The Dalai Lama said that the purpose of our life is to seek happiness. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So, he says, I think, the very motion of our life is toward happiness.

While human life was in a primitive stage, we were part of a group by necessity. We did not operate as individuals, but a part of a group. The ego had not developed. I believe that the simple, although dangerous and burdensome life may have had more happiness because the attitudes of hate, anger and greed had not yet developed in the mind of humans. Even in less developed societies than ours, we see happiness. Fred Muir told us of the happiness of the peasants of the Philippine Islands. They could return from long hours of toil in the hot sun with a happy attitude. They did not come home stressed out. How do you feel after a hard day at the office followed by a long drive home on the congested roads?

After we became more "civilized" we developed as individuals. As individuals, our ego evolved and we acted to enhance that ego-to do our own thing, to be better than the rest, to be number one! In the process we developed some bad habits that became part of our consciousness. Some of our consciousness is inherited, other parts we developed in our own lives. While the purpose of our lives may be to seek happiness, we generally ignore this goal, and alternatively, we water the seeds of unhappiness in our consciousness. Through this we succeed in achieving unhappiness.

We should not confuse pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is a short-lived feeling as a result of sensation of touch, sight, sound, taste, or thought. Some may define happiness as winning the lottery. I call this a pleasure. First comes the thought of what pleasures the money can buy-a nice car, a vacation home, a boat, travel, parties with friends, etc. Then you would indulge in these pleasures for a time. Studies of lottery winners show that they have happiness or pleasure for a while, then return to the same level of happiness they had prior to the winning of the lottery.

Maybe happiness is indeed a warm puppy. A warm puppy is a symbol of happiness and contentment. It embraces the happiness of the puppy and the beholder of that puppy. There is warmth, compassion and love between the puppy and the beholder. At the time, both are living in the present moment. The puppy is like the rose as seen by Emerson, There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. . . . man cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present. The rose, the warm puppy and the beholder exist in the present moment. Happiness is manifest in a state of peace and tranquility in oneself, in the family and community.

St. Francis of Assisi said in the last half of his well-known prayer,

The sources of happiness are your own actions of compassion, love, understanding, forgiveness, generosity, deep listening, and helping others. We all need to reclaim our innate state of happiness. We need to exercise our own intuitive state of human warmth and compassion. When we connect with others and are intimate with our partner and family members, we start to regain our happiness.

Another source of happiness is connecting with nature. We are connected deep within; we need to realize this connection. Recently my wife and I spent a weekend at a meditation retreat at an old farm in West Virginia. The theme of the retreat was, "Walking in Beauty". While on a meditation walk, I realized what was to me a new meaning of beauty. We have evolved with nature over thousands of millennia. Thich Nhat Hanh likes to use the word, "interbeing", which means we are interconnected with all other beings and the rest of nature. The Buddha discovered this 2500 years ago. My realization at the retreat was that we can be interconnected with the nature in which we evolved; and when we are connected, we are connected in beauty because we are all one. What we perceive as beautiful is this natural, wonderful interconnectedness of everything. When you are walking on a path through the woods or along the beach, feel the connection.

Unhappiness is the state of not being happy-it is suffering. Suffering is manifested as hate, anger, anxiety, fear, lust, jealousy, greed, selfishness, sickness and death. I think that you have probably noticed that when you become angry, that an unhappy feeling stays with you for a long time after the incident that made you angry. When you have a fearful experience, this fear clouds your thinking and the unhappy feeling lingers for some time.

These states of mind, while lingering, cloud the judgment. They can just make you unhappy and regretful; but even worse, they can cause your to make mistakes through poor judgment that only add to your unhappiness. Your physical actions and speech that are hurting or harmful cannot make you happy; they cause regret and emotional disturbance to what may have been a calm state of mind. Watching and performing acts of violence, injury, and misconduct have a lasting effect on your well being. They forge your attitudes, your feelings of what is right and wrong.

The real sources of suffering or unhappiness are the result of your past actions, your karma. You have built up the seeds of unhappiness in your consciousness. Thich Nhat Hanh says that if you water these unwholesome seeds they will grow and create even more unhappiness in the future. In the past an event occurred and you reacted with anger. A sound has been perceived as an indication of impending injury and you reacted with fear. These reactions have been reinforced many times and will be reinforced and grow in the future unless we take action.

The underlying culprit is our attitude-a deep-seated reaction. Our attitude is the result of our karma-our past actions. Attitude is our innate response to external stimuli. Unwholesome attitudes must be changed if we want happiness.

Ego is often the source of unhappiness. This can be the deep-seated reason for intuitive or knee-jerk reactions to stimuli that result in anger, hatred, fear and other sources of unhappiness.

Misguided perceptions often lead to unnecessary suffering. The words that led to your anger or fear may have had a completely different meaning and intention.

Unnecessary consumption does not lead to happiness, in spite of what you see in the ads on TV. Many times the suggested consumption can be harmful to your body and mind. Many toxins are ingested through unmindful consumption of violence, hatred, and vice shown on TV, in movies, music, books and magazines. Mindful consumption is a component of our path to happiness.

Unfortunately, our unwholesome attitudes, the seeds of our unhappiness lie at the depths of our consciousness. It is not easy to change them.

Psychotherapists try to find the cause of suffering and try to show the person how they can treat the cause of the suffering. One of the great teachings of the Buddha 2500 years ago is that suffering exists, that there is a cause of suffering, that suffering can be eliminated and there is a path to end suffering.

