His Holiness the Dalai Lama often says we all want to be happy. Everything we do, say or think is to try to bring ourselves happiness. Even when helping others, some part of our motivation is about the good feeling we get when we help others.
The question that echoes throughout human history is how do we get happiness?
We tend to have three approaches in our effort to acquire happiness. We try to get what we think we want. That could be material things like a new car, house or social status, good job or life experiences. The other effort we make is to try and avoid the things we don’t want. Then we ignore the rest.
Superficially, this makes sense. Try to get what you want, avoid what is unpleasant and ignore the rest. The problem with this strategy is that it sets us up for fleeting happiness at best. We tend to incessantly scan our environment for “bad things” to avoid and “good things” to grasp onto. Ignoring the rest sets us up for missing most of world in front of us. We miss the roses and those blissful moments of sudden quiet or starry night views or the majestic sunsets.
Another thing the Dalai Lama likes to say is that happiness comes from inside. He says “where do you feel happiness? On the inside or outside of you?”. Of course you feel happiness on the inside. So why not look for happiness on the inside?
Instead of continually scanning our outside environment for happiness, why not spend some time exploring inside for happiness? In the Tibetan traditions we talk about three levels: body, mind and spirit. Sometimes is called body, breath (energy) and mind.
We spend a great deal of time focussed on the body and physical things. The right house, the right neighborhood, money, the right school for our kids. We also spend a lot of time focussed on mind. We want the social status, the right job, success in our careers.
We spend so little time inward, on the spirit level of ourselves. If we do spend effort and time on spirit, we find our true Selves. True Self is covered over by the sticky emotions, thoughts and feelings of body and mind. These include wanting, greed, lust, desire as well as anger, aggression, ignorance and others.
But if we can take the time to look past these outer emotions, we can find our true Selves. This is where we will find a more lasting happiness. A centre of peace and joy for life. That inner peace is always with us. If we can learn to connect with that inner self, again and again, slowly it becomes more and more prevalent in our lives. With enough practice and effort, we continually exist in our True Selves all the time.
This is what meditation is about. Connecting to that inner peace. In meditation we practice seeing past the outer, sticky, entangling emotions.
The question is how do we do this with meditation? How does meditation work?
Typically, we have two approaches to strong emotions or thoughts that arise in our minds. We either get caught up in them or if we don’t like them, suppress them or distract ourselves.
With meditation we step back from our thoughts and emotions and just observe them. Stepping back and disentangling can be difficult. Also, if we have developed a pattern of supressing, it can be hard not to do that habit.
With meditation we use a little trick for our brain. We anchor the brain in what it thinks is a purpose. Often we anchor in following the breath, but it can be a mantra or image too. We follow the breath in and out and when our mind wanders, we let go of the thought or feeling that distracted us and re-focus on the breath.
We do this again and again until we get pretty good at just seeing thoughts as thoughts. We realize we don’t have to chase every thought or supress every unwanted feeling. We can just be there with it. In the present moment.
When we can disentangle ourselves from outer emotions, thoughts and feelings, we find an extraordinary inner Self. A center of peace and calm with a of feeling openness, spaciousness. We become relaxed with whatever arises. Thoughts and feelings no longer seem so substantial, hard and real. Thoughts become much more fluid, dynamic; just moving energy.
As we learn to meditate and stay with whatever arises in our minds, we got more and more glimpses of our true Selves. We become more at home with being in open awareness. We feel connected to others in a deeper way. We feel we finally belong, just where we are; right here, right now.
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