to have to come from your actions, that long-term is possible, and that it’s better than short-term. That requires that you step back a little bit from your immediate wants and desires, step back from your hunger for instant gratification, because that hunger can cloud your vision. A part of you might say, “Who cares about long-term? I want what I want right now.”

There was a question in yesterday’s Zoom group from someone who said she knows what’s for her long-term welfare and happiness, but when she sits down at night, all she wants to do is scroll through her iPad. Something inside her will realize, “Okay, this is not going to lead to long-term welfare and happiness.” And another voice comes up and says, “So what?”

That’s what you’ve got to watch out for. That’s what you’ve got to train. This is one of the reasons why we practice meditation: to give some immediate gratification. There has to be a sense of well-being that comes as you settle down. Breathe comfortably, allow the comfortable breath to spread through the body—or focus on whatever other topic of meditation attracts you right now.

This is one of the reasons why it’s good to have a stable of practices, or a whole repertoire. Something that the mind is happy to do tonight, it may not be happy doing tomorrow morning. But that’s okay. You can change the flavor, change the appearance of the food you’re fixing for yourself. Just make sure it’s something related to the Dhamma.

When you’ve got a certain amount of satisfaction that way, then you can start stepping back and saying, “Okay, how about the long term?”

This is where the wisdom comes in. The awakened people you ask will tell you to start with generosity, virtue, and meditation. In other words, look for happiness in ways that’re harmless. If you want your happiness to last, you don’t want it to harm anybody. Otherwise, they’ll try to destroy it. Look for happiness in ways that you’re sharing with other people, and they’ll be happy to see you happy.

So, you get the immediate benefit with generosity and your virtue. The development of meditation will take a longer time, though, and it won’t be so immediately obvious.

The meditation that the Buddha recommends right at the beginning is the development of the brahmaviharas: developing thoughts of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity for all beings.

Of those, the first three are basically expressions of goodwill. Goodwill itself is a general wish for happiness. Compassion is what goodwill feels when it sees people who actually are suffering. You want them to be able to escape from their suffering. Empathetic joy is what goodwill feels when it sees people who are already happy. Those three are expressed with, “May”: May all beings be happy. May they be released from suffering. May they not be deprived of the good fortune they’ve attained.

Equanimity, though, is more a statement of fact: “All beings are the owners of their actions. Whatever they do, for good or for evil, to that will they fall heir.”

Years back, when I was teaching in France, the group who had organized the retreat had a chanting book that had passages in Pali with French translations. They made the mistake of expressing equanimity as saying, “May all beings be the owners of their actions.” Which, when you think about it, sounds like a curse. Equanimity is more a statement of fact.

It’s the reality check. Even though you wish for all beings to be happy, you have to realize you can’t make them happy. They themselves will have to act in ways that are skillful. That’s something you can’t force on anybody.

This is why, when the Buddha was asked if all the world would attain awakening, he wouldn’t answer. “Half the world?” He wouldn’t answer. “A third of the world?” He wouldn’t answer because he had no control over what the beings of the world would choose to do. He did know the path that they’d have to follow, but he couldn’t make them follow the path, and he couldn’t follow it for them.

The same principle applies to us. We can see that all beings are going to reap happiness or pain because of their actions, but we can’t make them change their actions if they’re headed in the direction of pain. Sometimes, the more you force them, the more recalcitrant they become, the more resistant and stubborn they become.

But you do have to make sure that you take care of your own intentions toward other beings.

And you can take this as an opportunity to learn about happiness.

A certain part of it is in seeing that happiness comes from actions. As you look at what you’re doing to see what actually causes true happiness, this is where the teachings of the Buddha to Rahula come in.

Again, you’re taking your happiness seriously. As the Buddha says, look at what you’re planning to do, and if you see that it’s going to cause any affliction, you don’t do it. If you don’t foresee any affliction, you act on it.

While you’re acting on it, if you see any affliction coming up, you stop. If you see no affliction, you continue.

Then, when you’re done, you look at the long-term results. If you see that you did cause affliction, you go and talk it over with someone who knows more than you do about the path. Then you resolve not to repeat your mistake. If you don’t see that you’ve caused any harm, you take joy in the fact that you’re progressing in your path and keep on training.

I know a lot of people who say, “That’s an awful lot of thought put into your actions.” But if you’re serious about your happiness, this is what you’ve got to do. Too many people are too lazy to really want happiness. And if you don’t put thought into your actions, what are you going to put it into?

Think about the Buddha. He was someone who sincerely wanted happiness. And look what he had to do. He had to train himself. He had to try different paths. When he saw that they were dead ends, he’d move on to another path. And if that was a dead end, too, he’d move on to still another path. He never gave up. He’s an example of someone who really wanted happiness.

