Prayers Are Seldom Answered

<b>Prayers Are Seldom Answered</b>
"Prayers not answered” means your “expectations not fulfilled.” The TAO wisdom explains why: your attachments to careers, money, relationships, and success “make” but also “break” you by creating your flawed ego-self that demands your “expectations to be fulfilled.”

Friday, April 16, 2021

The Happiness Wisdom


The Happiness Wisdom

The Happiness Myths

Happiness is only an abstraction, a far-fetched thought that is often elusive and evasive; it is difficult not only to define but also to understand. To further the complication, happiness often creates certain misleading myths.

The myth: the happiness sources

It is always a myth that abundant wealth, good health, and satisfying relationships—what most people crave and pursue in their lives—will bring them happiness. Abundant wealth, good health, and satisfying relationships are only the byproducts of happiness; they do not cause or bring true and lasting happiness in real life.

To illustrate, many lottery winners attest to their experiences of temporary ecstatic happiness, and nearly all winners confess that their winning has ultimately made them miserable and unhappy for various reasons. Maybe once the initial stimulus of sudden wealth and the drastic changes of lifestyle have worn off, they ultimately return to their original baseline level of happiness or unhappiness. Or, maybe, according to some experts, having too much pleasure—what is known as “eustress”—could also cause stress, just as lacking in pleasure might be stressful to the many have-nots.

The myth: the happiness effort

It is also a myth that happiness is something that can be pursued with willpower and effort. The Bible rightly says that pursuing happiness is just “like chasing the wind.” (Ecclesiastes 2:11)

Effort does not necessarily bring happiness; it only creates the illusion of an environment that is conducive to temporary happiness. To illustrate, one may work diligently in one’s career to excel and to get to the top of the profession only to find that one has a terminal illness, or has incurred a debilitating accident. For example, Steve Job, the co-founder of Apple computers, had his life cut short by pancreatic cancer at the height of his successful business career.

Pursuing happiness may be only a fantasy fueled by temporary moments of happiness, because aging, illnesses, misfortunes, and ultimately death plague all alike; in other words, impermanence cuts short all human efforts and endeavors to bring happiness. We are all aware of the fact that impermanence is an ultimate leveler of everybody and everything, but many of us still choose to delude ourselves into thinking otherwise. Denial only fosters the myth that if there is a will there must be a way to attaining happiness, and that all it requires is the human effort to make any dream come true.

The Attributes of True Happiness

Advertising, consumerism, and the media have all mesmerized us into believing that happiness is one of the basic human rights that we are all entitled to. The truth of the matter is that true happiness is, surprisingly, simple and effortless, because it comes from within, and not from without; it is part of self, and is natural to human life and existence. It is all in the mind—that is, how we think.

If that is the case, then why is that some people are happy while others are unhappy?

There is so much truth in what Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian author, said in very beginning of his celebrated novel Anna Karenina: “Happy families are alike, and unhappy families are unhappy in their own way.” So, those who are happy and those who are unhappy must have shared some common attributes or characteristics that predispose them to happiness or unhappiness.

The unhappy people

The unhappy people may have the following common characteristics:

Identity crisis

They do not know who they really are. That is, they may have falsely identified themselves with something in the world they are living in, such as “I am a successful businessman” or “I am a good mother.”

Once they have created for themselves their false identities, they naturally feel the need to protect and preserve their self-created images. In doing so, they desperately want to control and protect their destinies, such as avoiding what they fear might taint their preserved identities, or repeating what they previously did in order to sustain and substantiate their identities.

As an example, a “successful businessman” might want to overwork in order to avoid in future all possible failures in his or her business, or to repeat in future all his or her past successful business endeavors.

As another example, a “good mother” might strive to control the behaviors of her children in order to control and shape them into the individuals she wants them to become to prove that she is indeed a "good mother."

In the process of protecting and sustaining that identity, stress is not only unduly created but also aggravated by all outcomes falling short of their expectations. Nowadays, many people are living just to escape their yesterday’s pains and to anticipate their tomorrow’s pleasures; unfortunately, they are on the road to more unhappiness, and not less.

The bottom line: you are who you are, and not who you would like to become.

Not letting go

The unhappy people simply refuse to let go of what they think belong permanently to them; they anticipate what they think they rightly deserve through their efforts to control or influence the outcomes of events in their lives. They are afraid of any unforeseeable change, especially death that puts an end to everything they have delusively created for themselves.

The happy people

The happy people are usually wise because they know not only how to live but also how to survive in a world of depression. 

Knowing the ultimate truths

The truly happy people are those who understand that the only permanent cure for unhappiness is enlightenment, which is the profound human wisdom to know who they are, and what life is all about. True happiness lies within the true self; it comes from knowing the ultimate truths about everything in life.

Living a simple life

In addition, the happy people live a simple life, which is the essence of living. They have little or no attachment because they understand that everything is impermanent and subject to change and demise. Therefore, craving for more may also imply getting more problems when things do not last.

Remember, you have to be always conscious of your thinking mind in order to better understand your perceptions and then change them so that they may become a glass half-full, and not a glass half-empty.





 Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau

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