Happiness Without Borders

Every meditation should begin with thoughts of goodwill: a wish for happiness—your happiness and the happiness of others—true happiness, a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody.

Sometimes we’re accused of looking out only for ourselves, wishing for our own happiness. But when you stop and think about it, if your happiness is going to be long term, it cannot depend on the suffering of others, because they’ll then do what they can to destroy it. So you have to take their happiness into consideration too. So we’re thinking about happiness without boundaries.

The world goes for happiness with boundaries. It goes for wealth, status, praise, sensual pleasures. With happiness like that, some people gain, but other people have to lose. But with the happiness that comes from being skillful—not only having thoughts of goodwill but also acting on those thoughts, being generous, being virtuous: That happiness has no boundaries. It’s not just your happiness; it’s happiness that gets spread around.

So there’s nothing selfish about this happiness. Then you ask yourself: Where is it going to come from? From your actions: what you do, what you say, what you think.

This means you have to watch out for your intentions. You have to get your intentions under control. This is why we meditate.

So think in these terms. You’re not just here for stress reduction or for your own pleasure for the moment. We’re thinking about the long term. We’re thinking about a wider range. You’re doing this for yourself and for others.

Sometimes, when meditation begins to get a little bit dry and you’re tempted to give up, remind yourself that you’re not doing this just for yourself—you’re doing it for others, too. Think also of the debts that you have to other people. Here at the monastery, we live off the gifts of others. When we meditate, we meditate for them, too, to help pay off that debt.

So it’s not just for you. You’re doing this meditation for people at large, beings at large, to actually give you a little extra oomph to your practice, get you over some hurdles where you think, “Well, this is enough for me tonight.”

Ask yourself, “Is it enough for the rest of the world?”

Look at the rest of the world right now. They need a lot of goodwill, a lot of generosity. They need a good example in terms of virtue. So whatever you can do in that direction, give a little extra, so that it really does become a happiness that spreads around.