Life Toast Ep.3 Happiness or Suffering? You may want to think again - Revised transcript

Words can travel thousands of miles.

May my words create mutual understanding and love.

May they be as beautiful as gems, as lovely as flowers.

Hello, welcome back to this podcast. I'm Jill.

Today, I want to share a topic called happiness or suffering, you may want to think again.

We all want crave happiness and we all want try to avoid suffering.

But have you ever thought about what really is happiness truly considered what happiness really means?

What makes us happy truly brings us joy and what makes us suffer causes us pain?

Most people have some idea about happiness and what makes us happy.

People would answer you might say, "Well, I think money makes us happy because if you have a lot of money, you can buy many things and you can be happy that brings us happiness."

Some people want fame, they want to be famous, they want to draw wanting attention and recognition from the great public of the world, believing and that will make them feel proud, proud of themselves.

And some people Others would might say not having to work may be a source of happiness because work creates a lot of stress and anxiety can be stressful and anxious.

If you don't have to Without work, you will have a lot of free time to do whatever you want please.

And some people Many also like enjoy eating, sleeping, watching television, buy things shopping online, watching movies, or and so on.

We think believe these things will make bring us happy happiness.

And what makes us suffer?

But what about suffering?

Of course, we consider Many view work to be as a source of suffering.

We don't like to dislike working, we don't like to and seeing our bosses because work and seeing our bosses makes us make us uh can be stressful and anxiety-inducing, stressed.

And we also don't dislike the uncertainty about of the future.

We don't like to be worried about what would happen worries about tomorrow.

Will I die?

Will I get sick a disease?

Will there be an earthquake?

We want to avoid all these uncertainties.

We want to feel safe and assured.

These are our common notions about happiness and suffering.

But according to Buddhism Buddhist teachings, happiness and suffering are a pair of opposites and they exist together like two sides of the same coin.

When you think there is perceive suffering, you simultaneously create the potential for happiness on the other hand.

And when you think there is happiness somewhere else, you would automatically think acknowledge there is suffering here.

And that is what how I felt toward about my work.

One day, I realized that I hated I hated work so much because I felt so stressed and anxious about my job of the stress and anxiety it caused.

And also because I think believe forever happiness could be found in not working there will be happiness forever if I don't have to work.

This is was an illusion.

This is just an imagination inside my head a fantasy I created in my mind.

But I assume imagine I could find eternal happiness if there will be heaven, happy heaven in the future when I don't have to work anymore.

So, I immediately think of the fact that now I'm still working, so I am suffering.

I am felt I should be unhappy because I still have to work. I wasn't free.

If I don't have that notion that there should be happiness existed somewhere elsewhere, I wouldn't feel suffer.

I wouldn't have felt feel unhappy about my work because. if I really sit down and look deeply into my work, there's I had nothing to complain about.

I am lucky enough to have a work, to have a job, and to have stable income.

So, the reason that I feel unhappy about my work is that I assume there should be My unhappiness stemmed from my belief that happiness resided in a life without somewhere else when I don't have to work.

And another example is when I went to a fine buffet restaurant during the on Mother's Day.

And when you go to a buffet restaurant, you normally we often eat as much as you we can at buffets, just as and I did the same on Mother's Day.

So, I ate so much food, I felt even uncomfortable afterward having so much food.

And I sat there, looked around to the people also in that restaurant at the other diners.

I asked myself, "Are they really happy eating so much?"

"Am I really happy eating so much?"

Because we have that notion that eating a lot should make us happy.

We often believe that overeating brings happiness.

So, we eat as much as possible fill our plates.

We don't care how much we spend ignoring the cost.

We only think that eating, having a lot of meat should make us happy.

convinced that a lot of food will bring joy.

But is it true?

When I sat there, I looked deeply into myself, I asked myself, "Do I really feel happy?"

And I was sure that my stomach was not comfortable.

So, we should need to rethink about our notions on ideas about happiness.

And one day, there was an occasion when I stayed in a small temple.

And because I wasn't familiar with the bed and the bedroom was unfamiliar, so I didn't slept didn't sleep well.

Around 4:00 a.m. in the morning, I heard some sounds from the kitchen, which was near my room because my bedroom was close to the kitchen that night.

And I found out that it was a venerable monk preparing for the food for a large offering ceremony the next day when there was a huge offering ceremony.

And he had started so early.

At 4:00 a.m., he was already working in the hot kitchen, getting everything ready preparing for all the things that the ceremony needs.

And I I slept in.

I didn't want to get up so early and I didn't want to or help the monk.

So, I kept stayed in the bed until 7:00 a.m.

then I woke up and walked went to the kitchen.

The monk saw me and beamed. he was so happy.

He said, "Oh, Jill, good morning. Let me prepare your breakfast."

It didn't look like he had worked for three or four hours in the kitchen, in the hot kitchen preparing for so many things.

He was still very happy and energetic.

I was very touched.

At that moment, I thought, "Oh, it's true that it can be happy to offer people. just like the monk did."

So, what really makes us happy?

What really makes us suffer?

We might want to think again.

There is a Buddhism teaches us about four kinds of wrong perceptions.

The first kind is to imagine what is impermanent to be permanent.

And the second is to mistake something that is causing us suffering to something that is bring bringing us happiness.

And the third is to think that what is taking away our freedom to is actually giving us freedom.

And the fourth is to think what is believe something impure to be is pure.

I think the second and the third misunderstandings about the world are really the root causes to of our suffering, because we misunderstand what is happiness and we misunderstand what is taking away restricts our freedom.

Like for example, when we have a lot of money, we will also have a lot of fear.

The fear of being um being robbed, or being stole being stolen from.

And we the fear that our friends and relatives would want to borrow money from us family will ask for loans.

Money actually brings a lot of worries and suffering, but we think money can make us happy.

We might should think again.

If we reflect frequently on our notions ideas about happiness and suffering, we may might see this world very differently and we may free ourselves from the suffering that we think we cannot get rid of believe is inescapable.

Just a switch of our mindset A simple shift in perspective can bring us happiness right away.

It can bring us to heaven right away.

Thank you. 

See you next time.

Jill