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Home > Archive > Yoga > January 2006 > American Buddhism - Happiness - Quotations by Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
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American Buddhism - Happiness - Quotations by Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
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| ramaquotes@tibetanworld.com 2006-01-02, 1:09 am |
| American Buddhism - Happiness - Quotations by Zen Master Rama, Dr.
Frederick Lenz
"I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy."
- His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
Main Page:
www.ramaquotes.com
American Buddhism - Happiness:
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Zen Master Rama:
"The purpose of life is happiness. What else could it possibly be?
Life is a game in which happiness is the goal.
Happiness is the most elusive thing for human beings to find.
We are miracles. So don't deny yourself the miracle of happiness.
Life is not a malfunction. It's beautiful. But if you do not see it
that way, it's simply because your room needs cleaning.
Happiness has to do with how quickly you vibrate. Meditation is a
process of speeding up the vibration.
People don't really want to be happy. They go out of their way to be
miserable.
Most people have no idea how unhappy they are because they don't know
what happiness is. When they get a little break from their total pain,
they feel a little better and they call it happiness.
How can you be happy in a world like this? You have got to be crazy to
even attempt something like that.
Happiness comes from self-knowledge. Self-knowledge means that you have
understood your mind. Your mind is the whole universe.
Happiness is warm puppy. In other words, happiness is the things around
you. Just to see that puppy is to be happy. You don't have to do
anything; you don't have to add anything.
Maybe if you stopped asking "why" all the time, you might be happy.
Leave it alone, you know? Life is happy.
Happiness comes from living in the moment, this moment, now, right
here. If you are in obscure states of mind, you won't see what this
moment is. You won't realize its beauty.
I can't give you happiness. I can show you where it is, but I can't
give it to you. How can I give you what you already have? You have to
get it yourself, inside your mind.
Nobody can make you happy but yourself. Things occupy us, people occupy
us, but they don't make us happy, if we are honest. What makes us happy
is to experience spirit.
Loneliness is a feeling that is created by our ego. The ego feels
separate from the rest of creation. The answer to overcoming those
feelings is ecstasy.
Ecstasy should not be viewed as an unusual experience, but rather a
natural experience of feeling all of the living matrix of existence
around us.
..
You want to be happy. Of course, that isn't how you get to be happy;
because if you want to be happy, you are going to be sitting around
being unhappy because you're not happy.
You don't have to do anything to be happy, nor do you have to avoid
anything. Happiness comes from within your mind. Happiness already
exists.
My god, life is beautiful! Look at the colors! if you are blind, look
at the colors of your mind.
Just to exist, just to be, to take a breath, to feel that, whether its
pleasure or pain, loss or gain, just your experience in life is unique
to you. No one sees life like you do.
Happiness is in the mind and the mind is the universe. Your mind is the
universe, not just this physical universe that you perceive through
your senses.
Happiness will come through the practice of yoga and Buddhism. That
happiness is not something you will lose at the end of this lifetime.
It will stay with you.
Happiness is found principally in meditation. Let your mind flow out
into eternity. You have to exert some effort. Then you will notice a
subtle smile on your face.
Happiness has to do with how quickly you vibrate, how intelligent you
are, how subtle your awareness field is, how deep you are, how aware of
your eternal part you are.
People are unhappy because they don't understand life, by happy I mean
complete, aware, conscious, poignant, caring, loving, unaffected,
cosmic, simplistic, humble, excited, passive - everything. You are
everything.
Happiness is separate from daily experience. If picking the right door
on the game show makes you happy, then you will be unhappy in the
future because eventually you will pick a wrong door.
Happiness is jut being you where you are right now. Allow yourself to
be you. Shut off all the silly thoughts and desires and crazy emotions
There is a whole crazy world around you. You can't control it, so don't
even try. Because the more you try to control your environment, the
more it controls you.
There are no problems, there is only confusion. When confusion passes
away, there is only happiness. Happiness is not complicated at all.
Stop trying to do things that will make you happy. Happiness is a state
of mind; because otherwise, you are a slave to circumstance.
You cannot expect the world to settle down, everything to work out, in
order for you to be happy. You have to get control of your mind.
