Happiness Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Happiness

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Zusammenfassung von Happiness

Name: Happiness
Rating: 4.4 (155 reviews)
Author: Matthieu Ricard

Matthieu Ricard

A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill

4.4 (155 Bewertungen)

16 Min.

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Happiness
in 8 Kernaussagen verstehen

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Kernaussage 1 von 8

What’s in it for me? Banish negativity and suffering from your mind forever.

The key to happiness is something that we all wish to possess. If you doubt that, just consider how many tons of books about happiness burden shelves worldwide.

And yet, so many of these books fail to teach you one crucial element: you can’t become happy through external things like success or wealth. It’s only by looking inside yourself that you can find real joy. These blinks, based on the thinking of a highly influential Buddhist monk and philosopher, show you how to do this, providing the basics you need to attain true happiness.

In these blinks, you will learn

why fleeting pleasure will ultimately lead to pain;
what the hedonistic treadmill is; and
why you are not one but two entities.

Real happiness is a long-term mental state we have to consciously work toward.

Are you happy? Interestingly, how you answer that question might depend on where you’re from. There’s a wide gap between the Western conception of happiness and the Buddhist idea of true, long-lasting happiness.

Many Westerners think of happiness as a momentary, fleeting feeling. The intensity and duration depend on circumstances outside their control. A Westerner might feel happy about passing an exam, for instance, or winning a game or having a pleasant encounter with someone.

Happiness, however, shouldn’t be limited to such fleeting moments. Real, profound happiness is something more: it comes with having a healthy state of mind.

That means cultivating a mental state unburdened by memories and future plans. The only thing that matters is what’s happening now: the present. So the key to leading a happy and fulfilling life is being at peace with the present.

This approach to happiness mirrors Buddhist thought, which holds that one can attain a state of profound and sustained well-being when freed of negative emotions. Buddhists denote this state with a Sanskrit word: sukha.

Happiness is something that can be cultivated, but you do have work at it. Studies have shown that about 25 percent of our potential for happiness is defined by our genes – but that means 75 percent is up to us!

So you have a lot of power over your happiness. The way you think, live and perceive the world around you has a major impact on your mental well-being.

All in all, happiness is a matter of interpretation. It may be very difficult to change the world, but changing how you interpret it is manageable.

Seek happiness within yourself, not from the outside world.

You can’t buy happiness. In fact, external factors in general have a limited impact on happiness. Wealth and social status do have some effect on your happiness, but they only account for about 10 to 15 percent of it.

Happiness would be out of reach if it was purely an external phenomenon. After all, our desires know no limits; the amount of control we have over the world, in contrast, is very limited.

Happiness is not the same thing as pleasure.

Before you can achieve true happiness, you have to understand what it is – and then pinpoint those things that encourage it. But many people start down the wrong path, confusing happiness with other enjoyable emotions, like pleasure.

Pleasure might seem like the fastest and easiest road to happiness, but, sooner or later, you’ll come to a dead end. Pleasure is momentary by nature: it occurs under certain circumstances at a certain time.

Happiness isn’t about avoiding suffering. It’s about freeing yourself from worries about life.

In developed countries, about three-quarters of people claim to be satisfied with their quality of life. And yet, levels of unhappiness remain high. Why is this?

The answer has to do with the way people understand what happiness is. A lot of people think happiness is just a momentary respite from suffering. They might feel happy on the weekend because they don’t have to work, for example.

The ego is the true source of suffering and conflicted emotion.

Have you ever felt like everyone around you was self-centered or self-absorbed? Most people put themselves before all else. Buddhism, however, sees such egotism as a source of misery.

The ego causes a lot of problems and conflict with personal identity. To sort this out, Buddhism distinguishes between two “I”s: the natural, instinctive “I” we use when we say “I’m hungry” and the conceptual “I” we imagine but that doesn’t actually exist.

Free yourself from your own ego.

The concepts of identity and status are closely connected to unhappiness. That’s why it’s imperative to detach from your ego.

A person who clings to a specific self-image will do anything to make sure that that image is recognized and accepted. Such a person will devote all their time and energy to seeking validation. Ever worked with someone who spends more time smiling and cracking jokes than doing actual work? Such people are usually overly invested in having their identity praised and accepted.

Your thoughts and emotions can be your worst enemies.

Thoughts and emotions can be your best friends – but they can also be your worst enemies.

The main sources of pain in our lives often aren’t what we think they are. During war, for example, it’s been shown that depression and suicide rates actually decrease. The most powerful causes of distress are elsewhere. But where?

Examine your negative thoughts and emotions so you can overcome them and achieve inner peace.

If you don’t control your own emotions, they might end up controlling you. How can you prevent this?

Buddhism holds that opposite emotions cannot arise at the same instant. We might fluctuate between love and hate, for example, but it’s impossible to feel both for the same person at the same time.

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Worum geht es in Happiness?

Happiness (2007) guides you toward a state of true happiness. Many people today falsely believe that happiness comes from ephemeral things like money or fame, but truly long-lasting and profound happiness stems from maintaining a higher sense of well-being. And these blinks will help you do exactly that.

Wer Happiness lesen sollte

Aspiring and practicing Buddhists
Anyone interested in psychology
Those wanting to lead a happier life

Über den Autor

Matthieu Ricard gave up a career in cellular genetics so that he could move to the Himalayas and become a Buddhist monk. He’s been a close assistant to the Dalai Lama for about 40 years and has written several bestsellers, including Happiness, Why Meditate?, and The Monk and the Philosopher.

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