Chasing Happiness, and Cultivating Peace in Life

Life is complicated. The grass is always greener most everywhere you have the option to look. That's not really very fair. It's also an illusion.

Years ago now I watched some random podcaster on YouTube interview a Buddhist monk, and one exchange has resonated again and again with me over the years.

"Don't you want to find happiness?" The monk responded, "Well I'm not seeking happiness, I'm cultivating peace."

That resonated with me, but it took a long time to wrap my head around why. I've since learned a lot about the different paths of Buddhism and the more I did the more the statement crystalized into an ethos or understanding of how we interact with reality.

The most useful part, the keystone of this concept, is best illustrated by the Buddha's metaphor for self as a river, and indeed this metaphor can be extended to the whole experience of life, as the self is a metaphor for the story of you.

Imagine we go stand by some great river like the Mississippi, Yangtze, or Nile. I say "Do you see the river, friend?". You nod. I say, "Would you be so kind as to go down to the edge, pick up the river, and bring it to me?"

You can't, obviously, but it's not that it is an immovable object. You can go to the river's edge and pick up some of the water in your hands, but that is not the river. Not only that but the water that was in front of you a moment ago has already flowed a mile downstream, and in a year the riverbank will have moved back ten feet due to erosion and the place that you stand will be claimed by "the river". The river, then, is just a word - a word for the sum of the ephemeral, structured flow of some water through a space over time.

How does this apply to the self? The self, I've come to think, is the same kind of word. It's a word for the sum of the ephemeral, structured flow of some individual person through a space over time.

I learned to stop referring to goals and milestones like a finish line. When I finish my diet. When I meet the right woman. As if the river of my life will somehow halt at that moment I put so much thought and energy into, and it won't just pass like any other.

Yes, you will be healthier and fitter after that diet where you lost 30lbs - and then the diet will be done but you will keep eating something because life depends on that little habit. If you eat the way you did before the diet, you will rubberband right back to your old weight and fitness level. The river never stops.

This is where I think the monk was on to something. Peace is a state that you can cultivate - he used that word "cultivate" because you don't achieve peace as much as put yourself in a place, and around people that you continue to flow in harmony with your surroundings.

Happiness in contrast, as the American Declaration of Independence says, is something you pursue. Happiness is great but I've found that happy moments are like trees or song birds on the shore, beautiful moments that pass in an instant as the river just keeps flowing.

It's worth noting that cultivating a state of peace probably leaves more latitude for happy moments, as chaos on the shores is likely to scare away the song birds. But if you focus on trying to attain "happiness" you are always looking ahead to a moment that will pass as quickly as it arrived.

You don't have to abandon all thought of the future - you still have rent to pay, kids to feed, and a life that requires planning. But most people don't have just one eye on the future; they live their life in the "what could be" and "what could have been". Be present in the moment and try and find balance and harmony through awareness of your own values, love, and what you know in your heart to be right - there you will find peace.