Sending You Happiness (Part 1)

Do you know that at the first time when our ancestors appeared on earth, they always lived with their instincts which gave them the abilities to search for the value of the nature to meet their needs of lives.

Nowadays, the material life is fulfilled and people focus on enjoying life. Even the poor always hope to get rid of poverty because they think that they will be happy and peaceful if they are rich. Actually, everything that we want and desire will not always be. Suffering will not discriminate between the rich and the poor, the high people and the low people, the elder and the youth or the beauty and the ugly. Every person has his own suffering. Virtually so, we have been floated in the desolated circle of life. People often assume that that happiness is due to possession or the wealth or marriage for children; but actually, they do not receive true happiness but just more sorrow.

At this moment, you may also have vague and indefinite thoughts about the true happiness. Because from past to present, people have abstractedly defined the happiness which cannot help them get to the real happy shore without the act and apply into the real life. The path on which the Buddha went along with his Dharma does not only help people to focus on the awakening, knowledge and mastering the real Dharma but it also helps people transfer ignorance to lucidity, released sorrow for receiving happiness and closing the death and rebirth door. Happiness is real and necessary, you can see it inside every peaceful step, every breath and every miracle smile.

To have a peaceful cultivation and a free life, you need to experience them with a full energy heart of the calm wisdom and love and sharing. In order to have a real and firm happiness, you have to transform yourself by finding the key to open the door of defilement that bind s your body and mind. And today, I will give you that key to send you the happiness!

1.Happiness is an awakening moment.

If you can collect every small happiness in the present life, you will have a big happiness in the future.

I will tell you a story named ‘What is happiness?’

One day, a piglet asked his mom:

-What is happiness, mom?

His mom said, ‘Happiness is your tail baby.’

The piglet gladly runs out and plays with his tail. He is happy to know what happiness is.

Another day, he came to his mom and sadly asked :

- Mom, why cannot I ever catch my happiness?

His mom smiled and said, ‘You do not need to catch it. As long as you smile and move ahead, the happiness will follow you.’

You see! Happiness is simple. It is the tiny and normal things around you. It is right inside us. You cannot see the happiness in all around the world if you cannot find it out inside you. Please smile and move forward for the happiness to chase you. The day you stop searching is the day you realize that the happiness have been standing beside you for a long time ago.

Happiness is from life. If you awake, you can contact your life. At first, you can make a question that which material made your life. If you mind is incisive, you will see your life have been formed from the moments that passed in the past, skim fast at present and continue in the future. Do you remember the warm meals with your family, the days at school, the idle angry times that suddenly forgotten to burst into laughter as watching a comedy or the times that you were kittenish and ran into your mom’s trousers to hide from your father lectures. The images come to your mind when I am saying, do they? They are already in you and the past is the material which is used to build the present and the future. The miracle present is the minutes in which we truly live. And the future, do you know what it is? It is an equation with countless solutions and basing on the change of the constants that you choose to pick in life.

You do not need to recall too much to hear the wonderful, echoing sound of the past that come from the shadow of your mind. That is your life with the joys make you smile and also the pains hurt your heart. And the pains are the necessary experiences for you to live in the mess life and to learn a lot of lessons from them.

The Buddha had also begun from the pains of life. The first time, prince Siddharta sat under the Boddhi tree to think about life and he saw a worm shaking under the plow-share and a small bird seeking baits but being anxious about the hunter inside the grass. Are those the valuable lessons? They are the beginning of the truths that he discovered. Prince had passed four castle to find the enlightening way because he saw people suffering in getting old, sick and dead. May the pains are the antidote for the ignorance of human. Through the entire of life, everyone has to meet the obstacles and failures, however these matters will train your will and energy so that you can face the storms of life. I will never advise you to act as a camel which submerges its head into the sand to avoid the chasing of human, be an eagle to flight high with the winds. The stumbles will help you to grow up and be more careful with the deep pits being laid out in front of you. Facing them instead of avoiding them and making a question about the things we should do to solve the problem. Sometimes, you just need to stop and look at the sorrowful present and it will be transferred to happiness because happiness is to know how to accept and smile. There is a secret that I want to tell you. Suffering may be a chance for people to realize the true happiness. You will know that strength is happiness when you are sick; you will respect the family’s love when you are far away from home and you will cherish the sun light when the storms come. Raising both suffer and happy feelings because suffering is the catalyst that form the chain of the enlightening reactions and the liberation from life. If you do not face both of them, how you can really live with thousand emotions of life. Actually, all the feelings of suffering or happiness are just the illusions of birth and death. In order to live in peace and joy, you must be enlightened to see the real form of suffering and happiness.

·Simple happiness:

Have you ever wonder what your life is? Actually, it is formed from the simple things such as flowers, gravels, grasses, rains and also the people whom you have just only one chance to meet and communicate in your life. Maybe it will not mark deep into your mind but it is your life and it helps you to touch lives and happiness. That means you do not need to find happiness, all you need to do is to stop and identify. A Roman poet conceived, ‘holding today’ as a formula for him to live happily. Actually, you do not need to hold anything, you just need to release and to stop all thoughts and realize things existed. Instead of ‘holding today’, you should practice to stop with every moment and live mindfully and peacefully at present, you do not need to looking for the distant happiness in dreaming. The future is at the present and the past is not lost, every awaking moment will pain your life with the beautiful and bright colors.

Happiness is around, you just need to stop to touch it. The sun is beautiful at both dawn and sunset; a dry leaf with the wind or a young shoot on the branch; a grass on the path or a blooming violet flower in the neighbor’s house, which all are showing the beauty. Both full moon or crescent are beautiful; both a small candle light and a bright neon light are miracle. Nothing on earth is trivial. You will see a beautiful, strange and new life when your mind is happy. In contrast, you just can see a dark, dirty and fallen life when your mind is polluted by the ignorance and suffering. Perhaps Nguyen Du had a deep understanding of the human’s perception law and wrote a poetry. ‘A sorrowful person sees a sad scene’. The life will depend on how you look. If you change the angle of view, the life will also change.

If we want to have a peaceful and happy family, each individual in the family must work together to build it. As if to build a house, the prerequisite must be bricks, sands, rocks and cements etc. And they must be attached together to become a house. So, if you want to build a happy home, each member, as well as the bricks and grains of sand, harmonize together to form a happy family. Gathering small happiness will create a great happiness.

Translated into English by Nguyen Khanh Hoa

Tam Luc