By David Futrelle
If you want to know how to use the money you have to become happier, you need to understand just what it is that brings you happiness in the first place.
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Living a self-determined life doesn’t mean that you have to quit your job or move countries or make any other radical changes, it’s all about the small steps.
Question: Buddhist teachers, including the Dalai Lama, often speak of happiness as a goal (if not the goal) of Buddhist practice. I don’t begrudge anyone happiness, but making it so central to spiritual life feels self-serving. Am I misunderstanding what’s meant by “happiness”?
It’s surprisingly easy to achieve lasting happiness — we just have to understand our own basic nature. The hard part, says Mingyur Rinpoche, is getting over our bad habit of seeking happiness in transient experiences.
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Humans are the only animals on earth who punish themselves a thousand times or more for the same mistake, and who punish everybody else a thousand times or more for the same mistake.
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If you use your awareness, you will see everything you believe, and this is how you live your life. Your life is totally dominated by the system of beliefs that you learned.
Sneezing, coughing, blowing her nose—Natalie Goldberg was awfully sick yet she was happy. Happiness is available to everyone, she realized, but we can find it only when we’re still.
Natalie Goldberg’s classic Writing Down the Bones introduced writing as a spiritual practice. She discusses Zen and the writer’s practice with author and Buddhist teacher Steve Hagen, moderated by Scott Edelstein.
We don’t have to reject scientific logic in order to benefit from instinct.
Getting to know yourself is equal parts intimidating and exhilarating. It allows you to open a window of understanding and acceptance that can have a tremendously positive impact on your life.
Self-reflection is the key to self-awareness: it allows us to look neutrally at our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions. Through this practice, we are able to look at ourselves with interest and curiosity.