Being Is Happiness

‘Being is happiness’. The peace and happiness which everybody loves above all else is their own being. The great tragedy and comedy of the human condition is that most of us spend our lives seeking peace and happiness outside of ourselves. Henry David Thoreau said that most people ‘lead lives of quiet desperation’, seeking happiness where it cannot be found. There is no experience that his not accompanied by our sense of our self, the feeling of being. We refer to our basic sense of our self when we say simply, ‘I am’, and everything that we experience is added to this basic sense of being ‘myself’ or the knowledge ‘I am’. We overlook our being in favour of experience, just as we overlook the screen and become absorbed in a movie. When the seeking mind comes to an end, happiness shines by itself. The taste of our being is happiness, the nectar of being.

‘Being is happiness’. The peace and happiness which everybody loves above all else is their own being. The great tragedy and comedy of the human condition is that most of us spend our lives seeking peace and happiness outside of ourselves. Henry David Thoreau said that most people ‘lead lives of quiet desperation’, seeking happiness where it cannot be found. There is no experience that his not accompanied by our sense of our self, the feeling of being. We refer to our basic sense of our self when we say simply, ‘I am’, and everything that we experience is added to this basic sense of being ‘myself’ or the knowledge ‘I am’. We overlook our being in favour of experience, just as we overlook the screen and become absorbed in a movie. When the seeking mind comes to an end, happiness shines by itself. The taste of our being is happiness, the nectar of being.