EXAMINE YOUR HAPPINESS

EXAMINE YOUR HAPPINESS

“Even though a totally pure happiness may be a long way off, we can be more and more pure in our dealings with the world as we try to find happiness, and figure out what happiness is, realizing that certain types of happiness that we’ve enjoyed in the past—when you really start looking at them carefully—are really not worth it. Happiness that comes from gain, status, praise: You want to be able to see through that, so that you don’t go trying to grab it from the world.
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Instead, you want to turn inside and see what is it about the way the mind relates to itself: What are your dealings with your own mind, and to what extent are you honest with yourself about what happiness is and in what you’re doing to get it? And what are the results of the way you’re getting it? How do these things all balance out? It’s in sensitizing yourself to these issues that you get a better and better sense of what a pure happiness would be.
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So these are some of the reasons why the Buddha doesn’t define terms like happiness and suffering, because all too often if you think of the term as defined, and you assume you know it—when actually you don’t.
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Happiness is an undefined term that’s really important in our lives, and yet all too often we don’t really look carefully at the experience of happiness. We don’t think seriously about happiness. We just see other people going for this pleasure or that, and we think it looks like fun, so we follow them without really looking at what we’re doing.
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The Buddha wants you to look very carefully inside yourself: What are your dealings with the world? What are your dealings inside over the issue of happiness? To what extent do you lie to others, to what extent do you lie to yourself? To what extent do you harm others, to what extent do you harm yourself in your search for happiness? Can you clean up your act?...”
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Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Excerpt from “Examine Your Happiness”
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You can read the complete talk here:

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/Meditations8/Section0027.html