The Folly of Investing in Unsustainable Happiness
Having done my own research on [observing my experiential application of Dharma and arriving at my own conclusions], I really see how two little birds can live very happily in a small nest or how two puppies can happily share a corner of room. Just having that warmth in their hearts — a warmth that they both give and receive — is enough to make them happy. Of course, it’s difficult to imagine most modern human beings feeling that kind of contentment in such minimal situations. Two harmoniously married people living in a tiny house with simple jobs would probably spend a lot of their time thinking, “I need this to be happy , I need that to be happy.” But if they did go out and realize all their dreams, they might well discover that they had already possessed the happiness they were searching for. Maybe their quest led them to a few novel pleasures or helped make some aspect of their lives a bit smoother, but how many years of harmonious tenderness did they have to sacrifice? Whatever they have accomplished shows itself to be a mere shadow of accomplishment because it fails to bring them the joy they had hoped for. After all this time, the couple may end up reminiscing about their formerly simple life, when they had so much space to enjoy the flow or warmth in their hearts!
This kind of external happiness with which most of us are obsessed can never be sustained. If you depend on someone praising you, someone giving you a gift, someone making you into a big deal, you are investing in unsustainable happiness. If you feel elated when these things appear in your life and depressed when they’re absent, that is a form of addiction. It’s not that we should reject these things when they do come around, but if we hold on to them tightly, mistaking them for the source of our well-being, we are setting ourselves up for pain. So when they do come to us, it’s wise to take them with a grain of salt. We should think twice before allowing ourselves to become emotionally dependent on fulfilling our external desires.
Dzigar Kongtrul
from Training in Tenderness