”If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.”Lao-tzu
In college I used to have this teacher that one day was talking about happiness. She was saying that is impossible to be always happy...at most one can have many moments of happiness in life. I agree with her at the time...but been the dreamer that I am...I wonder if it was possible to find eternal joy while we live in this difficult world of us. Where nothing is permanent and things are constantly changing. I like to pursue the impossible because I enjoy challenges. After much searching I found my answer and believe that my teacher was wrong to a certain extend. Here are a few tips that may help you find what you truly never lost in the first place...that elusive thing that some said only can be pursue...happiness:
1)-Life will not get any better than this and the myth of the grass is greener on the other side of the fence:
Most of us are usually thinking...when I get this job, object, person, knowledge, be more *insert any trait*, I will be happy. But when we manage to get that we thought will gonna be the source of happiness...we experiment a temporary sense of joy but at some point we return to the same emotional state that we had before getting what we desire. And this repeat again and again...the only thing that changes is what we desire. This illusion last for the majority of people their entire life, in the constant pursuit of something...never finding peace...looking for something that they never lose in the first place.
If you sleep,
Desire grows in you
Like a vine in the forest.
Like a monkey in the forest
You jump from tree to tree,
Never finding the fruit -
From life to life,
Never finding peace.
Buddha
2)-Happiness lies inside and depends 100% of you:
This is a good thing. You can at this moment decide to be happy. There is not really any obstacle in your way than the face that looks at you from the other side of mirror. We put so much effort to be miserable. The mind will always gets in the way and start to fixated in something external...start to formulate some wish or pointing fingers at others as the source of your misery. It is much easy to blame others for our own shortcomings. If people can find happiness in the middle of a concentration camp in the times of the second world war...think most if not all reading this have a more easy way of achieving it.
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”..Victor Frankl’s
“It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.”...Agnes Repplier
3)-Love everyone and drop the expectations:
Loving others is the ultimate selfish act. It is always a win-win situation. When you love others in fact you are loving another aspect of yourself. We are all one....just different manifestation of the same being that some of us like to call God. Love never cause pains, it doesn't need anything because it is always fulfilling on its own. Once you clean all the garbage that is in your mind the only thing that remains is love. That's what we are in essence. Love is the highest truth.
Love is too much of a good thing to reserve it for one or a few specials person. It is what truly feeds the spirit. Why will you deprive others of such a beautiful thing when everyone could use a little more of it in their lives?. If you don't want to do it for them...them do it for you
. Like I said...is the ultimate selfish act...when you love, you feel good.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~Dalai Lama
The problem arise when you have expectations of that "love" and you can call that what you want...but that is not love. When our expectations are not fulfilled we usually become disappointed and that bring sadness. What cause the sadness was not the other people was your own expectations. So drop them if you want to stop suffering. Is been years since the last time I expected something of others and things have been so much better. The next quote will be hard to swallow but there is so much truth in it:
Why is there this everlasting craving to be loved? Listen carefully. You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you. As long as you demand to be loved, there is no love in you; and if you feel no love, you are ugly, brutish, so why should you be loved? Without love you are a dead thing; and when the dead thing asks for love, it is still dead. Whereas, if your heart is full of love, then you never ask to be loved, you never put out your begging bowl for someone to fill it. It is only the empty who ask to be filled, and an empty heart can never be filled by running after gurus or seeking love in a hundred other ways.----J. Krishnamurti Think On These Things
When you think of it...it is kind of funny. You are looking for something that you never lose in the first place while you pursuit ghost and illusions create by your own mind. When you get tired of this fool errand..at that moment you look at the last place that is left to explore...inside of yourself:
According to an old Hindu legend there was a time when all men were gods, but they so abused their divinity that Brahma, the chief god, decided to take it away from men and hide it where they would never again find it. Where to hide it became the big question.
When the lesser gods were called in council to consider this question, they said, "We will bury man's divinity deep in the earth." But Brahma said, "No, that will not do, for man will dig deep down in the earth and find it." Then they said, "Well, we will sink his divinity into the deepest ocean." but again Brahma replied, "No, not there, for man will learn to dive into the deepest waters, will search out the ocean bed, and will find it."
Then the lesser gods said, "We will take it to the top of the highest mountain and there hide it." But again Brahma replied, "No, for man will eventually climb every high mountain on earth. he will be sure some day to find it and take it up again for himself." Then the lesser gods gave up and concluded, "We do not know where to hide it, for it seems there is no place on earth or in the sea that man will not eventually reach."
Then Brahma said, "Here is what we will do with man's divinity. We will hide it deep down in man himself, for he will never think to look for it there." Ever since then, the legend concludes, man has been going up and down the earth, climbing, digging, diving, exploring, searching for something that is already in himself.