Happiness does not mean that everything works out. Usually nothing
works out, but you get a kick out of it anyway.
Happiness is not dependent upon outer circumstance. Happiness is
falling in love with everything around you, everything inside of you.
Happiness does not come from external things, as we're really taught as
children. It doesn't come from Santa Claus. Happiness is from within
your mind. Just realizing that will change your whole life.
Let us say your wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend makes you happy.
If they leave, you're bound to be unhappy. You are the slave of the
thing that makes you happy. You are a junkie and human relationships
can be expensive habits.
Stop trying to do things that will make you happy. Happiness is a state
of mind; because otherwise, you are a slave to circumstance.
Happiness is something that you can definitely achieve. At first, it
will just come for a moment or two. Then it will come for longer
periods of time. Eventually you will be happy all of the time.
Happiness is a state of mind. The key to happiness is being able to
disconnect your life from your perceptions. If you saw things as they
really were, you would be happy automatically.
Real happiness is something most people never know. What we experience
in deep meditation, that ecstasy is beyond what human beings call
happiness
The pathway to enlightenment is happiness. It doesn't really matter if
you're successful, if you're in prison, if you're dying - if you have
contact with light
Love is the only rule in self-discovery. If you've forgotten that rule,
you've forgotten everything. It's not what you can get; it's what you
can give.
There is no reason not to love. There is no reason not to be joyous.
There is no reason not to celebrate because all of this means nothing
absolutely nothing. So why not be happy?
Love is the only antidote for the insanity of this world. And the funny
thing about love is that when someone loves you, it doesn't necessarily
make you feel better; but when you love someone else, it does.
Love is light in the inner worlds; it is energy, a luminescent energy
that is the basis of all creation. Love is the only thing in this world
that is worthwhile because it is the only thing in this world that is
eternal.
Love is self-realization. Love is liberation. The only way beyond
time, to unravel the knot of existence, is to love.
Let the rain of unhappy and tragic experiences fall, as sometimes it
inevitably must, even in the lives of the enlightened masters. If your
mind has become one with nirvana, you will remain happy at all times.
Happiness is only gained when your mind is in extended states of
attention, when your mind is merging with the infinite.
Stop being jealous, I mean, to be jealous is to suggest that God
doesn't know what she is doing. This is ridiculous! She does everything
perfectly
Forgiveness is the best revenge.
Happiness is not dependent on experience. What you experience shouldn't
make you happy or unhappy when you know how to be happy.
Sometimes it is hard to see in life. If the fog rolls in we can't see
anything. Most people get caught up in life that they forget the
purpose of life is to be happy.
Unhappiness is really an incorrect way of seeing. When we are unhappy
we don't see life as it really is. We are in a condition of veiled
light, of shadows.
Consistency is nice, I think, personally. I like to be consistently
happy. I like to be consistently more aware and more conscious of the
truth.
Discrimination means keeping the negative and unhappy thoughts away and
allowing the pretty thoughts to come inside you.
You must constantly check and re-check that you are meditating
properly, and not becoming what Clint Eastwood refers to as "a legend
in your own mind."
Don't just sit there. Go do something and don't expect that it's going
to be fun unless you make it fun. You have got to work on things. That
is when you are happy.
Happiness is something that you don't postpone. If you are postponing
happiness - it is something you will probably never experience much of.
The worst thing you can do is to sit and brood and feel sorry for
yourself. Nor should you feel wrong about doing this, since all of us
do from time to time.
The nuns taught me that the best thing you can do in life when things
get difficult is to work.
To occupy yourself with tasks that are useful to yourself and others,
you can get your mind off your problems.
Take a yoga class, study different forms of self-discovery. Some people
are crazy and fanatical, avoid them. People who are balanced and calm
and introspective, associating with them will raise your energy level.
Walk in nature. Take the time to be still. Practicing arts, arranging
flowers, doing some drawing, working on a computer, brings a sense of
stillness into your life.
Find things that make you feel still, that make you feel good.
Happiness is everything in the whole universe. It's a state of mind.
Your whole life is a state of mind. So be happy. Why not?
