DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

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When finding happiness, you must first recognize your mental state, and what factors you use to achieve happiness. You must know that money and material wealth are necessary conditions to live, but those things do not bring you joy. Therefore it can be said:

- You don't need a lot of money, success or fame. You don't need a perfect body or even a perfect partner. But if you want to be happy, right now, at this very moment, you must know how to equip yourself with some basic elements that you think will help you achieve complete happiness.

When you think about some of the basic elements that help you achieve happiness, you must know that there are many different states. Like circumstances or external materials, some are helpful, some are harmful, and some are neutral. So when it comes to external factors, you should first try to identify which types are good so you can pay attention to developing, growing, and using them. Eliminate harmful substances. In the same way, when you talk about the mind, there are thousands of different thoughts or different minds. Of those, some are useful, those you must embrace and nurture. Some are harmful, which you must try to minimize, or eliminate.

So the first step in finding happiness is to learn. First, know how negative emotions and behaviors are harmful to you and how positive emotions are helpful. You must understand that these negative emotions are not only very bad and harmful to the individual but also harmful to society as well as the future of the community and beyond, the whole world. With such awareness, you can increase your determination to confront and overcome them. Then you will understand the beneficial aspects of positive emotions and behavior. Once you realize that, you become determined to nurture, develop, and increase positive emotions, no matter how difficult it is. So in the process of learning and analyzing which thoughts and emotions are beneficial and harmful, you gradually develop strong determination and will change your feelings:

- Now the key to my happiness, my good future, is within my reach. I must not miss that opportunity!

In Buddhism, the principle of cause and effect is accepted as a natural law. Faced with reality, you must pay attention to that rule. For example, in everyday experience, if there are certain things that you don't like, the best way to ensure that they don't happen is to make the conditions that normally cause risk for that thing happen. That certainly won't happen again. Likewise, if an event or thing has happened, it is reasonable for you to find and collect the causes and risk conditions for that event.

Indeed, if you desire happiness, you must find a cause that does not cause risks to destroy happiness. And if you don't want to suffer, then you must make sure that the causes and conditions that risk suffering do not arise. Thus, evaluating the principle of cause and effect is very important.

Now, let's talk about the importance of mental factors to achieve happiness. Then your next task is to observe the variety of mental states you experience. You need to recognize different mental states, and distinguish and classify them to see if they bring happiness or not.

Harmful emotions include:

- Anger, jealousy, and anger, etc...

You consider them negative states of mind because they disrupt your mental happiness. Once you harbor angry or unkind feelings toward someone, once your heart is filled with hatred or negative emotions, the other person also seems to be hostile towards you. So as a result, you will be more afraid, more inhibited, and hesitant, and a feeling of insecurity will occur. Once these negative emotions develop, you will feel alone in a hostile world. All these negative feelings develop because of feelings of hatred.

Types of positive emotions:

- Different from negative emotions are positive emotions, which are mental states such as kindness and firm love. This kind of emotion is very useful...

It's healthy for you to be compassionate, warm, and kind. If you maintain the feeling of love and compassion, something automatically opens a door within your mind. Thanks to that you can communicate with others much more easily. And affability most likely creates open honesty. You will see that all people are like you, so you can easily relate to them. This gives you more friendship. Then you have less need to hide things, and as a result, feelings of fear, doubt, and insecurity are automatically dispelled. In addition, you also have feelings of trust towards others. On the other hand, for example, you find someone who is very good and you know that you can trust his or her abilities. But if you feel that person is not kind, then you have to suppress something. You feel:

- Oh, I know that person can do the job, but actually, I probably don't trust that person.

At that time, you always have some fear to create distance from that person. Therefore, cultivating positive mental states such as kindness and love will lead to a healthy mentality that will lead to greater peace of mind and happiness.

The question specifically asked is:

- If happiness is simply a matter of cultivating positive mental states, such as kindness and many other good things, why are so many people unhappy?

To achieve legitimate happiness, it requires you to change your way of looking and thinking, but that is not a simple matter. Because you need to apply many different elements from many different directions. Likewise, to achieve happiness, you need many solutions and many methods to deal with and overcome a variety of negative, changing, and complex mental states. And if you are looking to overcome certain negative ways of thinking, it cannot be accomplished by simply applying a particular thought, or a certain technique, once or twice. It is similar to taking proper care of your body, you need many vitamins and nutrients, and not just one or two is enough. Change takes time. Even changing the state of the body takes time. For example, when you move from one climate zone to another, your body needs time to adapt to the new environment. Likewise, changing your mind takes time. There are many negative mental traits, so you need to pay attention and react to each one individually. This is not easy. It takes repeated application of a series of different techniques and time to familiarize yourself with the practice. That is the learning process.

With time you can make positive changes. Every day, as soon as you wake up, you can develop a positive, honest thinking motivation such as:

- I will use today's time more positively. I shouldn't waste today.

And at night before going to bed, review what you have accomplished, and ask yourself:

- Did I use today as planned? If everything goes right, you should be happy. If it's not right, regret what you did and find out what was wrong that day.

Thanks to such methods, you can gradually strengthen your positive mind.

