Sustaining Higher Happiness Quotient by spreading cheer

Each and every living being has within them the seed or potential to become a fully enlightened being and to realize its full potential. What we need to do now is to be able to achieve it … this is something that only human beings can do. Animals can gather resources, defeat their enemies, and protect their families, but they can neither understand nor engage in the enlightened path. It would be a great shame if we were to use our human life only to achieve what animals can also achieve, and thereby waste this unique opportunity to become a source of benefit for all living beings.

After having indulged our self-cherishing for so many lives, now is the time to realize that it simply does not work. Now is the time to switch the object of our cherishing from yourself to all living beings. Countless enlightened beings have discovered that by abandoning self-cherishing and cherishing others they came to experience true peace and happiness. If we practice the methods they taught, there is no reason why we should not be able to do the same. We cannot expect to change our mind overnight, but through patiently and consistently practicing the instructions on cherishing others, while at the same time accumulating merit, purifying negativity, and receiving blessings, we can gradually replace our ordinary self-cherishing attitude with the sublime attitude of cherishing all living beings. Here are some simple steps to achieving all this and more:

1: Gradually develop the capacity to be "centered."

The "center" or the "centered self" has to be built through conscious effort. We have to learn to go there and "center" or calm ourselves. How can we do this? Through efforts to relax and detach yourself from a constantly active mind and from demanding emotions, you can find some peace. With practice, you can get better at withdrawing from the stress (while becoming an even keener observer). Several other steps will help you do this.

2: Use determinism to increase your acceptance of what is happening

By understanding that there are causes for everything that happens, we can start to focus more on observing the true causes and less on some emotional reaction, such as "ain't it awful," "that should never have happened," etc. We can relax because we know the outcome was lawful (unless we witnessed a miracle). This accepting attitude gives us a certain freedom--a toleration of whatever happens. We may, of course, have a preference about what happens, and if the desired behavior occurs, we are happy, but if something else happens, we can be equally happy; because we accept reality (laws) and we learned some important information about the laws of behavior. The freedom from being right or winning and just focusing on observing and learning is a great relief.

3: Give up trying to control everything, loosen up.

Whether you understand it or not, the world is unfolding as it should. Woldwide philosophies advocate acceptance or "going with the flow of the river." Going upstream is very hard and probably isn't the right direction anyway. Focus on learning to control your own life within a little bubble, don't worry much about changing the course of great rivers.

4: With practice you can learn to have a detached, calm, accepting attitude. That is peace of mind.

Peace of mind includes more than inner calm, it is accepting oneself, others, and the world. It is being sensitive to being off center, i.e. things beginning to go wrong, and doing something about the problems right away. It is a wonderful mental state, but no one can achieve it all the time.

Spread Happiness All-around!

We can sometimes help others by providing them with money or better material conditions, but we should remember that the greatest benefit we can give is to help them overcome their delusions and find true, lasting happiness within. Through technological progress and by organizing society in fairer, more humane ways, we can certainly help to improve people's lives in some respects; but whatever we do will inevitably have some unwanted side effects. The best we can hope for is to provide people with conditions that bring some temporary respite from problems and difficulties, but we cannot give them true, lasting happiness. This is because the real cause of happiness is inner peace, which can be found only within the mind, not in external conditions.

Our real purpose in attaining the permanent inner peace of enlightenment is to help others do the same. Just as the only way to solve our own problems is to find inner peace, so the only way to help others to solve theirs is to encourage them to engage in spiritual practice and discover their own inner peace. This way of benefiting others is by far the best; yet we can do this effectively only if we first work on our own mind. There is little benefit in telling people how important it is to overcome their delusions if we are unable to control our own. However, if through training our mind we succeed in pacifying - or even completely eliminating - our own anger, for example, we can certainly help others to control theirs. Then our advice will not be mere words, but will have behind it the power of personal experience.
- Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net