Happiness - Others Happiness is our Happiness

Today I want to write my own understanding of Happiness. Happiness is something which we experience often but it is very difficult to express and define it. I once read in the book "How to live without Fear and Worry" that the Happiness is very subjective. My happiness won’t be the happiness of someone and the happiness of others may not be my happiness. 

According to the teachings of Buddha, all sentient beings starting from the unicellular microbes to multi-cellular mammals want happiness and don’t want sufferings. But they don’t know that the seed of suffering is unwholesome sinful acts and the seed of happiness is the virtuous acts.  As a result, all suffer due to ignorance. It is also said that what we are today is the result of what have we been doing in past lives and what and where will we be in next lives will depend on what we do today. This basically explains why there are differences among the people living in the same society. Some live beyond their means and some can’t even live up to their means. This is all because of what has been in-stored for us from the past lives, what is generally known as previous Karma. Being Buddhist, I truly believe life after death and cause and effect. If we do good, good will come upon us. Give happiness to others and you will be happy. 

Once I was watching His Eminence Gyalwa Dokhampa's talk on restful mind. He talked about happiness. Rinpoche said that happiness is living the present, not thinking about the past and future. Past is gone and future is uncertain. He also gave an example of how illogical the happiness is. None of us feel happy or appreciate that we don't have toothache at the moment, but the moment we have a bad toothache and is being treated by dentist and gives no more pain, then we feel the happiness of not having toothache anymore. So Rinpoche talked about appreciating the present moment and feeling satisfied. Satisfaction is the ultimate happiness in this world. The moment we are dissatisfied, we are not happy. So one way to be happy is to feel satisfied with what we have in this life. Do not be obsessed with what happened and what would happen. Happiness as discussed earlier is very subjective. For some, if they get something to eat and wear, it is their happiness, for some the happiness is to what they desire and it is happiness for some to help others. The happiness that we gain after helping others is long lasting. If we help someone who is in dire need, they will become happy and that virtuous act of ours will be rewarded with happiness befalling on us. Even from religious point of view, it is believed that first think of the wellbeing of others and our own wellbeing will be taken care of karmically. If we pray and work for the wellbeing of all sentient beings, there is no need for us to pray for ourselves. That virtuous act of ours will re-bounce back to us and the effect will be double the efforts we have put in.  

Help those who are in need of. Give when they beg. Talk when they ask and listen when they talk. Make them feel one of us in the society. This means a lot to them and that is happiness for them. That happiness of them will multiply and will be our happiness. Always believe that, what we do to others will come back to us one day. So give happiness to others to get happiness for ourselves.    

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