How to be happy: the secrets to satisfaction and mindfulness through meditation from a Buddhist monk once stressed and fatigued
- Searching for happiness is part of the problem – we’re always looking for something more, Buddhist monk Gelong Thubten says
- The neuroplasticity of the brain means people can change, so if you train in a mental attitude again and again that becomes who you are, he explains
We have been seeking happiness ever since humankind evolved past the stage of simple survival. Philosophers from Aristotle to Bertrand Russell have discussed it, Thomas Jefferson wrote the right to pursue it into the American Declaration of Independence, and psychologists spent the best part of the last century trying to help us achieve it.
No one, though – not psychologists, philosophers nor neuroscientists – have been able to define what the nebulous feeling of happiness actually is. The happiness surveys that sometimes grab the headlines don’t even try to define it – they simply ask respondents to describe how happy they feel.
In his book A Monk’s Guide to Happiness, Gelong Thubten, a Buddhist monk based in the UK, gives his view on the subject. The one-time hellraiser entered a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Scotland to rid himself of stress and fatigue, then converted to Buddhism and became a monk.
His book looks at how to remove the causes of unhappiness, and explains what constitutes happiness. It also provides a guide to the meditation techniques that he says will make us happy.
The best way to achieve happiness is to stop trying to find it, he says. “When we search for happiness, the searching becomes the problem. We are always hungry for something when we are looking for happiness – we are always searching for something more. We don’t ever feel happy because we are continually looking ahead, hoping to find something better. We are never satisfied with what we have.”
Buddhists believe that happiness is our natural state – our brains are wired to be happy. To find happiness, we must simply free ourselves of the daily distractions that obscure it from us through meditation.