James Bazar opened the workshop by quoting
Dalai Lama: ” The purpose of life is to be happy” and continued by saying that
everything we do, we do because we want to be happy. We are even grumpy,
because we want to be happy. We walk with a fake smile and try to please
everyone around us, because we want people to like us and we want to be happy.
However, this is the happiness outside ourselves and unfortunately it is
usually not long lasting. But can we turn to ourselves and look for happiness inside
us? Bazars’ say it is exactly where we need to look for it and be open for it
when we find it.
If the only thing we do to be happy - just
to look inside ourselves - why are so many of us still unhappy? We often look
for and remember only bad things happening to us. As Jane Bazar says: “our mind
is designed to grasp and keep bad experiences in our memory, because the ones
that were only thinking everything will be good didn’t make to these days”. I agree with Jane, evolution likes jokes like these. We are watching out all the time, but we
can also train our minds to notice good things. I really liked James’ idea we
can incline our minds towards anything we want by just thinking that way. So
you want to be grumpy and see bad things around you – think that way. If we always
look for something bad to happen, we train our mind to notice more
and more bad things around us. But if I try to look for good things then of
course we will tend to observe more good in our life. Jane very accurately pointed out: “it takes practice for
our mind to notice good things and positive experiences”. I couldn’t agree
more.
We all have happiness inside us; we were
born with it. James brings this point home nicely by showing everyone a photo
of a happy baby. “That is why we like babies so much,” - says James. “They
remind us of us”. To be happy you need to want to be happy. You need to find
gratitude for good things and practice it. Practice happiness, don’t these two words resonate? Practice happiness.
Practice happiness. Intention is what takes us to be happy. It really struck me
how simple and yet difficult is to be happy: all you need is want to be happy. Funny things is that we not always know what
we really want.
I asked James:“ have you met people who can
really say they know what happiness is? He asked me back: “what do you think” ? I don’t think many people know what it means to be happy. I certainly cannot
always understand what it really means to be happy myself. “The highest
happiness is peace” – says James. At the workshop, we were asked to imagine
what happiness is for us and think about that as my happiness. People gave
really many explanations what they think happiness is. All of the descriptions
were unique and I must say rather abstract. Nobody said: having enough gold is
my happiness (though I must say James tried to provoke us with the photo of
the pretty women covered in gold). But then again, in different setting and
context the answers might have been different. For me, happiness is hard to
describe in one word. But if I try to describe what happiness is for me it is a
feeling of stillness, calmness. It is like you are standing on the top of the
mountain and overlooking a wonderful landscape of fall colors sinking into the
calm rich clouds. It is like boundary between you and the experience was
dissolved; you are one.
Many interesting topics were discussed at
the workshop. With some of them I fully agree and with others I am somehow more skeptical, but nonetheless I enjoyed the
workshop. I hopeful I will be inspired to explore these topics in more detail
in future. For now, the message I took home was that things will fall apart, you
will get sick and bad things will happen to you, but if you are genuinely happy
you will be alright. Suffering exists and you are not suffering because you are
not good enough. Everyone suffers, but those who process the suffering they are
not afraid of it. These people can see goodness in themselves and in others. If
you practice kindness towards yourself and the world, you will find gratitude
in everything and you will be happy.
