Saturday, August 11, 2007

Happiness - A Buddhist Perspective, Dr. Frederick Lenz, Rama

Happiness is the Natural State
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"The purpose of life is happiness. What else could it possibly be?

Life is a game in which happiness is the goal.

Happiness is the most elusive thing for human beings to find.

We are miracles. So don't deny yourself the miracle of happiness.

Life is not a malfunction. It's beautiful. But if you do not see it that way, it's simply because your room needs cleaning.

Happiness has to do with how quickly you vibrate. Meditation is a process of speeding up the vibration.

People don't really want to be happy. They go out of their way to be miserable.

Most people have no idea how unhappy they are because they don't know what happiness is. When they get a little break from their total pain, they feel a little better and they call it happiness.

How can you be happy in a world like this? You have got to be crazy to even attempt something like that.

Happiness comes from self-knowledge. Self-knowledge means that you have understood your mind. Your mind is the whole universe.

Happiness is warm puppy. In other words, happiness is the things around you. Just to see that puppy is to be happy. You don't have to do anything; you don't have to add anything.

Maybe if you stopped asking "why" all the time, you might be happy. Leave it alone, you know? Life is happy.

Happiness comes from living in the moment, this moment, now, right here. If you are in obscure states of mind, you won't see what this moment is. You won't realize its beauty.

I can't give you happiness. I can show you where it is, but I can't give it to you. How can I give you what you already have? You have to get it yourself, inside your mind.

Nobody can make you happy but yourself. Things occupy us, people occupy us, but they don't make us happy. If we are honest, what makes us happy is to experience spirit.

Loneliness is a feeling that is created by our ego. The ego feels separate from the rest of creation. The answer to overcoming those feelings is ecstasy.

Ecstasy should not be viewed as an unusual experience, but rather a natural experience - feeling all of the living matrix of existence around us.

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You want to be happy; of course, that isn't how you get to be happy; because if you want to be happy, you are going to be sitting around being unhappy because you’re not happy.

You don't have to do anything to be happy, nor do you have to avoid anything. Happiness comes from within your mind. Happiness already exists.

My god, life is beautiful! Look at the colors! if you are blind, look at the colors of your mind.

Just to exist, just to be, to take a breath, to feel that, whether its pleasure or pain, loss or gain, just your experience in life is unique to you. No one sees life like you do.

Happiness is in the mind and the mind is the universe. Your mind is the universe, not just this physical universe that you perceive through your senses.

Happiness will come through the practice of yoga and Buddhism. That happiness is not something you will lose at the end of this lifetime. It will stay with you.

Happiness is found principally in meditation. Let your mind flow out into eternity. You have to exert some effort. Then you will notice a subtle smile on your face.

Happiness has to do with how quickly you vibrate, how intelligent you are, how subtle your awareness field is, how deep you are, how aware of your eternal part you are.

People are unhappy because they don't understand life; by happy, I mean complete, aware, conscious, poignant, caring, loving, unaffected, cosmic, simplistic, humble, excited, passive - everything. You are everything.

Happiness is separate from daily experience. If picking the right door on the game show makes you happy, then you will be unhappy in the future because eventually you will pick a wrong door.

Happiness is just being you, where you are right now. Allow yourself to be you. Shut off all the silly thoughts and desires and crazy emotions

There is a whole crazy world around you. You can't control it, so don't even try. Because the more you try to control your environment, the more it controls you.

There are no problems, there is only confusion. When confusion passes away, there is only happiness. Happiness is not complicated at all.

Stop trying to do things that will make you happy. Happiness is a state of mind; because otherwise, you are a slave to circumstance.

You cannot expect the world to settle down, everything to work out, in order for you to be happy. You have to get control of your mind.

Happiness does not mean that everything works out. Usually nothing works out, but you get a kick out of it anyway.

Happiness is not dependent upon outer circumstance. Happiness is falling in love with everything around you, everything inside of you.

Happiness does not come from external things, as we're really taught as children. It doesn't come from Santa Claus. Happiness is from within your mind. Just realizing that will change your whole life.

Let us say your wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend makes you happy. If they leave, you're bound to be unhappy. You are the slave of the thing that makes you happy. You are a junkie and human relationships can be expensive habits.

Stop trying to do things that will make you happy. Happiness is a state of mind; because otherwise, you are a slave to circumstance.

Happiness is something that you can definitely achieve. At first, it will just come for a moment or two. Then it will come for longer periods of time. Eventually you will be happy all of the time.

Happiness is a state of mind. The key to happiness is being able to disconnect your life from your perceptions. If you saw things as they really were, you would be happy automatically.

Real happiness is something most people never know. What we experience in deep meditation, that ecstasy is beyond what human beings call happiness

The pathway to enlightenment is happiness. It doesn't really matter if you're successful, if you're in prison, if you're dying - if you have contact with light

Love is the only rule in self-discovery. If you've forgotten that rule, you've forgotten everything. It's not what you can get; it's what you can give.

There is no reason not to love. There is no reason not to be joyous. There is no reason not to celebrate because all of this means nothing, absolutely nothing. So why not be happy?

Love is the only antidote for the insanity of this world. And the funny thing about love is that when someone loves you, it doesn't necessarily make you feel better; but when you love someone else, it does.

Love is light in the inner worlds; it is energy, a luminescent energy that is the basis of all creation. Love is the only thing in this world that is worthwhile because it is the only thing in this world that is eternal.

Love is self-realization. Love is liberation. The only way beyond time, to unravel the knot of existence, is to love.

Let the rain of unhappy and tragic experiences fall, as sometimes it inevitably must, even in the lives of the enlightened masters. If your mind has become one with nirvana, you will remain happy at all times.

Happiness is only gained when your mind is in extended states of attention, when your mind is merging with the infinite.

