Be in Yourself

There may be days when you get up in the morning and things aren’t the way you had hoped they would be.

That’s when you have to tell yourself that things will get better. There are times when people disappoint you and let you down.

But those are the times when you must remind yourself to trust your

11 Happy Things You Need For a Happy Life

True happiness is easy to achieve if you have the happy things that matter in your life. If you’re confused about what happiness truly means to you, fret not, because it’s really simple. All you need are these 11 happy things.

Make a checklist of these 11 happy things, and tick them off when you feel like you’ve achieved them. And for the first time in your life, you’ll know what it takes to truly feel happiness, inside and everywhere around you!  

Happiness Doesn’t Exist

Happiness is slippery. It doesn’t like to stick around. We know we’ve had it before, but it’s gone away, and we know there are certain things we have to do to find it again. Certain ducks have to be in a row. After all, if you didn’t have to do anything to be happy, you wouldn’t do anything at all. It can’t be too hard to find. Other people seem to be finding it all right.

Yet for all our efforts, we never seem to get this happiness problem nailed down, and there’s a very good reason for that.

When we start talking about solving the problem of unhappiness, it’s hard to avoid the topic of Buddhism. I know not everyone is a fan, but they have lain some important groundwork, even for those of us who like the idea of improving our quality of life but aren’t prepared to buy the whole package, with all its baldness and orange robes. Despite its promises of peace and enlightenment, I haven’t leapt in with abandon, so don’t worry, this article doesn’t delve into pratitya-samutpadas and tathagatagarbhas. It’s about a plain-jane concept you know very well: happiness.

Buddhism developed as a response to mankind’s search for happiness. In the simplest terms, it’s not a belief system but a methodology for being happy. Yet Buddhist literature is known for focusing much more on suffering than happiness. Its curious preference for morbid subject matter has led some to describe Buddhism as preoccupied with negativity.

The reason suffering has become Buddhism’s primary focus, rather than happiness, is that happiness, as we conceive of it, doesn’t really exist — at least not in the same way suffering does. What we refer to as happiness is really just what the absence of suffering feels like.

Although it’s become the favorite term for the concept, “suffering” is really not an adequate word. The Buddhists call it dukkha. Suffering is perhaps the most common English substitution, but I’ve also seen anguish, unease, dissatisfaction, stress, discomfort, or unsatisfactoriness. None of them are quite right, and so many writings in English will use dukkha.

I avoid the casual use of Sanskrit or Pali words in my articles because I think they make a lot of readers tune out, as they sense they’re being led into an esoteric religious discussion. Books and articles about Buddhism can get pretty dry and cryptic, scaring away readers who would otherwise be fascinated by the very same concepts if they weren’t presented in such stuffy, user-unfriendly language. But for the rest of this article I’ll use dukkha, if it hasn’t scared you off yet.

“Unease” might be the best of the English translations of dukkha. The original word was meant

You can't buy Happiness

You only have to open a newspaper to see pictures of happy looking people, sitting behind the steering wheel of their new car; or to stroll down the tube platform to see beaming individuals, delighted because they're new home-owners. But these adverts don't reflect reality.

Material possessions and money are not the true source of happiness. On the contrary ... Read on and learn how to appreciate all those small pleasures that money just can't buy.

"Money doesn't buy happiness," so the wise saying goes. Of course, it's difficult to be happy if you're living on the breadline; you do need some money to ensure a minimum level of comfort and so you can live calmly without having to worry about tomorrow. But once your basic needs have been met, it seems that there is no correlation between how happy you are and the size of your bank balance or the number of cars or plasma screens you own.

Should we live for other people’s happiness?

You know, the ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death. When their souls got to the entrance to heaven, the guards asked two questions. Their answers determined whether they were able to enter or not. 'Have you found joy in your life?' 'Has your life brought joy to others?' —The Bucket List

Maybe that's well-intentioned but very deceptively naïve. It raises the question as to whether you should live for your happiness or devote yourself to making other people happy. What should be on priority? For the enlightened one the question is utterly irrelevant (and he would know why!) But what would I say to those still in the journey of spiritual development?

First of all, there's no heaven and hell. What is, is here and now in this life. So, you need not worry and do anything to secure your wellness after life. Death is the end of consciousness. There's absolutely no "you" after you die.