The other day I came across a quote by the Dalai Lama on Facebook (yeah, somehow I did not find him on Google Plus) and considered it as pretty straight to the point and well said. He talks about different degrees of happiness and that it is essential to find the balance between those differences. Before going to much into the analytics part, lets check out the quote:
“We have different degrees of happiness & different kinds of suffering.Material objects give rise to physical happiness,while spiritual development gives rise to mental happiness.Since we experience both physical and mental happiness,we need both material and spiritual development.This is why,for our own good and that of society we need to balance material progress with inner development.”
like everywhere in life - balance is the key
I’ve always been a big fan of the Dalai Lama and since seeing him live back then in Sydney I felt even more convinced that he is one of the few people that really are worth listening to every single time. Sometimes he says quite obvious things, sometimes quite thoughtful things, sometimes a mixture of both and sometimes things that simply have to be said but it never feels like it is a religious thing but more of a “life-thing”.
And such a “life-thing” is the above mentioned quote. Are you happy? Really? If so, how happy are you? Could you be more happy? What made you happy? Can you stay that happy? Or be more happy? Man so many questions. With being happy being the most important goal in ones (well at least in my) life (while being happy is far away from being rich or stuff like that) I started to think about this quote for quite a while.
First I thought about my own degrees of happiness and figured out quite easily what kind it is I experience right now. Being in Thailand and teaching at a community college it is quite obvious that there is not much space for material happiness. Nevertheless the mental happiness increased a lot during the last 10 months compared to my life in Europe where the material side exceeded the mental one. Having this said you can see that before coming here I wasn’t that happy mentally but therefore had a lot of fun on the physical side.
While I haven’t found the right balance yet I suppose I am not the only one struggling with this adventure. Where is the right balance? How does it feel? And how can you achieve and keep it? Or is it not about finding the middle but more about deciding which side has to exceed the other. Once you decide this the balance might come automatically because it is not about the objective perception. Happiness, of course, is something subjective.
Now the final question: Is happiness something you can chase? Or is the pursuit of happiness destined to fail? Shouldn’t be “living a good life” be ones credo and happiness some when comes to you by itself? Hard to choose? Of course! You can not always give give give give and end up with no material happiness. On the other hand you will never be really happy when you only focus on the money money money…at first it might help but on the long run it won’t. So it is on you to set priorities! In the end however happiness itself can not be chased or caught. You got to do something for it – work for it and always remember:
The brick walls are there to give you a chance to show how badly you want something…
