• News Center
  • Daily News
  • Business News
  • International News
  • Business Magazines
• Business Knowledge
  • Strategy
  • Marketing
  • Market Research
• International Market
  • International Market
  • China Market
• Financial Market
• Small Business
  • Government Agency
  • Legislation
• Business Writing

• Life Care & Life Style
  • Health
  • Life Style
• Mind, Body & Spirit

• Editor Articles
• Latest Articles

Author -- ZOE

Make A Happy Life

SECTION I 
Many of us pursue happiness; many words also express our desires, such as true happiness, highest happiness, purer happiness, purer and purer happiness, and the art of happiness. However, we need to know that HAPPINESS IS INNER US, AROUND US AND AT PRESENT.

Now happiness seems be more luxury than ever in our life.  Although we have more luxury life than our parents’ and than our grandparents’, we feel unhappier and lonelier than ever. We seem lost in the wonderland. There seems no guiding light in the dark sea; there seems no direction in our life. 

We can notice that stresses, loneliness and depression seem more common in our life. What is happiness? How can we achieve happiness? In the following, I would like to company with you to explore it.

1. What is happiness?
Happiness is what you define for yourself. Happiness has no universal definition. Happiness is individual concept，which reflects individual values and beliefs (I). It depends on the way you see things, what life you want, what your life value is and what your belief is.

Before we defined happiness, we need to identify and understand a few concepts: happiness vs. contentment, happiness vs. enlightenment, happiness vs. illusion, happiness vs. pleasure, happiness vs. life meaning.

Happiness vs. contentment
Contentment is the state of being happy and satisfied. Greek philosopher – Epicurus (BC 341-270) said “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

happiness vs. enlightenment
Enlightenment is the state you are united spiritually with the universe in the Buddist and Hindu religions, of no longer having any human desires. In 1784, Philosopher Immanuel Kant quoted in his essay An Answer to the Question: “What is enlightenment”,
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one understands without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! “Have courage to use your own understanding!” — that is the motto of enlightenment.”

happiness vs. illusion
Illusion is the state you believe something true, or something away from what it really is. In psychiatry and philosophy, “illusion” refers to a specific form of sensory distortion. Sometimes, it could be very dangerous.

happiness vs. pleasure
Pleasure is an activity or experience that you enjoy very much. In Greek philosophy, they stated pleasure as the absence of pain. Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher, understood pleasure as a negative sensation, as it negates the usual existential condition, that of suffering.

Happiness vs. Life meaning
The meaning of life is an elusive concept that has been the subject of much philosophical, scientific and theological speculation (it is from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedis). This concept is identified from ancient philosophy to 20th philosophy, from western philosophy to eastern philosophy. It is also discovered in science and religions.

These concepts are related and different. It is easy to confuse or abuse them in the life. It could be good; it also could be harmful. Let us find a healthy way to create happiness ourselves step by step.

Different people have different identification for happiness. For example, some people may define that happiness is well-being in their life; Some people may define that happiness is making a family; Some people may define that happiness is having a stable life. Happiness is not universal concept; happiness is individual concept.

For Buddhist, they believe that happiness is not self happiness, but the happiness of everyone and everything which there is a life. Pursuing happiness is a way from self-awareness to self-forgetfulness. See the below quotes.
Studying Buddhism means studying the self. Studying the self means forgetting the self Forgetting the self means being attained by [the spirit that is one with] tens of thousands of things.         —‘Genjo-koan~ Volume in the Shobo-genzo 
The Buddha taught that our essential nature is wise, loving and joyful. Self-awareness is the key. You can improve your skills to set yourself free from anxiety, self-criticism, depression, fear, and loneliness. You can free yourself from moods, the racing mind, compulsions, and scripts from the past. You can overcome your deepest fears, forgive others, and love yourself.
Buddhist practices meditation to improve levels of happiness.

Philosophers assume typically that happiness results from comparison between notions of how-life-should-be, with perceptions of life-as-it is. In early Greek philosophy, happiness was a major issue. Epicurus undervalue that maximizing the potential for happiness is experiencing pleasure as much as possible. Plato posits “the knowledge one needs for happiness is the nature of necessary versus unnecessary desires, the nature of the gods, the nature of death, and a life of contemplation and science.”

You cannot find happiness, but you can create happiness yourself.

Happiness is not there and waiting for you. Happiness is not hiding anywhere you miss. Happiness is created by yourself. Aristole (384BC-322BC) posits that happiness depends upon ourselves.

Happiness does not exist before you create it. What you are looking for is nothing and something which does not exist. However, you can create your happiness. You can put smile in your face. You can feel love when your partner prepared the dinner and was waiting for you. You can feel pride when your child is becoming more mature. Now you know happiness is from inner you and is from your attitude to everything in your life.

NEXT