Meditation for Thursday 28th July 2022
We think about it from the cradle to the grave. Thousands of books have been written about it and advertising assures us that it’s within our grasp. We intuitively know that it’s not possible to have it by acquiring money or material goods, yet we block this realisation from our mind. We glimpse it in the birth of a child, sometimes in the sacredness of death or a sunset that leaves us in awe.
The photos from the James Webb telescope giving us images from beyond our universe billions of years ago leave us breathless but delighted in our expanded knowledge. Happiness comes in sundry forms, but we know in meditation that it comes by making peace with the present moment. The present moment is the arena on which the event of life is played. Being in the present opens for us the opportunity to make peace with ourselves and with others.
This is the secret and art of happiness.
Sometimes unconsciously, sometimes consciously we worry and fret about whether we’re judged a success or a disappointment, a winner or a loser. The world tells us to be concerned with status anxiety and often we comply. If we get caught up in this anxiety happiness eludes us.
When we live in the present our happiness is determined more by our state of mind than external events. The Dalai Lama often says that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. I prefer the word joy as it recognises that even in the midst of suffering joy is possible. I’m fairly confident when the Dalai Lama writes about happiness he is writing about joy.
The good news is that we can reclaim our innate state of happiness or joy by being in the present moment, by embracing the now.
MEDITATION
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