The first steps on the path are contained in the Five Mindfulness Trainings as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh. He has interpreted the precepts taught by the Buddha in modern terms. These trainings or precepts describe two of the elements of the path, i.e., right action and right speech. The essence of these trainings are:

1. Be aware of suffering caused by the destruction of life, and commit to a reverence of life and the environment.
2. Don't take anything that belongs to another and practice loving kindness and generosity of your time, energy and resources.
3. Refrain from sexual misconduct-enter into a relationship only with a prerequisite of love and a long-term commitment.
4. Refrain from harmful speech. Cultivate loving speech and deep listening.
5. Commit to cultivating good health by practicing mindful eating, drinking and consuming. Refrain from ingesting toxins into your body and mind.

Meditation and mindfulness are essential elements of the path. Meditation helps calm the mind and can lead to insight. Mindfulness is living in the present moment and being aware of our body and mind and what is really happening in the here and now.

Another essential element of the path is Right Effort. Right effort is taking the action to bring about change to achieve happiness.

If you realize that you have problems and that the cause of these problems is not external but within you, you can decide to correct the source of the problem. Your problems will not go away by changing jobs, partners or where you live. You can only make the correction yourself and this correction must be made within. No other human or a god can fix the problem-it is only you that can fix it. You are the only source of your salvation.

To make a change you must move toward something rather than away. Move toward embracing a happy life, to the joy of living.

First you must decide that you should start on the path to happiness. You must have a real determination and dedication to follow the path. A teacher is useful in helping you understand the path and guide you along the way. It is good to have other persons with a similar pursuit to help you. But in the end, it is you that must tread the path yourself; Jesus, the Buddha or Allah can't do it for you. They can show you the way, but you must walk the path yourself. The teaching is that Jesus, the Buddha or Allah is already inside of you and all that you ever wanted to know is within-you just have to look for it and find it. When the disciple Thomas asked Jesus how will we know when the Kingdom of God has come, Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is already here, it is inside of you and around you. Man just does not recognize it. The Buddha said the same thing about the Pure Land or nirvana. It is up to you to exert the right effort.

The Dalai Lama teaches that an antidote to unwholesome mind states is wholesome actions. Acts of compassion, kindness and generosity help overcome attitudes of hatred, anger and greed. The journey is long. After all, it took you a long time to generate your karma. It will take a long time to erase the mistakes of the past. If you are mindful and recognize your anger, fear, and ego induced actions, you can slowly correct your actions and thereby slowly change your attitudes and reactions. This is accomplished by watering the wholesome seeds in our consciousness while we refrain from watering the unwholesome seeds. Cultivate the positive states of mind and start to eliminate the negative states of mind.

The first half of the prayer of St. Francis goes like this:

The art of living happily has many components. It begins with the understanding that happiness and unhappiness exist and that the sources of happiness and unhappiness are within ourselves and in connections outside of ourselves. It involves deciding to follow a path with inner discipline and determination to root out the unwholesome mental states that prevent happiness and replacing them with positive constructive states of mind, such as kindness, tolerance and forgiveness.

In identifying the factors that lead to happiness, we conclude that there is a final component called spirituality. You may associate spirituality with religion. I think that is a mistake. Spiritual, to me, means the searching and investigation of the true nature of the mind. Spiritual means seeking the nature of the mind; exploring the aspects of consciousness, perceptions, feelings, the thought process and the relationship with the body. Through this, we come to understand the effects of our behavior, the actions of our body, speech and mind. If you don't understand the karmic results of what you think and do, there is no way for you to become a spiritual person. It has been said that you are what you think; but I believe it is more that, you are what you have thought, done, said, seen, heard and the way you have reacted to events in the past.

Walking the path to happiness is not an intellectual exercise; it is a journey of the mind at the level of feeling, perceptions and the consciousness. It is experiential, not an intellectual or thought process. It is a spiritual journey.

I feel a lot of spirituality in our church. I feel it in Fred's sermons, in his attitude toward life. We have it in our services, in our music and readings. It is in our interactions among ourselves.

One of the best tools we have for bringing about change is meditation. In religions this is called prayer. Through meditation we calm the mind. With a calm mind we can then reach the realm of insight. Through insight we can change our habits and attitudes that prevent us from being happy.

Meditation is stopping the mind so that you can connect with the Kingdom of God or the Pure Land of Buddha that is within and all around you. Sitting meditation helps you make this connection. With practice, it becomes easy to expand your meditations to the other parts of your life. Living in the present moment is part of it. The warm puppy is not an intellectual exercise; it is connecting with the puppy and your inner self. You feel it; you don't think it. The inner peace that you have at a quiet beach or on that path in the woods is not from thinking, "I am at peace"; you just feel it. It is connecting with the beauty within and outside of you. I believe that seeing interbeing and beauty is an important part of the path to happiness and an essential element of the Art of Living. This leads to a gradual change. This is a spiritual path-a journey of the mind. It is a journey worth taking.

I invite those of you who are interested to join with the Mindfulness Practice Group in meditation and discussion on Thursday evenings at our church. Together we are learning and practicing the art of living.

(Bell) Listen, listen, this wonderful sound brings me back to my true home.

(Bell) Listen, listen this wonderful sound brings me back to my true home.