Week 3: Happiness
In this lesson, we discussed the definition of happiness and the facets in life that have an impact on happiness. Happiness is the state of feeling or showing pleasure or contentment. Happiness has quite a loose definition. In fact, happiness can be either feeling or showing, meaning that happiness is not necessarily an internal or external experience, but can be both.
Based on a research, there are a few facets in life appear to have moderate impact on subjective well-being: health, social activity, religion belief and culture. There are also a few variables that are strongly related to overall happiness: love, marriage, relationship satisfaction, work, genetic and personality. On the other hand, money, age, intelligence and physical attrativeness suprisingly have weak association with overall happiness.
Then, we were asked to do some research on the definition of happiness from the religoius perspective. I decided to look into the how Buddhist define happiness and below is the summary of my study:
Buddhism is associated with happiness more than any other religion. According to Buddhist thinking, happiness and sorrow are our own responsibilities and can completely controlled by ourselves. According to Venerable David Lungtok, a Buddhist monk in Sydney, Buddhists say everything comes from the mid. Hence, we get happiness as the result if we train our mind properly.
In the words of Buddha himself, "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world." This idea is in line with modern thinking in psychology, whereby we can change our feelings by changing the way we think. Buddhists focus more on detaching yourself from all thoughts to create a state of stillness conducive to ultimate self-understanding, or enlightenment. The key method of achieving this is meditation to arrive at a state where we are not distracted by our thoughts.
Dalai Lama has said that in order to be a good person and a happy person, it's not necessary to practice Buddhism, or for that matter any religion. Therefore as we're all seeking happiness, it makes sense to try to be as good as possible.