..續本文上一頁f connectedness or affinity with others is very important.

　　In the Buddha”s teachings, the basis of this affinity is that we all desire happiness and freedom from suffering. So we are all in the same boat, trying to cross the same ocean. There is not much separating us other than our own little self-absorptions. In reality, our happiness and others” happiness, our freedom and others” freedom from suffering could be more easily achieved if we did not live within our own small self-absorption, but instead reflected on the need of happiness and freedom for everyone, and learned how to foster a sense of deep rejoicing.

　　For example, if I”m to become successful, finding my happiness and therefore my destiny, I must work really hard. Right

　　 Alone, I have to work very hard to reach that destiny, to achieve that happiness and deep satisfaction. Who knows how long that will take, maybe forever. Even spending my entire life working toward that, there”s no guarantee in the end. However, if I can be happy for your success, satisfied and fulfilled by any of you reaching your destiny, then I can share that satisfaction and happiness. Since there are so many of you, my chances of happiness are then much greater, as your success and fulfillment also becomes mine. So without having to do much work, I can have that happiness and my own deep satisfaction.

　　This kind of sympathetic joy and the resulting happiness doesn”t require any grinding work of your mind or body. So the Buddha has said that this sympathetic joy and what you gain from it—a deep sense of satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment—is the purest kind of happiness that exists in samsara. If it is my aim to fulfill my dream of happiness, and I can get there in this way by just training my heart and mind to be supportive of my well-being, then why not choose this path over one requiring hard, dirty, grinding work without guarantees

　　Our problem with this is having too many negative habits from past lives, our mind conditioned by deadly self-absorption. We”ve become caught in a rut of inflexibility. Even seeing the wisdom in something different, we remain inflexible due to our habit of thinking that our own happiness is much more important than that of others. Seeing no way to make others” happiness our own is simply due to ignorant habit, and is a rut that we can”t seem to change for the better. We”re possessed of a certain rigid reaction to happiness in general. When happiness conforms to our own sense of self-importance, we think it is happiness, yet when that happiness does not belong to our own self-importance, we conclude we have little to gain from it. Right

　　 If we cannot change that attitude, how could we ever imagine finding happiness

　　 How could we imagine becoming a spiritual person

　　 How could we ever imagine looking to the very trait that has brought us so much suffering—our self-importance—to provide us happiness

　　 This is like expecting a poison to provide us medicine.

　　When we”re so caught up with ourselves, so much in the grip of our own agendas and wishing to change the world through an all-pervasive feeling of our own self-absorbed mind, there”s really no intelligent way to proceed on the path toward happiness. We see this. If there were some way to proceed toward happiness in this manner, then the most materialistic people, the most greedy people, the most unwholesome people, the most shrewd people should be the happiest, and we see that is not true. Those who are the most greedy, most shrewd, most unkind, are totally fixed on their own agendas and not at all concerned for others. Others have no respect for them, and they have no respect for themselves at a deeper level.

　　So the point here is first to become really clear in your view of how to obtain happiness, and gain confidence in that. Secondly, try to change your habitual pattern, no longer following the same rut, while trying hard to truly embrace others as the source of your happiness.

　　Taken from NSS 2005 Talk 1

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