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In college I used to have this teacher that one day was talking about happiness. She was saying that is impossible to be always happy...at most one can have many moments of happiness in life. I agree with her at the time...but been the dreamer that I am...I wonder if it was possible to find eternal joy while we live in this difficult world of us. Where nothing is permanent and things are constantly changing. I like to pursue the impossible because I enjoy challenges. After much searching I found my answer and believe that my teacher was wrong to a certain extend. Here are a few tips that may help you find what you truly never lost in the first place...that elusive thing that some said only can be pursue...happiness:
1)-Life will not get any better than this and the myth of the grass is greener on the other side of the fence:
Most of us are usually thinking...when I get this job, object, person, knowledge, be more *insert any trait*, I will be happy. But when we manage to get that we thought will gonna be the source of happiness...we experiment a temporary sense of joy but at some point we return to the same emotional state that we had before getting what we desire. And this repeat again and again...the only thing that changes is what we desire. This illusion last for the majority of people their entire life, in the constant pursuit of something...never finding peace...looking for something that they never lose in the first place.
If you sleep,
Desire grows in you
Like a vine in the forest.
Like a monkey in the forest
You jump from tree to tree,
Never finding the fruit -
From life to life,
Never finding peace.
Buddha
2)-Happiness lies inside and depends 100% of you:
This is a good thing. You can at this moment decide to be happy. There is not really any obstacle in your way than the face that looks at you from the other side of mirror. We put so much effort to be miserable. The mind will always gets in the way and start to fixated in something external...start to formulate some wish or pointing fingers at others as the source of your misery. It is much easy to blame others for our own shortcomings. If people can find happiness in the middle of a concentration camp in the times of the second world war...think most if not all reading this have a more easy way of achieving it.
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”..Victor Frankl’s
“It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.”...Agnes Repplier
3)-Love everyone and drop the expectations:
Loving others is the ultimate selfish act. It is always a win-win situation. When you love others in fact you are loving another aspect of yourself. We are all one....just different manifestation of the same being that some of us like to call God. Love never cause pains, it doesn't need anything because it is always fulfilling on its own. Once you clean all the garbage that is in your mind the only thing that remains is love. That's what we are in essence. Love is the highest truth.
Love is too much of a good thing to reserve it for one or a few specials person. It is what truly feeds the spirit. Why will you deprive others of such a beautiful thing when everyone could use a little more of it in their lives?. If you don't want to do it for them...them do it for you
. Like I said...is the ultimate selfish act...when you love, you feel good.If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~Dalai Lama
The problem arise when you have expectations of that "love" and you can call that what you want...but that is not love. When our expectations are not fulfilled we usually become disappointed and that bring sadness. What cause the sadness was not the other people was your own expectations. So drop them if you want to stop suffering. Is been years since the last time I expected something of others and things have been so much better. The next quote will be hard to swallow but there is so much truth in it:
Why is there this everlasting craving to be loved? Listen carefully. You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you. As long as you demand to be loved, there is no love in you; and if you feel no love, you are ugly, brutish, so why should you be loved? Without love you are a dead thing; and when the dead thing asks for love, it is still dead. Whereas, if your heart is full of love, then you never ask to be loved, you never put out your begging bowl for someone to fill it. It is only the empty who ask to be filled, and an empty heart can never be filled by running after gurus or seeking love in a hundred other ways.----J. Krishnamurti Think On These Things
When you think of it...it is kind of funny. You are looking for something that you never lose in the first place while you pursuit ghost and illusions create by your own mind. When you get tired of this fool errand..at that moment you look at the last place that is left to explore...inside of yourself:
According to an old Hindu legend there was a time when all men were gods, but they so abused their divinity that Brahma, the chief god, decided to take it away from men and hide it where they would never again find it. Where to hide it became the big question.
When the lesser gods were called in council to consider this question, they said, "We will bury man's divinity deep in the earth." But Brahma said, "No, that will not do, for man will dig deep down in the earth and find it." Then they said, "Well, we will sink his divinity into the deepest ocean." but again Brahma replied, "No, not there, for man will learn to dive into the deepest waters, will search out the ocean bed, and will find it."
Then the lesser gods said, "We will take it to the top of the highest mountain and there hide it." But again Brahma replied, "No, for man will eventually climb every high mountain on earth. he will be sure some day to find it and take it up again for himself." Then the lesser gods gave up and concluded, "We do not know where to hide it, for it seems there is no place on earth or in the sea that man will not eventually reach."
Then Brahma said, "Here is what we will do with man's divinity. We will hide it deep down in man himself, for he will never think to look for it there." Ever since then, the legend concludes, man has been going up and down the earth, climbing, digging, diving, exploring, searching for something that is already in himself.
