No Mud, No Lotus by Thich Nhat Hanh

Author:Thich Nhat Hanh [Hanh, Thich Nhat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937006860
Publisher: Parallax Press

CREATING HAPPINESS

We know how to nourish happiness with mindfulness. We get in touch with the wonderful elements of life in us and around us. We don’t need to run around. We don’t have to go looking into the future. The conditions are already there. With mindfulness we can discover the fact that the conditions of happiness we already have are sufficient, really much more than sufficient, and happiness is possible right now. When you walk, it can be a celebration. When you breathe with awareness, it’s to celebrate. When we sit like that, we are celebrating; we’re celebrating life.

Just as we may have many small sorrows that mindfulness can help us release, we also have a multitude of small moments of happiness that we can savor and extend. Whether you drink a cup of tea or take a walk or just sit down and look, you can create happiness during that time. People complain that they don’t have any happiness in life. We need to find the many small joys that life has to offer and help them grow.

There are many talented people with diplomas, degrees, and long titles. There are people who can invent revolutionary new machines and computer applications. We may like to ask them, “Can you create a moment of happiness?” If you know how to do this, you can create something truly beneficial.

To make a soup we need some water, some vegetables, some tofu, a little of this and a little of that. You can make a good soup with just a few simple ingredients; nothing fancy is needed. A small portion of happiness is a kind of soup. With a few ingredients, an open mind, and a little resourcefulness, we can make a moment of happiness for ourselves and for the person next to us. We can offer some of our tasty soup to someone else. If we know how to create a moment of happiness, we get to enjoy that happiness ourselves, and we can also double it by sharing it with another person. That is the art of happiness, tasting and delighting in the little happinesses of daily life.

I suggest you take a piece of a paper and write down all the conditions for happiness available to you right now. One page may not be enough. Two pages may not be enough. Three or four pages may not be enough. When we recognize all these elements, it’s so easy to generate happiness.

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