Stop being jealous, I mean, to be jealous is to suggest that God doesn't know what she is doing. This is ridiculous! She does everything perfectly

Forgiveness is the best revenge.

Happiness is not dependent on experience. What you experience shouldn't make you happy or unhappy when you know how to be happy.

Sometimes it is hard to see in life. If the fog rolls in we can't see anything. Most people get caught up in life that they forget the purpose of life is to be happy.

Unhappiness is really an incorrect way of seeing. When we are unhappy we don't see life as it really is. We are in a condition of veiled light, of shadows.

Consistency is nice, I think, personally. I like to be consistently happy. I like to be consistently more aware and more conscious of the truth.

Discrimination means keeping the negative and unhappy thoughts away and allowing the pretty thoughts to come inside you.

You must constantly check that you are meditating properly, and not become, what Clint Eastwood refers to as:"a legend in your own mind."

Don't just sit there. Go do something and don't expect that it's going to be fun unless you make it fun. You have got to work on things. That is when you are happy.

Happiness is something that you don't postpone. If you are postponing happiness - it is something you will probably never experience much of.

The worst thing you can do is to sit and brood and feel sorry for yourself. Nor should you feel wrong about doing this, since all of us do from time to time.

The nuns taught me that the best thing you can do in life when things get difficult is to work.

To occupy yourself with tasks that are useful to yourself and others, you can get your mind off your problems.

Take a yoga class, study different forms of self-discovery. Some people are crazy and fanatical, avoid them. People who are balanced and calm and introspective, associating with them will raise your energy level.

Walk in nature. Take the time to be still. Practicing arts, arranging flowers, doing some drawing, working on a computer, brings a sense of stillness into your life.

Find things that make you feel still, that make you feel good.

Happiness is everything in the whole universe. It's a state of mind. Your whole life is a state of mind. So be happy, why not?

You are complete. Completion has taken place in you eons ago. Accept yourself. Enjoy yourself. This time will never be again, so fulfill the moment with your own self-joy.

Forget that you are anybody and just perform the activities around you. Look at them. Watch what you are doing, my God! Life is right in front of you, and it's great.

Focus on beauty all day long. Realize how incredibly beautiful your life is. How incredibly beautiful it is to feel, to look around, to be, to experience all this wonder.

You have to be courageous in life to allow a lightness to engage your being. It is easy to be a jerk. To be unhappy with all this weird stuff around us just seems to me to be such a waste. That's a jerk.

Practice smiling for five minutes. Stop trying to meditate. Just smile. Let your smile get bigger and bigger. Oh, you're unhappy, you're miserable, nothing is working in life, it doesn't matter. Smile anyway.

Smile sometimes when things aren't going well, and maybe realize when they aren't going well, they are.

Pain and frustration vanish in the sunlight of your smile.

It is is easy to smile. It is an act of self-giving. When you smile you are at your best and you give that best to others.

Don't be discouraged. At times the path to truth is circuitous. The point is not to succeed, only to smile eternally.

Put a smile on your face. Don't sit in the waiting room of life. Go do something, happily.

Practice being happy. Work at it. It's a new role, I realize, but you'll get it. The auditions will be coming up very soon. So get on top of it. I'm sure you will get the part.

Happiness is self-generated as the mind becomes still. As we become involved with the desires of the world, we lose that centering, that stillness.

Meditation simply means entering into states of mind which are happiness, profound happiness, simple happiness, beautiful happiness, complicated, uncomplicated - There are ten thousand states of mind.

Everything you do in meditation is amplified. If you meditate for five minutes with your complete mind focused on happiness, that is like focusing on happiness for several hours as you are walking around.

What we focus on we become. If you are just focusing on unhappy things, you will become unhappy. If you focus on happy states of mind, then it will grow in you.

Most people think happiness comes from experiences in the world. The fulfillment of desire causes a type of happiness. But as soon as they experience passes, the happiness passes.

The fulfillment of desire does not necessarily make you happy because there is a satiation factor. You can get some apple pie and eat it. If this is what makes you happy, why not eat ten?

The rich aren't happy so they try and get richer thinking it will make a difference. The poor aren't happy. They try and get rich thinking that will make a difference.

How can you possibly be happy if you think you're a person? Because we all know, just by definition, that people are definitely not happy because they take everything too seriously. They take themselves seriously.

Happiness only comes when you let go of who you think you are. If you think you're wealthy and powerful and noble and truthful or horrible and demonic, whatever it may be, it's all a waste of time. Take it from the Zen Master. He knows.

Power doesn't make you happy. Actually, power without knowledge and balance is problematic. Power is something that will automatically follow when you have knowledge. The two are really the same, in a certain sense.

You don't have to take drugs to be happy. You don't have to drink to be happy. You don't have to have people around you who love you to be happy. You don't need anything except the clarity of your own mind.

If you are not as happy as you used to be, chances are you are not meditating properly. You may be trying to skip steps. You are using power incorrectly. Your motives are not pure. You don't vibrate quickly.

There is always going to be pain. There is always going to be pleasure. But what is not always going to be there is balance, happiness. That is a personal decision

If you're a sniveler, a whiner, a complainer, you will never be happy. We all have that side. Get a little stoical and just take the pain.

Learn to be happy in any and all circumstances, whether you're experiencing pleasure or pain, whether there's loss or gain, whether the world loves you or hates you. Learn to be happy.

Even sickness becomes an experience that we pass through in happiness because our happiness is not dependent upon how our body feels, but how our spirit feels.

Life should be continually brighter. We are continually seeking our own innocence. We want to recapture it for eternity. It's in there, but we lose touch with it.

If we immerse ourselves in the ultimate good, we will have this silly smile on our face or perhaps just inside our hearts. That is what illumination is."

- Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
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