You are complete. Completion has taken place in you eons ago. Accept
yourself. Enjoy yourself. This time will never be again, so fulfill the
moment with your own self-joy.
Forget that you are anybody and just perform the activities around you.
Look at them. Watch what you are doing, my God! Life is right in front
of you, and it's great.
Focus on beauty all day long. Realize how incredibly beautiful your
life is. How incredibly beautiful it is to feel, to look around, to be,
to experience all this wonder.
You have to be courageous in life to allow a lightness to engage your
being. It is easy to be a jerk. To be unhappy with all this weird stuff
around us just seems to me to be such a waste. That's a jerk.
Practice smiling for five minutes. Stop trying to meditate. Just smile.
Let your smile get bigger and bigger. Oh, you're unhappy, you're
miserable, nothing is working in life, it doesn't matter. Smile anyway.
Smile sometimes when things aren't going well, and maybe realize when
they aren't going well, they are.
Pain and frustration vanish in the sunlight of your smile.
It is is easy to smile. It is an act of self-giving. When you smile you
are at your best and you give that best to others.
Don't be discouraged. At times the path to truth is circuitous. The
point is not to succeed, only to smile eternally.
Put a smile on your face. Don't sit in the waiting room of life. Go do
something, happily.
Practice being happy. Work at it. It's a new role, I realize, but
you'll get it. The auditions will be coming up very soon. So get on top
of it. I'm sure you will get the part.
Happiness is self-generated as the mind becomes still. As we become
involved with the desires of the world, we lose that centering, that
stillness.
Meditation simply means entering into states of mind which are
happiness, profound happiness, simple happiness, beautiful happiness,
complicated, uncomplicated - There are ten thousand states of mind.
Everything you do in meditation is amplified. If you meditate for five
minutes with your complete mind focused on happiness, that is like
focusing on happiness for several hours as you are walking around.
What we focus on we become. If you are just focusing on unhappy things,
you will become unhappy. If you focus on happy states of mind, then it
will grow in you.
Most people think happiness comes from experiences in the world. The
fulfillment of desire causes a type of happiness. But as soon as they
experience passes, the happiness passes.
The fulfillment of desire does not necessarily make you happy because
there is a satiation factor. You can get some apple pie and eat it.
If this is what makes you happy, why not eat ten?
The rich aren't happy so they try and get richer thinking it will make
a difference. The poor aren't happy. They try and get rich thinking
that will make a difference
How can you possibly be happy if you think you're a person? Because we
all know, just by definition, that people are definitely not happy
because they take everything too seriously. They take themselves
seriously.
Happiness only comes when you let go of who you think you are. If you
think you're wealthy and powerful and noble and truthful or horrible
and demonic, whatever it may be, it's all a waste of time. Take it from
the Zen Master. He knows.
Power doesn't make you happy. Actually, power without knowledge and
balance is problematic. Power is something that will automatically
follow when you have knowledge. The two are really the same, in a
certain sense.
You don't have to take drugs to be happy. You don't have to drink to be
happy. You don't have to have people around you who love you to be
happy. You don't need anything except the clarity of your own mind.
If you are not as happy as you used to be, chances are you are not
meditating properly. You may be trying to skip steps. You are using
power incorrectly. Your motives are not pure. You don't vibrate
quickly.
There is always going to be pain. There is always going to be pleasure.
But what is not always going to be there is balance, happiness. That is
a personal decision
If you're a sniveler, a whiner, a complainer, you will never be happy.
We all have that side. Get a little stoical and just take the pain.
Learn to be happy in any and all circumstances, whether you're
experiencing pleasure or pain, whether there's loss or gain, whether
the world loves you or hates you. Learn to be happy.
Even sickness becomes an experience that we pass through in happiness
because our happiness is not dependent upon how our body feels, but how
our spirit feels
Life should be continually brighter. We are continually seeking our own
innocence. We want to recapture it for eternity. It's in there, but we
lose touch with it.
If we immerse ourselves in the ultimate good, we will have this silly
smile on our face or perhaps just inside our hearts. That is what
illumination is."
Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz, PHD.
www.ramaquotes.com
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