I’ve not yet seen a picture of Matthieu Ricard not smiling. French by origin, he left a career as a scientist in cellular genetics to study Buddhism. From working with molecular cells at the Pasteur Institute, he now lives a monastic life in the Himalayas as a Buddhist monk, devoting time to humanitarian projects in India, Nepal, and Tibet through his foundation Karuna Shechen. His TED talk “The Habit of Happiness“, has been viewed by more than six million people. Surely then, happiness is a much sought-after state of well-being. Ricard has been dubbed “the happiest man alive.” He is known to devote time to meditation, possibly more than the time he spends on his writings. His trademark book, Happiness is subtitled – The Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill.
So how do we go about developing this skill? Skill implies that it can be trained, or honed through practice. But does one need monkhood and meditation to become happy? What really matters in the quest to be happy? Is it even achievable for someone who professes to be “normal”? Normal as in someone who has to dig past the drudgery of life, never mind the mortgage payment due for the car at the end of the month. Can we be happy in the fleeting moments of the present, without too much investment in time and technique?
Matthieu Ricard offers no quick fixes, except to suggest that we can all cultivate the capacity for happiness. Training the mind does take time and effort. Let me quote Matthieu Ricard: Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things. Agree, it’s a mouthful. But he does state something important – Nothing from the outside, and everything within.
Happiness is mental-emotional well-being defined by pleasant positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Yeah, another mouthful – but if we can cut it down, it will just say – happiness is a state of being. What will be your notion of happiness, if it’s not from some feeling of exuberance? Before we go further, two quotes from Rumi, my favorite 13th-century Persian poet:
What you seek is seeking you.
This Universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.
A quote that really made me think “out of the box” is something I listened to in an audiobook by Michael Neill, The Inside-Out Revolution – If you are doing things in order to be happy… you’re doing them in the wrong order. That’s an interesting take. We need to be happy first and then happiness happens. Yes, forgiveness and being in gratitude all count. So does a generous dose of mind awareness, ala meditation. Where the mind goes, energy flows. But it’s all putting the cart before the horse. Be happy first. We are inherently designed for well-being and happiness. I recommend reading The Inside-Out Revolution.
If happiness is a state of being, then it’s about thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Michael speaks about mind, awareness, and thought in his book. What you choose to focus on in your mind, becomes the thoughts that create feelings, and in turn, create the corresponding emotions. We can be aware of our thoughts, and where it’s leading us, in terms of emotions. We can choose our own thoughts. That is an empowering feeling, that we can control our emotional state. Nothing on the outside needs to influence that. We decide. It goes to say we can be miserable by choice.
As Rumi says, happiness seeks you as you’ve been seeking it. Have you looked within? More from Michael – There’s nothing you need to do, be, have, get, change, practice, or learn in order to be happy, loving, and whole. No fix is needed – you’re amazing as you are. When you have that awareness, your perspective changes.
I like Wayne Dyer’s – we can only give away what we have inside ourselves – philosophy. When you’re happy you make the people around you happy. No stopping you. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. One last quote from Michael, and it rhymes with Rumi – You have wisdom inside you – listen for it. You have a light inside you – feel its glow. You have the power to speak and act and make things manifest in the world – let your wisdom and light guide you as you do.
What choices will you make to be happy?
