Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

Everything is relation; nothing exists in and of itself, immune to the forces of cause and effect.

The world of ignorance and suffering—called samsara in Sanskrit—is not a fundamental condition of existence but a mental universe based on our mistaken conception of reality.

Pleasures become obstacles only when they upset the mind’s equilibrium and lead to an obsession with gratification or an aversion to anything that thwarts them.

So long as we are slaves to the dissatisfaction and frustration that arise from the confusion that rules our minds, it will be just as futile to tell ourselves “I’m happy! I’m happy!” over and over again as it would be to repaint a wall in ruins.

This substitution of means for ends is one of the main traps lying across the pursuit of a meaningful life.

Unhappiness is altogether different, being the way in which we experience our suffering. Unhappiness may indeed be associated with physical or moral pain inflicted by exterior conditions, but it is not essentially linked to it.

If we do take the time to explore our inner world, it’s in the form of daydreams and imagination, dwelling on the past or fantasizing endlessly about the future.

Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.

As influential as external conditions may be, suffering, like well-being, is essentially an interior state.