The Buddha’s Joyful Way

Happiness must be a combination of inner causes and outer causes in order to come about (14th Dalai Lama, 1982.) For example if outer factors like good weather and delicious food is present while you are internally sad at the moment, the presence of outer favorable factors will not give you joy at all. However, if you are internally happy regardless of what is happening outside of you, you can radiate that inner joy to change outer conditions. The 14th Dalai Lama (1982) suggests the cultivation of inner good karmic qualities like “having few wants, contentment, humility, simplicity and other noble qualities...patience, forgiveness and so on...” through the faculty of the mind. So here you would notice how the Dalai Lama emphasizes inner happiness over outer-caused happiness.

Now there is a relationship between karma and the present happiness one is going into. Karma as we know is tied with the teaching of reincarnation in Buddhism. Karma is the law of cause and effect. Favorable or happy conditions are a result of skilled past actions from past lives while unfavorable ones are results of unskilled evil actions (14th Dalai Lama, 1982.) Even if this is so the Teacher, Dalai Lama, goes on to add that with a right mind(fulness), one can consciously face his negative karma by accepting this event “calmly” in such a way he would be able to go through his bad karma in a better light.

The Dalai Lama goes on to add that karma stems out from the mind and body (actions) and how important it is to have full concentration (that is removing all external stimuli as possible) during meditation. Now he goes on to say that beyond the ability to remove thoughts and arriving at thinking of nothing like the mind being a blank paper, there is still a higher state of meditation. That higher state of meditation is the realization that duality ceases. Duality is the presence of good and evil.

Reference:

14th Dalai Lama (1982). Happiness, Karma, and Mind. Retrieved from: http://www.lamayeshe.com/index.php?sect=article&i...