Translating Happiness

I am happy. It's not just a fact. Neither is a spoken word. It's beyond what can be described. Being happy is both complex and simple. As complex as the diverse colors of the universe; as simple as the Light that gives all the colors. It is hard to explain, because we are so used to have a single cause of happiness, like those many important people and things and events in our lives. Yes, they give us happiness. But more than what they can provide, there is a happiness that comes from the subtle fabric of existence, unbound by any definitions and dimensions. This happiness is moving, unfettered by any reasons, as it exists on its own. The great thing in life is to experience it. Even to have a glimpse of it is a great experience itself. For many of us who underwent and undergoing life's big crisis, this happiness is the light at the end of the pitch dark tunnel. This ray of hope is the key to expand the happiness that beams everywhere, that shines now here.

To finally find happiness, stop finding it. To think that this happiness is lost is to make sadness more real in our lives. We often wallow on our depressions, and think that life is hard to live. We often freak out on this ineffable restlessness, and trying to compensate the lack through many ways, mostly through material accumulation and physical manipulation. We become more frustrated, for the things that we long for are so elusive and we are still dissatisfied of those that we have. Most people I have met still believe that it is human nature to be discontented. This limiting belief has made humanity starving for happiness. Like a thirsty fish that lives in water all its life. We can only have happiness if we begin to affirm that happiness is something that we don't seek for, but something that we are. There is a big difference between saying "I have happiness" and saying "I am happy". The former is treating happiness like something we possess, and might lose someday. The latter is to recognize that as we face ourselves in the mirror, we see happiness looking at us, that we say "happy" as our own name.

Happiness seems a vague word for many, so we'd better translate it to words that bear the same experience. After all, Happiness and all the wise and wholesome words we will learn today are interchangeable. More so, all of them are lexical expressions of the same iridescent experience.

To be happy is to be thankful. A heart of gratitude is a heart of happiness. Gratitude originally means grace. Happiness comes in the state of grace. A state of grace is to be confident that everything that comes to us is a gift, given at the right time. We do not seek for anything that is out of reach of our time and space. We fully appreciate those around us, from the most important person, down to the least material object. When we feel dissatisfied, we are choosing to feel the absence of this thing or this person, rather than to choose their presence. Happiness begins when we stop overlooking the blessings that long to be noticed. Becoming aware of things that we have is enough to make us smile. This is not just to compare ourselves with others who do not have what we have. Happiness translated as gratitude is to see that as human beings, we are all capable of receiving great blessings, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem.

To be happy is to choose to be happy. Happiness, as Barry Kaufmann said, is a choice. And making a choice is different from selecting something from many things. Being happy is never a thing to be selected. There is a Zen story of a monk who went to a butcher's store to buy the best meat. But the butcher replied that every meat he has is the best. Then the monk became enlightened. The story exemplifies the mind of happiness: there is nothing to be selected, nor to be compared. Everything we have in life is irrefutably incomparable, what we just need to do is to see our blessings in a different way. After all, the stuff of life is relative. A treasure to one is a trash to another. It is a choice to begin to see those trash as treasures, to appreciate those things we hardly thank for, and to accept difficult realities that go beyond our control. Life is not easy to live, but it is possible to be happy. Happiness proves the paradox that once we become happy, such causes of unhappiness become seeds of happiness themselves.

To be happy is to understand. In his book Being Peace, Thich Nhat Hahn says "When you understand, you cannot help but Love." And a heart that understands, loves. A heart that loves is always happy. They are words of one inseparable meaning: to experience this sense of being beyond any kind of conventions and conditions. Happiness is such unnameable reality. It is as it is. With such awareness, one can be all-embracing, so as to acknowledge the inherent differences of others and anything that exist not just a matter of mitigating conflict, but honoring the myriad forms of truth that transmute in immense ways.

To be happy is to Love. And there is nothing that can embody happiness more than Love does. For Love is the fountain where all forms of happiness come from. To thank, to choose and to understand are but forms of happiness that come from Love. Love is the essence, the meaning that holds every meaning in place. A Loving soul is a conduit of happiness, that brings magnificence to all things, both big and small. And the lines between identifying Love and soul and happiness become blurred. All of them are melted into oneness. Love and happiness never see what is ugly in life, only opportunities to express beauty. Our eyes that see beauty only see happiness and act in it. Happiness never fails us to Love, for Love itself is happiness. We are souls born out of it, and gives birth to same.

Happiness and we are one. Just as you and I are one. We just don't accept this truth. We must be awaken to it. Being happy is a truth that is always within us, waiting for our attention. And when we are happy, we become incarnations of happiness, and avatars of Love.