The Art of Creating "Happiness" - Thich Nhat Hanh

What is the nature of joy and happiness?
How can we touch true joy in every moment?
How can we live in a way that brings a smile
to everyone we encounter?

Use your talent to find ways to bring
happiness [joy] to yourself and others.
The happiness that arises from meditation is
not the same as the feelings that come from
the pursuit of pleasure-seeking

Meditative joy has the capacity to nourish our
mindfulness, understanding, and love.
Live in a way that encourages deep meditative
happiness/joy in yourself.

You can vow to bring joy to one person in the
morning, and to help relieve the suffering of one
person in the afternoon.

Ask yourself, "Who can I make smile this morning?"
This is the art of creating happiness...

Thich Nhat Hanh

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

From the kitchen window the branches of
this apple tree that's trying to grow at the corner
of the shed have a luminescent pinkish glow...
Just gorgeous... :)  
Brings me an inner sense of "happiness."

 

Beneath the Storms - Thich Nhat Hanh

It's funny how much our surroundings influence our emotions.
Our joys and sorrows, likes and dislikes are colored by our
environment so much that often we just let our surroundings
dictate our course.

We go along with "public" feelings until we no longer even
know our own true aspirations.  We come a stranger to ourselves,
molded entirely by society...  Sometimes I feel caught between
two opposing "selves" - the "false self" impose by society and
what I would call my "true self."

How often I confuse the two and assume society's mold to be
our true self.  Battles between our "two selves" rarely result
in reconciliation.  Our mind becomes the battlefield...

Without storms like these, simmering in my own thoughts
and mental formations,  I would not be who I am today.  I
am often on the verge of tears or laughter.  But beneath all of
these [storms] what else is there?  How can I touch it?  If there
isn't anything why would I be so certain that there is?

I understand then that I am empty of ideals, hopes, viewpoints,

or allegiances.  I have not promise to keep with others.  In that
moment the sense of myself as an entity among other entities
disappears.  I know that this insight did not arise from dis-
appointment, despair, desire, or ignorance.

A veil lifted effortlessly.

That is all.

...what is actually here will reveal itself...

Some life dilemmas [storms] cannot be solved...
We just live them...

Thich Nhat Hanh
1926-2022

From: Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962-1966

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Doors through which we pass - Thich Nhat Hanh

 This body is not me.
"I" am not limited by this body.
"I" am life without boundaries.
"I" have never been born,
and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,
sacred thresholds on our journey.
Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

So laugh with me,

hold my hand,
let us say good-bye,
say good-bye,
to meet again soon.

We meet today.
We will meet again tomorrow.
We will meet at the source...
We meet each other in all forms of life.

Thich Nhat Hanh

via - Death Deconstructed

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

See Beyond the Facade...

“We are here to awaken
from the illusion of our separateness…”

Thich Nhat Hanh

“Darkness does not become light,
for there is only light…

You are Life ItSelf undivided
from the power that moves the planets.”

Jeff Foster

“Only when the mind is completely free
from yesterday,
and is therefore not using the present
as a means to the future,
is it capable of receiving
the eternal…”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

“…behind this outer façade,
another life is going on in you.”

John O’Donohue

Photos during snow fall Friday night…
Top two photos are of a street light...
And what looks like a building in those photos
is a reflection on the glass of a wall hanging -
an illusion of a building...