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    How to Be Happy
    How to Be Happy
    How to Be Happy
    Ebook75 pages1 hour

    How to Be Happy

    By Thubten Zopa and Josh Bartok

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    About this ebook

    In How to Be Happy, Lama Zopa Rinpoche helps us find our good heart, the heart that rejoices in the happiness of others.

    In How to Be Happy, Lama Zopa Rinpoche helps us find our good heart, the heart that rejoices in the happiness of others.

    How to transform problems into happiness, how to find compassion for our "enemies", how to treat ourselves with kindness; it is on these persistent and universal challenges that Lama Zopa offers his wise and warm teachings. Including three wonderfully rich and evocative guided meditations, How to Be Happy works with the reader to show that happiness in this present moment is dependent on the wisdom of a truly open and generous heart.

    Anyone looking for advice on how to be happy - truly, meaningfully happy - will find Lama Zopa Rinpoche to be a trustworthy and skillful guide. He is a tireless teacher of methods that work for us when all is well, and also when life's troubles, big and small, seem unmanageable.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWisdom Publications
    Release dateOct 10, 2008
    ISBN9780861719280
    How to Be Happy
    Author

    Thubten Zopa

    Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche is the Spiritual Director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a worldwide network of Buddhist centers, monasteries, and affiliated projects, including Wisdom Publications. Rinpoche was born in 1946 in the village of Thami in the Solo Khumbu region of Nepal near Mount Everest. His books include Transforming Problems into Happiness, How to Be Happy, and Ultimate Healing. He lives in Aptos, California.

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      Book preview

      How to Be Happy - Thubten Zopa

      Happiness

      EVERY ONE OF US WANTS HAPPINESS, and not only in each moment of our daily life: we want an unchanging, ultimate happiness that can be experienced forever.

      Every one of us is trying to stop our problems and find peace. No matter where we live, what race or culture we belong to, what religion or philosophy we follow, or what language we speak, we all wish to be happy and not have problems. Truly every living being has the basic wish to experience happiness and avoid suffering.

      But so often, our attempts to find happiness end up only causing more pain.

      We need to understand the full potential of our mind, and we need to understand the importance of loving-kindness for our own happiness and for the happiness of the world. We need to learn how to transform our daily work so that it becomes the cause of happiness rather than problems, now and in the future. And we need to learn how to transform every single experience—health and sickness, wealth and poverty, living and dying—into happiness. Meditation is the most powerful tool we can employ to do this. Through the power of meditation, we can find lasting peace and happiness and, more importantly, we can bring peace and happiness to others.

      Cultivate the thought that everyone you meet—in all circumstances—is fulfilling all your wishes.

      This is the gate to true happiness.

      The sun of real happiness shines in your life only when you start to cherish others.

      PROBLEMS AND THE ABSENCE of problems do not come from outside. Problems and the absence of problems, as well as all peace and all happiness, only come from your own mind. Your mind has the potential to stop the problems that come from your mind. And yet the same mind that brings the problem doesn’t stop the problem, but another mind—another thought, another attitude—can stop all problems and bring peace and happiness.

      The mind of a buddha or some holy being can’t be transplanted into you.

      Peace, happiness, and satisfaction have to come from your own mind.

      AS LONG AS WE BELIEVE that happiness has to come from outside, from other people or from the external environment, we will always blame something outside whenever we have a problem. Many people, for example, think that their problems come from their parents. They say, I’m like this because of my mother and father. My parents are to blame. In a way, Western culture as a whole teaches children to blame their parents for their problems, rather than emphasizing how kind parents are in giving life to their children. But real happiness has nothing to do with the past, with our history, or our upbringing. Real happiness comes when we free ourselves from the dissatisfied mind of desire. Satisfaction comes when we give ourselves freedom from the always unhappy mind of desire.

      Suffering is the broom that clears away negative karma.

      THE HAPPINESS OF MATERIAL progress is artificial, just some kind of external excitement—the briefest flash of lightning in the dark. True joy, lasting joy, comes from the depths of the heart.

      Renounce the happiness that produces suffering; cherish the true happiness that can come from suffering.

      Meditation

      YOU CANNOT MAKE your body flexible just by thinking about making it flexible. You can only do that by training it; the body has to make the body flexible. Just as physical flexibility has to be created by our body, mental flexibility—which is another name for ultimate peace and happiness—has to be created by our mind, through mental training.

      Meditation is mental training.

      MEDITATION is a profound psychological technique to stop wrong conceptions and to start the correct way of thinking that leads to peace, happiness, and harmony. Meditation sounds like some kind of religious term, but it is actually the deepest practice of inner psychology. Meditation protects the mind, and keeps it aware of reality. Meditation also helps you keep your mind in a state of loving-kindness by training you to be aware of all the ways in which others are kind to you; and it helps you

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