It seems pretty easy to deduce that what drives all of us, including animals and creatures, is the instinctive wish to be happy and to not suffer. It underlies every action we do, every choice we make.
Nothing wrong with that! But we ought to ask ourselves why, no matter how hard we try, stable happiness – fulfillment, contentment, joy – seems so elusive. If someone gives me a recipe for a cake, let’s say, that doesn’t work when I try it, it’s reasonable to try again, making sure I follow each step well. But if after a couple of tries it still doesn’t work, we’d naturally question the recipe rather than stubbornly repeat the same steps.
Buddha suggests we be equally intelligent when it comes to happiness. What’s our recipe for that? Getting the nice things, basically: nice house, nice job, nice relationships, nice environment. That’s the default assumption in the minds of all of us. It seems utterly logical.
However, even a cursory look at the lives of so many of us who can tick all these boxes, who have these things, even an abundance of them, will show us that we’re not happy, not fulfilled, not joyful, not content. But we keep trying the same recipe, relentlessly; we rarely ever question it.
Buddha’s take on it is so simple, it’s embarrassing. But because we’re so addicted to our faulty recipe, we find it hard to hear. Essentially he’s saying – and this he’s discovered from his own direct experience – that what goes on in our mind is the main cause of happiness and, indeed, suffering. The external things – the people, the events – are merely catalysts.
The fact is, we know this; we can see it again and again in our lives. One day we wake up feeling pretty content and even though things go wrong, it doesn’t affect us too much. Another day we wake up anxious, depressed, and even though the day is sunny, people are kind, the food is delicious, we’re not happy.
This should blow our minds! This should prove to us that our accepted recipe for happiness isn’t valid.
So, what does Buddha suggest? Change our minds, basically. Become our own therapists, dig deep inside, unpack and unravel the deeply held assumptions of neediness, anger, low self-esteem, depression and the rest. In theory it’s not complicated, but because we’re addicted to the opposite, it’s the most difficult job we’ll ever do.
For years I worked with people in prison, in Australia but mainly in the United States, including people with life sentences and on death row. From the normal point of view, it would seem bizarre to suggest that you can find happiness in these situations. But many of my friends in prison without doubt are leading fulfilled, content, beneficial lives.
I read the biography of woman in Florida who, thirty years ago, was arrested, along with her husband, for killing two policemen. In fact, they were innocent. He was even executed. She spent seventeen years on death row but eventually was released. Can we even imagine the suffering, the pain, the grief, the loss? It’s hard to bear.
But she was amazing. She said, “I couldn’t change anything, but they couldn’t take my mind from me. I decided, ‘I’m not a prisoner, I’m a monk. I’m not in a cell, I’m in a cave’.”
Many of my friends say that being imprisoned has been their wake-up call. When you literally can’t the change the external environment, if you’re brave enough you can see that you can change the way you see things: change your mind, in other words. Then, very simply, fulfillment, happiness, contentment come.
Again, putting it simply: we think that happiness is what we get when attachment gets what it wants; Buddha’s saying that happiness is what we get when we give up attachment and the other neuroses.