Happiness & the Meaning of Life
Happiness & the Meaning of Life is a philosophical study of the art (and science) of living well. The course explores the writing and philosophy of Aristotle, Seneca, the Buddha, Epicurus, William James, and many others. Expect to learn perennial lessons (and practices) to help you flourish in the modern day.
“We are what we think. All that we are arises from our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind, and trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart. … Speak or act with a pure mind, and happiness will follow you as your shadow, unshakable.”
— Buddha, Dhammapada
One of the many paradoxes in life is that thinking (or the mind) can be a path to peace or suffering.
The Buddha taught, “Whatever one frequently thinks and ponders upon, that will become the inclination of the mind.” An untrained mind ultimately leads to suffering. The Buddha was far from the only person to discover this insight.
My conversation with longtime meditation teacher Shaila Catherine (author of Beyond Distraction) revealed that whether you are an experienced meditator or a beginner trying to develop mindfulness, you probably know the pain of wrestling with an unruly, distracted mind. Before you can experience the extraordinary joy of a settled and concentrated mind, you must learn how to dispel distractions.
Distraction is universal, explained Catherine, and even the Buddha tells us that before enlightenment, he sometimes found his mind preoccupied with thoughts connected with sensual desire, ill will, and harm.
Buddhist scripture advises that one develop a state of mind like the earth. People throw clean and unclean things on the earth, and the world is not troubled. When we develop the state of mind of friendliness, for as you do, ill-will will grow less; and of compassion, for thus vexation will grow less.
To a question about where to begin, Catherine responded,
The first major step forward in this process is to be mindful of a thought as a thought. And the thought is not a static thing. It’s a process, a dynamic process of thinking. It’s a mental activity. Instead of getting lost in the content or the story, we now become mindful of the activity that is occurring, thinking is happening. And this changes the entire framework of how we work with the mind.
If we’re looking at the story, stressed Catherine, there’s much we can learn and grow from by unpacking some of the assumptions and biases around the content and clarifying some things that are maybe memories that may or may not be accurate because they’re constantly changing over time.
Each time we think of something, it’s a whole new event. It’s a dynamic process. We first need to recognize the distinction between the content of our thoughts and our thinking process.
As the Buddha put it, our thoughts make our world. For this reason, Buddhist teachings (along with other wisdom traditions) stress the importance of seeing beyond (or through) words, labels, and judgments. One of the labels that can be problematic is how we see ourselves.
