What Makes You So Busy? by Khenpo Sodargye

Author:Khenpo Sodargye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

Lecture at Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics

July 3, 2012

9. HAPPINESS IS ROOTED IN THE HEART

Happiness isn’t rooted in how much you own, but in how much desire you let go. Socrates once laughed heartily in a market and said, “What a lot of things I don’t need!”

NOT LONG AGO, a journalist from the Chinese Central TV interviewed people all across China with the same question, “Are you happy?,” and got all sorts of strange answers. Following this trend, a journalist also asked Mo Yan, the Nobel laureate, “Are you happy?” He answered frankly, “I don’t know.” Afterward he explained, “Happiness is to think about nothing, let go of everything, be healthy, and have no pressure. Right now, I’m extremely stressed and anxious, so how can I be happy? However, if I answered that I’m unhappy, you would say: ‘Come on! How can you not be happy after you just won the Nobel Prize?’”

In the eyes of ordinary people, the Nobel Prize makes you rich, famous, and high in social status, and so they think this person must be happy. And yet Mo Yan’s answer was “I don’t know.” Reflecting on this, we can easily understand today’s topic: “Happiness Is Rooted in the Heart.” In other words, happiness doesn’t rely on the external world. Of course, happiness isn’t totally unrelated to external objects, but mainly it’s up to our hearts.

Poor people do feel happy when they get some money, but once basic living requirements are met, the increase in wealth doesn’t necessarily enhance happiness. There was a study a few years ago that put the limit on increased happiness and comfort gained by wealth at an average of $75,000 per year (the precise number in fact differed by state and country). This is to say that if you earn under $75,000 a year, you feel the lack of resources and are less happy. By contrast, earning more than that no longer added to any sense of well-being. For instance, you may feel very happy when you purchase your first house, but when you get the second and the third house, even if they’re in exciting locations, the feeling of happiness becomes less distinct.

Many people daydream, “If I had an enormous pile of money, all my problems would be solved, and I would be absolutely happy.” The fact is that it’s not that easy. Elizabeth Taylor said that in her life, she had possessed wealth, fame, success, and charm, but never happiness.

Wealth sometimes brings suffering instead of happiness. For instance, when you move from a single-story cottage to a high-rise apartment, your property management fees increase. When you trade in your Volkswagen Santana for a brand-new BMW, maintenance fees also go up. Additional afflictive emotions come with all sorts of extra bills.

Buddhism teaches that wealth is inseparable from suffering. In the beginning, there’s the suffering of collecting wealth, which comes from working hard. In the middle, there’s the suffering of guarding wealth, which comes with worrying about its depreciation or theft.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.