At a time when we most of us are deprived of many of our usual external crutches for wellbeing, the daily ritual of going to the gym or to work, the distractions, entertainment, various material goods we have come to rely on, some culinary treats, the cultural escapes, the face-to-face social interactions, the freedom to travel etc, all of which can undoubtedly catalyse our sense of comfort or pleasure, what are we left with? Do we have to feel miserable, bereft and unhappy?
Let’s use this time as a long-overdue wake-up call and reflect on a perennial truth, known to many wisdom traditions. The root cause of our wellbeing has always been within, for us to discover and cultivate. “To distinguish between genuine happiness and its counterfeits, imagine that all the external supports for your present sense of happiness and security suddenly disappeared. Whatever sense of well-being remains, is all that was truly yours.” (B. Alan Wallace)
The True Cause of Happiness
When the external supports suddenly vanish we need to understand them for what they always were, contributing conditions to our happiness but never its primary cause. When a pleasant experience leads to a sense of wellbeing it wakes up the mind’s capacity for bliss, it catalyses it. The bliss is not transmitted to us from outside, no person or thing or experience can ever transmit to us the happiness we experience, it is and always has been the capacity and quality of our own minds. Triggered one day, obstructed the next.
Awareness is Untainted by Temporary Obscurations
With many of our usual contributing conditions for pleasure taken away at the moment, let’s come back to the source of happiness itself. Let’s not feel deprived, empty and poor but wake up and drink from the wellspring itself – the vast and spacious awareness that is integral to and enables all of our lived experience. Like the sky that is temporarily obscured by clouds, our awareness may appear overcast at the moment, but it is at all times luminous and cognisant. It is luminous in the sense that it makes manifest appearances (without awareness we would not experience anything at all) and cognisant because it helps us know them for what they are.
Meditation as a Gateway to Genuine Wellbeing
Through meditation, we can learn to rest in the stillness of awareness amidst the turbulence of our minds and everything that is going on, no matter how disturbing. We may discover that our awareness of sadness or grief or despair is not itself sad or grief-stricken or despairing – it is always luminous and cognisant, we just need to identify it and learn to rest in this space. This is the entry point for cultivating a deeper dimension of wellbeing, the authentic wellbeing that arises from inside, from what we bring to the world rather than what we get from it. It’s what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia, often translated as genuine flourishing.
Online Meditation Course – Watch this Space!
I’m currently working on creating my first online meditation course, it will be on the very theme of Discovering the Wellspring of Sustainable Wellbeing – finally, outer and inner circumstances have converged for me to realise this long-standing project! More on this in due course!
What external supports are you missing at the moment? What are your thoughts on genuine happiness? Please let me know if I can be of any help on any of the issues raised here. If you would like to explore what genuine wellbeing may mean to you personally, please try my guided meditation which will be delivered to you via Messenger:
🙏🏼 May we all be happy and discover the causes of happiness! 🙏🏼
Stay safe and well,
Clara