So, you have to realize it’s going to take work. And if it’s long-term, you’re willing to put in whatever energy, whatever sacrifices you need to make.

That’s one of the lessons you learn about happiness.

Another lesson is learning about the gradations of happiness: happiness that’s good for a while and then changes; happiness that stays longer. This reinforces the lessons you’ve learned about action and its relationship to happiness. You realize you have to be responsible. In other words, in your search for happiness, you have to realize that it’ll have some other consequences as well, affecting both you and other people. You want to be really careful about what those consequences are.

And then as you’re developing thoughts of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, you can contemplate what you’re doing and the people for whom you’re wishing happiness. This is where empathetic joy is really instructive. Of the various brahma-viharas, it’s often the hardest. You feel good about yourself for having goodwill. You feel good about yourself for having compassion. But when it comes to empathetic joy, you realize that there are some people out there who’ve got much better good fortune than you, in worldly ways or in the ways of the Dhamma.

And all of a sudden you don’t feel so gracious and compassionate anymore. Sometimes you feel reduced by their happiness. So, you’ve got to look into that. Why should their happiness make you feel like anything less?

You can also look at the ways in which people make themselves happy. This is a really good lesson in seeing that there are some very foolish ways of being happy out there. People gain good fortune and they squander it. And in squandering it, they often harm other people. So, this should confirm you in your desire that you want a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody and is going to last.

In other words, you want to look for the deathless. As the Buddha said, that’s the only secure happiness there is. When people gain other forms of happiness—power, beauty, wealth—it often goes to their heads. They abuse their power, they abuse their beauty, they abuse their wealth, they abuse the people around them. And often they become the target of other people’s jealousy or greed. This is what happens when you aim for a happiness that doesn’t last, a happiness that’s unsafe.

So even though the practice of generosity, virtue, and the brahma-viharas may seem like just the very beginning steps, if you really focus on doing them well, you gain a lot of wisdom. They teach you lessons about where you’re going to look for happiness and what kind of happiness you’re going to allow yourself to be satisfied with.

That’s the big problem. That was the problem the Buddha himself said he had to overcome with his desire to do whatever needed to be done, and not to satisfy himself even with skillful qualities. He had to be discontent with his skillfulness. As long as he hadn’t reached the ultimate level, he wouldn’t rest.

He would appreciate what he had gained. As he often says, you have to enjoy the results of your good actions, but the enjoyment shouldn’t make you complacent. It should be food for further progress. Or as Ajaan Fuang would say, you have to reinvest your goodness: the good things that come from your good actions, when you use the strength you’ve gained, the well-being you’ve gained to practice higher and higher.

So, if you’re looking for happiness and you’re looking for the short term, you’re looking in the wrong place. There are things you have to give up, there are strong virtues you have to develop: the virtue of being responsible, the virtue of being heedful. It’s work.

The part of the mind says, “Oh no, more work”: You have to look at it. Reason with it. Argue with it. And find joy in the practice. In other words, you don’t tell yourself you have to wait till the very end of the path for the happiness to come. There are ways of finding happiness all along the way.

But you have to monitor them, adjust them, so that you don’t get satisfied there. It’s like knowing that you’re going to travel far to a really good dinner. Now, getting to that dinner is going to require strength, so you need to have some food to take with you to munch on along the way. That food isn’t the best food, but it’s enough to keep you going. That’s the encouragement you give to yourself.

Think of the Buddha’s style of teaching. He said he would urge, rouse, encourage, and instruct: one part information; three parts encouragement. So, learn how to give yourself pep talks. Keep your energy up.

And whatever difficulties you have, remember the Buddha’s image of the spears. He said if you could make a deal that you’d be speared every morning with a hundred spears; at noon, another hundred spears; in the evening, another hundred spears—altogether, three hundred spears every day for a hundred years, with no time out for weekends or holidays—but you’d be guaranteed at the end of a hundred years that you’d gain your first taste of the Dhamma, the Dhamma-Eye, it’d be a good deal to take. And when you finally realized the Dhamma, you wouldn’t think that it had been done with pain. The joy that comes from finding the ultimate happiness and realizing that it is true would blot out all the suffering of those spears. It’s that impressive.

So, use thoughts like these to encourage yourself, to remind yourself that the quest for true happiness is really worthwhile, whatever sacrifices have to be made. When the world that tells you that true happiness isn’t possible, learn to ignore it. And the voices in your own mind that say the same thing, you’ve got to learn how to ignore them, too. Because they don’t know what they’re talking about.