For me, right now, my definition of happiness is:

Happiness is the set of positive emotions that arise from the love of life.

I think that the likelihood of experiencing happiness is increased if the following happens:

1. We focus our direct attention on appreciating our life and the facts of reality
2. We go beyond the superstition of what is “good” and “bad”. For instance, things that we may initially think are bad can be seen from another perspective as being good.
3. We attempt to look beyond appearances and search out the reality of the situation. This is often called insight.
4. We investigate our thoughts to clarify misunderstandings and ambiguities, as misunderstandings are the cause of emotional pain.
5. We understand that we are more than our common self-definitions, that is, how we use “I”. When we say “I am a man” or “I am an engineer” or “I am bad at dancing”, recognize that we are much more than the “I” we say we are.

When I think for a moment, I notice that for much of my life I have been on a path of searching out the fundamentals of reality and appreciating reality. Upon further reflection, I can see that everyone else in the world is doing the same thing.  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.