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The Art of Being Happy Now: Mindfulness and Global Sangha
The Art of Happiness (or The Art to Be Happy) will be the topic for this winter’s three-month retreat, with monastics and Dharma teachers studying Dignāga’s Treaty on the Object of Perception. The next twenty-one-day retreat will be “The Happiness of the Buddha,” exploring how the Buddha “builds his happiness.” Thay and novice monk Pháp Triển have designed a Now watch—1,000 ordered for Deer Park, 300 received—to remind practitioners that every glance can bring mindfulness to “It’s now.” During the last winter retreat, about 300 monastics and laypeople practiced sitting meditation, walking meditation, Dharma discussion, and reflected on a global spirituality, resulting in a new version of the Five Mindfulness Trainings as a Buddhist vision for a global ethic.
At the European Institute of Applied Buddhism (near Cologne), a permanent monastic and lay Sangha offers courses on life’s challenges, including:
- a 21-day marriage preparation course,
- a course for young people at odds with parents,
- a course for parents struggling with children,
- a course for those in mourning,
-
a course for those diagnosed with cancer or serious illness.
Participants receive a certificate upon completion and live with the resident Sangha to learn selective watering of seeds of joy or anger.
Mindfulness enables practitioners to recognize and generate moments of happiness by touching the many physical and mental conditions of well-being already available—healthy lungs, a functioning heart, even the simple act of brushing teeth with love. Happiness is recognized against the background of suffering (as when a 24-hour ceasefire brought relief during wartime), and every mindful in-breath and out-breath becomes a source of happiness. A true Sangha carries the living Dharma—visible in peaceful walking, sitting, and smiling—and inter-ares with the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha as the soul of our spiritual family.
