Four Keys to Happiness
Understanding the nature of happiness is a hot new topic in science – it appears in all the scientific magazines, and the BBC recently devoted a series of programs to the subject, interviewing scientists from all over the world. It’s even been given a name, ‘The neuroscience of happiness’.
The scientists have been working closely to understand how the different mechanisms of desire, want, happiness, and pleasure work in the brain. And from their million dollar research on the subject, many of their conclusions confirm what Philosophers and Sages were saying many years ago.
They have ‘discovered’ that most of the things we think will make us happy, actually don’t … at least not for long. For example, to their surprise, they found that more money, beyond enough for basic needs, does not bring more happiness. Nor do the material things that money can buy. Research has shown that even people who win vast sums such as in a lottery, are after just a few years, as miserable as they were before they won the big bucks.
Why is this? First, the things that give us pleasure are usually physical – sex gives us bodily gratification, money and objects give us mental gratification. But all these are transitory pleasures. They are not permanent inner peace and joy.
After a while, we take ‘things’, including people - for granted – even things that once made us ecstatic. For example, the new lover, or the new car or house, the new dress or the new technological gizmo(s), the initial thrill soon wears off, and then we are back to looking for something better. We know there’s a hole to fill, but we’re using the wrong materials.
It is what the scientists call the ‘hedonic treadmill’. We adapt to things so fast, and the more possessions and accomplishments we have, the more we need to have, to keep boosting our level of happiness. Kind of like “if I only had a nicer car I would be happy,” or “if I only had a bigger house I would be happy.”
This is because the mind/ego is always desiring – that is its nature. And once it gets what it had been desiring, it looks for the next object of desire. The mind can never be happy with what it has, it is always striving after that which it doesn’t have, or cannot have. The mind can exist only with a goal, because it needs a way to remain tense. If the mind has a goal, then it can remain unfulfilled, frustrated, and living in hope. And because we are so identified with our minds, we are therefore always in misery. Always striving for the next great self-fulfilling thing(s).
Pleasure Is Not Happiness
Happiness, is different from pleasure. Pleasure comes from things. Happiness (joy) is not dependent on things, it is not conditional. It is a state of being that comes from inside you. The state of being “joyful.” Happiness is when there is no desire for something, just a gratitude for what is … and what IS in the present moment - the NOW. Then it is not a temporary state, because as long as you have gratitude, you have happiness.
According to scientists, happiness is a very desirable state: the evidence shows that happy people live longer than depressed people, are healthier, more resilient, and perform better than others. So adding years to your life based on happiness/joy is a huge effect."
What Makes Us Happy?
Here are four keys to focus on developing in yourself. The goal is to bring about a total transformation of ourselves. The ultimate goal is bliss, which is even higher than happiness. But as we start becoming more real and authentic, more tuned into ourselves than focused on outside things, then happiness comes automatically, like a shadow.
Part of the transformation process, explained back in the 60’s, is to transform our impure emotions to pure emotions, by developing four qualities. These are, in fact, exactly the same qualities that science is now proclaiming will improve your ‘happiness levels’:
- Friendliness
Scientists say that friendship has a much bigger effect on happiness than a typical person’s income. And not just on happiness, but also on health, because our brains control many of the mechanisms in our bodies which are responsible for disease. And just as stress can trigger ill health, it looks as if friendship and happiness can boost our immunity against disease. There are multiple stories of people with terminal diseases that have quit their jobs, gone back to their homes, began to hang around with friends … playing cards, and just enjoying themselves and then finding the cancer or illness to be gone.
We all have a source of friendliness inside, but life gives us very few opportunities for it to develop. In fact, most people die without this source being developed at all, because what we call friendship is usually hypocrisy and politeness … or behaving in a PC way.
He says we have to constantly create a social environment of friendliness around ourselves, sending waves of friendly energy all around. One method he suggested back in the 60’s is to do one or two things for others every day, for which you expect nothing in return. Forty years later, altruism, or performing acts of kindness to others, is one of the main suggestions being proposed by happiness scientists.
- Compassion
Let’s face it - usually when we look at people, our thoughts are critical, rather than compassionate. But there is a heart inside the worst of people, and if you are able to see it, you will be filled with compassion. This is not the same as pity, which makes us feel superior to others, and want to help or change them in some way. Compassion involves love and acceptance of people exactly as they are.
If you can understand compassion, he says, then you will know how to spread happiness to others, and that in turn will develop the happiness/joy center inside you. If, on the contrary, you go on being cruel and critical and judgmental of others, it will feed your own unhappiness. Because we become what our thoughts focus on. The concept of compassion has so far been missed by the scientists, but has been a mainstay of Buddhism from the beginning.
- Cheerfulness
For the spiritual journey, cheerfulness is needed. If you can live life as a laughter, then it is much easier to enter into meditation, much easier to discover your real self. If you live life as a misery, a sadness, you are burdened, and then you are not able to go far into meditation. You won’t be able to reach the Divine within.
