How are we to bring about true happiness? What are the causes of happiness?
One could get stuck on the term happiness, almost perplexed with how each person might consider it, even unto the debase.
Happiness, before modern craziness of screen time instead of outside romping play, and before binging on a couch with a clicker in hand, happiness was the romp, the play, the creative spark, the thrill of a bug on a leaf. But, in order to notice the bug, one had to notice the leaf. To notice that, one had to be walking, slowly, with the sun warming your back and with the yellow blaze of dandelions before you or of puffs just waiting for someone to blow on them. Happiness and Nature have always been nondual.
There is a restlessness in the person with the clicker; a restless hollowness that the clicker factually cannot soothe. There is no peace in that person’s mind, no sense of communion in his or her emotions. Otherwise, why would anyone watch a story centered on a murder or histrionics or, yet another, dystopian futuristic grime tale?
Peace is a foundation of happiness. One will never “have” happiness if one has little or no peace of mind. Fear, concern, and worry steal peace like a thief. Envy, jealousy, and arrogance disallow peace like pesticides on soil. Doubt about one’s value or capacity as a human being is like a brick laid upon flower seeds. Then, there’s those who just have to instigate; disturbing the peace. How can happiness unfold with any of these emotions or troubled mind states? It can’t.
Human beings have choice. Clicker and couch or take a walk? Worry about eyes dilating from turning on a light for a night toilet run or smile, and turn on the light and say prayers for all beings if it takes a minute to fall back to sleep. We have choice about how to use our mind, invest in our mind, clear our mind, illumine our mind.
The Buddha said it well: “We are what we think. With our thoughts we create our world.” Every level of world; from the personal to the Planet. Wow.
