Thursday, May 6, 2010

Happiness Comes from Mindfulness

Most of us spend countless years of our lives in the pursuit of happiness. We work long hours, lose sleep, compromise our health, and rush through what should be luxuriated-in moments of life and love and family, in the name of happiness, and often feel at a loss to actually find any at all. The truth is, of course, that happiness is not somewhere we need to get to; it is right in front of us all the time. But, how do we find it? How can we see and experience and access this state of blissful potential?


The answer is simple and found in the singular act of being quiet. By sitting in silence for short periods of time, and focusing naturally on our breathing, new awarenesses of happiness become possible and increasingly more accessible. In our hyper, Internet-speediness, taking some time to be still is an important counter-balance to our otherwise runaway lives.


In the same way that a glass of water mixed with sand becomes cloudy when shaken, the human mind experiences similar confusion when it is impacted by the cacophony of the everyday world, with all the decisions we are called upon to make in our lives. Yet, when the glass of sandy water has time to settle, when it is left alone, the water eventually regains its natural clarity. This is also true of the mind; when given time and space to settle, intelligence and intuition will prevail over rumination, worry, and emotional upheaval.


It turns out that mindful attention to the breath, and subsequently to the present moment, is good training for enlightenment. The Buddha discovered the truth of finding peace through stillness 2500 years ago when, through his meditation practice, he saw that one’s attitude toward the things of life is more important to achieving a state of happiness, than the actual events of life, themselves. This realization was key.


Cultivating a mindful presence, that is, being fully aware of whatever is going on in the present moment, with acceptance, is the actual route to happiness, to contentment, and to living a fulfilling life. Acceptance, rather than resistance, is the secret handshake of those who’ve developed the capacity to experience joy, no matter what. Present moment attention is the password for those who radiate bliss, even within the storms that gather on the shores of our lives. Feeling all the facets of our life give it the depth and profundity that elude us in times of existential malaise.


Interestingly, it takes tremendous courage to just sit still with ourselves, as we learn first to observe and then to ride the tide of our own breath. Strangely, we find comfort in the noise of pop culture and lose ourselves easily in conspicuous consumption. But true happiness does not come from the acquisition of things and the constant churning of activity. Instead, lasting happiness comes from connecting with the preciousness of our own breath, and then relating to others through a sense of shared humanity.

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