Sadness is just a habit. Cheerfulness can also be cultivated as a habit. We just have to start looking for the things in life which are full of light, not darkness, because the way we look at life directly affects what develops inside us. If we see radiance and light everywhere, we will feel radiant and light – we will feel joy. Life has no meaning of its own – it all depends on how you look at it. ‘Drop your sadness and say yes to joy. Let your life become a song’.
Doctors have also discovered the benefits of laughter – in many hospitals laughter therapists now work with patients, since it has been shown that people who can laugh heal much faster. That shows laughter has a tremendously powerful energy. endorphins are released, healing properties are spread throughout the mind and body.
- Gratitude
A complaining mind is never at peace. There are so many things in life to be grateful for, and if we can shift our focus to those things, if we can start to experience and express gratitude more. It will change our life tremendously. We will be filled with so much peace, and so much mystery and wonder. The happiness scientists are also big on gratitude – they suggest keeping a gratitude diary in which every day you write down things for which you are thankful.
These are the “Four Keys of Osho.” f we can develop these pure emotions in ourselves, it will create an inner expansion of our being. That is because pure emotions are not dependent on others, they well up from within us, from our being. And because they are not dependent on outside sources, they are not temporary, transitory feelings. They are long lasting and within us … a part of us.
Osho quote:
What is Happiness?
People are trying, in every possible way, to achieve happiness through the body. The body can give you only momentary pleasures, and each pleasure is balanced by pain in the same amount, in the same degree. Just a variance of polarity. Each pleasure is followed by its opposite because our body exists in the world of duality, just as the day is followed by night and death is followed by life and life is followed by death. It is a vicious circle. Your pleasure will be followed by pain, your pain will be followed by pleasure. But you will never be at ease. When you will be in a state of pleasure you will be afraid that you are going to lose it, and that fear will poison it. And when you will be lost in pain, of course, you will be in suffering, and you will try every possible effort to get out of it - just to fall again back into it.
The sleepy person knows nothing else. He knows only a few sensations of the body - food, sex. This is his world. And whatsoever you call pleasure is, at the most, just a relief of a tense state. Sexual energy gathers, accumulates; you become tense and heavy and you want to release it.
The man who is asleep, his sexuality is nothing but a relief, like a good sneeze. A tension was there, now it is no more there; but it will accumulate again. To the sleeping, pleasurable sensations are happiness. He lives from one pleasure to another pleasure. He is just rushing from one sensation to another sensation. He lives for small thrills. His life is very superficial; it has no depth, it has no quality. He lives in the world of quantity. The non-meditator sleeps, dreams; the meditator starts moving away from his sleep towards awakening.
Then happiness has a totally different meaning: it becomes more of a quality, less of a quantity; it is more psychological, less physiological. He enjoys music more, he enjoys poetry more, he enjoys creating something. He enjoys nature, its beauty. He enjoys silence. He enjoys what he had never enjoyed before, and this is far more lasting. Even if the music stops, something goes on lingering in you. And it is not a relief.
The difference between pleasure and this happiness is: it is not a relief, it is an enrichment. You become more full, you become a little overflowing. Listening to good music, something is triggered in your being, a harmony arises in you - you become musical. Or dancing, suddenly you forget your body; your body becomes weightless. The grip of gravitation over you is lost. Suddenly you are in a different space: the ego is not so solid, the dancer melts and merges into the dance. This is far higher, far deeper than the joy that you gain from food, or things, or sex. This has a depth.
But this is also not the ultimate. The ultimate happens only when you are fully awake, when you are as a buddha, when all sleep is gone and all dreaming is gone, when your whole being is full of light, when there is no darkness within you. All darkness has disappeared and with that darkness, the ego is won over. All tensions have disappeared, all anguish, all anxiety. You are in a state of total contentment. You live in the present; no past, no future anymore. You are utterly here in the now.
This moment is all. Now is the only time and here is the only space. And then suddenly the whole sky drops into you. This is bliss. This is REAL happiness. Seek bliss; it is your birthright. Don’t remain lost in the jungle of pleasures; rise a little higher. Reach to happiness and then to bliss.
Pleasure is animal, happiness is human, bliss is divine. Pleasure binds you, it is a bondage, it chains you. Happiness gives you a little more rope, a little bit of freedom, but only a little bit. Bliss is absolute freedom. You start moving upwards; it gives you wings. You are no more part of the gross earth; you become part of the sky. You become light, you become joy.
Pleasure is dependent on others. Happiness is not so dependent on others, but still it is separate from you. Bliss is not dependent, is not separate either; it is your very being, it is your very nature. To attain it is to attain to God, to "nirvana.”
Just a thought …
~Justin Taylor, ORDM., OCP., DM.
Thanks to Osho. Information taken from the The Dhammapada.
