Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

We willingly spend a dozen years in school, then go on to college or professional training for several more; we work out at the gym to stay healthy; we spend a lot of time enhancing our comfort, our wealth, and our social status. We put a great deal into all this, and yet we do so little to improve the inner condition that determines the very quality of our lives.

in hoping that money will make us happier, we work to acquire it; once we have it, we become obsessed with making it grow and we suffer when we lose it.

Wealth, pleasures, rank, and power are all sought for the sake of happiness. But as we strive, we forget the goal and spend our time pursuing the means for their own sake.

Wealth, pleasures, rank, and power are all sought for the sake of happiness. But as we strive, we forget the goal and spend our time pursuing the means for their own sake. In so doing, we miss the point and remain deeply unsatisfied.

Happiness is a skill, a manner of being, but skills must be learned.

Those who seek happiness in pleasure, wealth, glory, power, and heroics are as naive as the child who tries to catch a rainbow and wear it as a coat.

The most common error is to confuse pleasure for happiness. Pleasure, says the Hindu proverb, “is only the shadow of happiness.” It is the direct result of pleasurable sensual, esthetic, or intellectual stimuli.

It is unstable by nature, and the sensation it evokes soon becomes neutral or even unpleasant. Likewise, when repeated it may grow insipid or even lead to disgust; savoring a delicious meal is a source of genuine pleasure, but we are indifferent to it once we’ve had our fill and would get sick of it if we continued eating.

Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity; it is a state of being, a profound emotional balance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions.

there is no direct relationship between pleasure and happiness.

Pleasures become obstacles only when they upset the mind’s equilibrium and lead to an obsession with gratification or an aversion to anything that thwarts them.

There is a distinct difference between true joy, which is the natural manifestation of well-being, and euphoria, the elation caused by passing excitation.

There is a distinct difference between true joy, which is the natural manifestation of well-being, and euphoria, the elation caused by passing excitation. Any superficial thrill that is not anchored in enduring contentment is almost invariably

There is a distinct difference between true joy, which is the natural manifestation of well-being, and euphoria, the elation caused by passing excitation. Any superficial thrill that is not anchored in enduring contentment is almost invariably followed by disappointment.

declaring ourselves satisfied with life because there is no objective reason to complain about its conditions

meditation. Sit quietly, in a comfortable but balanced posture. Whether you sit cross-legged on a cushion or more conventionally on a chair,

Sit quietly, in a comfortable but balanced posture. Whether you sit cross-legged on a cushion or more conventionally on a chair, try to keep your back straight, yet without being tense. Rest your hands on your knees or thighs or in your lap, keep your eyes lightly gazing in the space in front of you, and breathe naturally.

Sit quietly, in a comfortable but balanced posture. Whether you sit cross-legged on a cushion or more conventionally on a chair, try to keep your back straight, yet without being tense. Rest your hands on your knees or thighs or in your lap, keep your eyes lightly gazing in the space in front of you, and breathe naturally. Watch your mind, the coming and going of thoughts. At first it might seem that instead of diminishing, thoughts rush through your mind like a waterfall. Just watch them arising and let them come and go, without trying to stop them but without fueling them either. Take a moment at the end of the practice to savor the warmth and joy that result from a calmer mind.

“Don’t think you’re paying me some kind of great tribute if you let my death become the great event of your life.

It is therefore always better to familiarize ourselves with and prepare ourselves for the kind of suffering we are likely to encounter, some of which will be unavoidable, such as illness, old age, and death, rather than to be caught off guard and sink into anguish.