For example, let’s say we look at other people around us with suspicion. That doesn’t hurt them at all, it hurts us. If we open our hearts to love and compassion and learn to look at life with the eyes of a child, without preconceived notions, then we establish happiness. Then no material gifts in the world can be equal to or surpass the value of that experience of happiness. We must cultivate happiness by the way we look at things. If we open the doors of our hearts, then we can find happiness.
I try this exercise each morning: I say to myself, “Today might be the last day I view these lights of the city. Maybe I won’t be able to do this tomorrow.” When my mind has sadness, restlessness, or anger, then this reminder helps me to cultivate happiness and compassion, and to make my life bloom as a flower. We can’t buy it; it is already present in our hearts.
Next, if we have the opportunity to observe nature, we can learn many lessons. The first lesson is the relaxation and letting go in nature. For example, in the plant kingdom, when autumn comes, the leaves fall from the tree naturally. Elephants leave their herd when they are about to die. We don’t know where they go. Whales too go off alone to die. People cannot even find the skeletons of whales that have died in the ocean. Nobody has been able to find their graves. There has never been a plant or an animal whose mind is burdened like a human mind. Animals don’t build gravesites. Humans want to be remembered and known forever. Our mind is so dear to us. All our joys, sorrows, anger, and love, we store these all in our consciousness carefully. And for what? Not to enrich ourselves. So we can learn from our mistakes? Not true. Each unskillfulness is different. Each day is a new day. Each breath is a new breath. Nothing repeats itself. No species retains its own characteristics as it evolves. No plant stays the same. Life changes. So storing up all the things we call past joy, past happiness, is the wrong way to live. We hold onto them like treasures. We want to invite our joys back into our memory to spice up our lives. But we also store our anger, sorrow, and hatred. Let us look at which of these we remember more often. It is the anger and the sorrow. When our love is young we think, “How can I live without my beloved one?” Later in life we think, “I don’t want to see this person’s face again for a hundred years.”
BE LIKE A TREE
Zen Talks by Thích Phước Tịnh
Edited and Illustrated by Karen Hilsberg
Jasmine Roots Press – 2008
CHAPTER TEN
Happiness and Letting Go
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