“Be content with what you have, rejoice the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
Lao Tzu
Even a child or a mentally retarded person can laugh and be happy.
But do you know how hard it is to be unhappy?
Do you know how hard it is to be miserable and hate your life?
It takes a lot of energy!
It takes a lot of thinking and reasoning.
It takes long sleepless nights of self torture.
And exhausting searches for that perfect excuse for failure.
Any body can be happy!
You don’t need to be rich to be happy.
You don’t need to have things to be happy.
You don’t need to worry about the world economy going south, about the inflation going up and the dollar going down.
Anybody can be happy!
You don’t need to get involved in politics, to debate religious or philosophical ideas.
You don’t need to have enemies and you don’t need to hate anybody.
You don’t need to live your life in a continuous battle.
You don’t need to do anything to be happy.
But to be unhappy; that is a hard thing to accomplish!
It takes a special person to be miserable.
It takes will power and cunning.
It takes maturity and stamina.
It takes discipline and a lot of perseverance.
Being unhappy is a very difficult and complex task!
So I’m just sitting here smiling like a retard.
…I can’t think of any excuse for being unhappy!
Besides I am not the young energetic block I used to be.
Even if I cold make up some clever excuse for self flagellation, I don’t think I’d have enough energy to do it.
Bummer!
Happiness is easy and it’s free but misery is a very expensive luxury and I am too poor to afford it!
So I’ll have to settle for less :)
I guess I’ll just have to live the rest of my life in this unbearable happiness…
…Oh well, not everybody can be successful in this life.
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7 comments:
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
Lao Tzu
This is what the "Secret" crowd don't get--yes, with the right attitude, you can have everything you want. However, once you have that attitude, you won't want anything you don't already have...I may have to write a blog post about this, myself...
Sometimes it's the easy things (like being truly grateful for being alive) that are the most difficult to accept. Human nature, I guess. And when society stops measuring happiness in $$ we'll all be a lot happier.
Great post, Buddha!
There's a story - i'm not going to say where i heard it, but i suspect that the people who told it me got it from buddhist philosophy - of a man who was so depressed that he thought of killing himself. All he could see was greyness and dispair
but it happened that there was a wise man who lived in the mountains, so the depressed guy decided to go see him: if nothing else he could throw himself off the mountain.
And when he got there the chap was just living in a simple hut and sitting on the grey and lifeless fields contemplating. And the depressed guy sat at his feet and unloaded all his problems and the wiseman just sat there listening and smiling gently.
And when the depressed guy finished the wiseman just pointed at a buttercup - and just for a second the depressed guy saw it through the wiseman's eyes as something unique and perfect and beautiful.
And when he looked around again he saw the whole damn field had been full of them the whole time.
So i guess the upshot is we see the world how we chose to and that we need to open our eyes a bit
It's hard to notice the beauty in the world when you are being chased by wild dogs.
I think the Buddha was absolutely correct when he taught that greed is the underlying cause of all suffering and I suppose that includes being greedy for a feeling of not being chased by wild dogs.
In the end, I suppose one needs to develop the inner peace to enjoy the run or being eaten.
Misery sure does take alot of energy. I prefer to live in the now and be happy. I don't want to sweat what I can't change. Cheers.
@ Flight – Good health; definitively – bad memory; I don’t know.
Now that I am getting old I want all my memories good and bad :)
@ Yoga for Cynics – LOL!
So true it happened to me too!
@ Talon – I do not have a problem being grateful for the good things in my life.
Being grateful for the bad things is my real challenge I would like to accomplish :)
@ Pixie – That is a wonderful story and I never heard it before.
So thank you for sharing it with us!
@ Diego – Yup!
But that is so damn hard to do – isn’t it?
@ Aggie – You are a happy soul Aggie.
It makes me happy to know you!
Don’t ever change!
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