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Mindfulness Is a Source of Happiness
Nothing can bring as much suffering as an untrained mind, nor as much happiness as a trained mind. We train the mind by understanding how it functions and by caring for the body, since body and mind share a strong connection. Because humans are “social animals,” practice must be collective. The Buddha recommends practicing as a Sangha—organized like a family—seeking not individual happiness or an individual future but “collective happiness” and a shared future. In large retreats of eight hundred people, participants are divided into small families; novice ordination groups include Golden Lotus, White Lotus, Pears, and Mangoes.
Buddhist practice is the practice of
- mindfulness
- concentration
- insight
Each practitioner generates energy of mindfulness, and together as a Sangha this collective energy supports deeper concentration. Mindfulness is the source of happiness and can be cultivated in every moment—opening the water tap (with a memorized gatha), breathing freely, walking, washing bowls, bringing tea—so that “little moments of happiness” accumulate into a “great river of happiness.”
Mindfulness also heals and transforms suffering by allowing us to hold pain tenderly, like a mother with her child. With mindfulness and concentration we see ourselves as a stream of being—ancestors breathe in us, descendants breathe through us—transcending a one-hundred-year life span. Karma—action in thought, speech, and physical deed—continues our positive energy into the future.