For example, in my case, as a Buddhist monk, I believe in Buddhism, and through my own experience I know that practicing Buddhism helps me a lot. However, because of habit, over many past lives, some things may arise such as anger or sadness. So now what I need to do is first learn about the positive values ​​of practice, then make up my mind to build them, and then try to practice them. At first, the positive practice is not significant, so the negative influence is still strong. However, eventually, as I strengthened my positive practice more and more, the negative behavior automatically decreased. So, the reality is that positive practice is a constant battle within, replacing previous negative traits or habits with new positive trait reflexes.

No matter what direction you are working in or what practice method you follow, nothing is difficult thanks to constant familiarity and practice. Through training, your thinking can transform itself. Within Buddhist practice, many methods exist to keep your mind calm when troublesome things happen.

By practicing these methods repeatedly, you may have some disturbances and negative effects on your mind, but they are not significant. Like undulating waves on the sea surface but without much depth impact. Although my personal experience is very limited, I find it very true in my practice. So, when I receive some bad news, at that time I may experience some disturbance in my mind, but it passes very quickly. Or I can be upset and angry, but then it goes away very quickly. There is no impact on the mind. No anger. This is achieved through gradual practice, it cannot be achieved overnight.

When you methodically cultivate a kind heart, the cultivation of happiness, and true inner change by choosing and focusing on the goal of a positive state of mind and resisting a negative state of mind pole

To achieve mental training, to achieve happiness, you need moral conduct which is another characteristic of the type of inner discipline that leads to a happy life. You can call it moral discipline. Great spiritual teachers like Buddha advise you to perform wholesome actions and avoid taking pleasure in unwholesome actions. Whether your action is good or bad depends on whether the action or behavior arises from a disciplined or undisciplined state of mind. A disciplined mind leads to happiness and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering, and in fact, the Buddhist monks say that bringing discipline to the mind is the essence of the Buddha's teachings.

This type of discipline is also called self-discipline, not discipline imposed on you by someone outside you. This type of discipline is applied to overcome negative qualities.

It seems that the search for happiness is one way or another a spontaneous process. Even under ordinary conditions, in your daily life, you consider education to be a very important factor in ensuring a successful and happy life. Knowledge cannot be acquired naturally, you have to learn and practice, and you have to go through some kind of systematic training program. Likewise, wanting to do good deeds does not come naturally, but you must consciously practice it.

Considered within the scope of religious activities. According to religious tradition, there are regulations to help you in how to behave, which way is good and which way is unwholesome. However, in today's society, many people do not pay attention to the need to have a good lifestyle. Because of this, I think that you need to make a lot of effort and consciously work towards achieving the knowledge of good living. For example, although I believe that human nature is fundamentally gentle and compassionate, I feel it is not enough that because of our underlying nature, we must also develop appreciation and compassion. awake to that truth. And changing the way you perceive yourself, through learning and understanding, can have a real impact on how you interact with others and how you live your day-to-day life. You need to be able to judge the near and far future consequences of your behavior and consider both. Example:

- Overcoming anger, although animals also experience anger, they do not know that anger is harmful. However, humans are at a level where you have self-awareness where you reflect and observe that when anger arises, it harms you. So you have the negative judgment of anger. You need to know how to think. So it's not as simple as putting your hand in the fire, and then getting burned, and then knowing never to do that again in the future. The more educated and knowledgeable you are about what leads to happiness, and the more sophisticated what causes suffering, the more effective you will be in achieving happiness. So, because of that, I think education and knowledge are very necessary.

Living in today's society, your attitude is often directed towards education, this only makes you more talented, more agile, and sometimes more cunning. Meanwhile, it seems that people who are less educated and less sophisticated in terms of educational training are more naive and honest. Even though society does not emphasize this, the most important use of knowledge and education is to help you understand the importance of doing good deeds and bringing discipline into your mind. When you appropriately use intelligence and knowledge to bring about change in your heart to develop kindness, you will be happy.

In short, in every century, people have struggled to define the proper role of happiness in life. Countless philosophers, scientists, and psychologists have all examined its relationship to your happiness. In the third century BC, Epicurus, based on his ethical system, boldly asserted:

- Happiness is the cause and result of a lucky life.

Although Epicurus acknowledged the importance of common sense and moderation, he also recognized that indulging in sensual pleasures leads to suffering.

Today, in a civilized society, you can more or less find happiness in the caress or smile of your lover, in a luxury hot tub on a cold, rainy afternoon, or in the way you look at the beauty of the late afternoon. But many of you find pleasure and happiness in the joy of drugs, the intoxication of heroin, and the intoxication of rowdy alcohol. Some are happy with the happiness of excessive sexual indulgence, and the exhilaration of gambling in Las Vegas.

Although there are no solutions to help you avoid negative pleasures, luckily you have a place to start, especially for Buddhists. Just remember that what you are looking for in life is happiness, as the Buddha pointed out, it is an unmistakable reality. If you begin to address your life choices with that in mind, you can more easily eliminate the things that are harmful to you, even if they bring you temporary pleasure. But because you have chosen your lasting happiness in life, you are willing to refuse temporary and harmful pleasures. So you have found happiness.

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