All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others
Interpretation
This quote highlights that while everyone desires happiness, most people are unaware of how to achieve it, leading to suffering caused by ignorance.
Sharon Salzberg emphasizes a fundamental truth about human nature: the universal desire for happiness. However, she points out that this desire often leads to suffering due to a lack of understanding about what truly brings happiness. Our ignorance can result in actions that not only harm ourselves but also affect others, suggesting that greater awareness and insight could lead to a more fulfilled and compassionate life.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a mental health awareness seminar to discuss the barriers to happiness.
It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on.
Patience doesn't mean making a pact with the devil of denial, ignoring our emotions and aspirations. It means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that's unfolding, rather than ripping open a budding flower or demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with.
To be truly happy in this world is a revolutionary act...It is a radical change of view that liberates us so that we know who we are most deeply and can acknowledge our enormous ability to love.
The critical element in meditation practice is beginning again. Everyone loses focus at times, everyone loses interest at times, and everyone gets distracted over and over again. What is essential, and also incredibly transforming, is realizing that we have the ability to begin again, without blaming or judging ourselves, without thinking we have failed, without losing heart, we can, and need to, constantly be beginning again.
It's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away somewhere so we don't have to see it.
Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.
Let yourself go, the pleasure of physical movement is so important. If that's a problem, you say to yourself, what is there that I am afraid of, or hiding? Maybe your libido!
When a man's stomach is full it makes no difference whether he is rich or poor.
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.
Our own true nature is Infinite Joy! _x000D_ Always happy, Always peaceful, Always free.
The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.
Seek to share joy with others, or to make somebody else happy, and you will find your own soul radiant with the joy you wished for another.
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