Finding Happiness and Inner Peace

A window to inner peace

Many people come to retreat at Guang Jue Temple looking for happiness and inner peace. Interestingly enough I find that many who come to Guang Jue have had recent relationship break downs and are searching for something deeper and more meaningful. However, will they find what they are looking for?

Many people in the West have turned to Buddhism hoping to find the elixir to eternal happiness hoping that a life of silent meditation will be some sort of anaesthetic for their pain. Many tell me that they have tried this religion or that religion, tried Yoga or this style of meditation or that way of meditation as if attending a buffet restaurant hoping that their hunger for happiness and inner peace will eventually be satisfied. We hope for the right type of person for a relationship and then we hope that we can get out of that relationship some years later when the romance rubs off and the issues arise! What often bring us what we think is “freedom” often leads us eventually into “pain”. So the never ending cycle of suffering continues.

How do we end this cycle of suffering? Come in to a retreat? Retreats are wonderful and part of our practice. However, as long as we need to return to our daily life in the big city we will be confronted by the same demands and problems over and over again. Chant and perform rituals? Chanting is an essential part of our Pure Land practise. However, it is a “part” and not the whole. Study and apply the bits of Buddhism that feel good? This seems to be an ever increasing issue of taking the selective parts of Buddhism that serve our immediate purposes without going deeper into ourselves.

Naikan meditation is a meditation that takes us deeper into ourselves by helping us see not only the giftedness of life but the obstruction to this gift by our own egos. Naikan is underpinned by three questions that guide out inner examination: (1) What have I received from X? (2) What have I given to X? (3) What problems and difficulties have I caused X? You can almost cut the atmosphere with a knife when students come to the third question. The ego begins to stamp its feet, avoid, intellectualize and do everything under the sun to stand its ground. As long as “I” am in there looking out at the rest of life then my practise is foiled and the unending cycle of suffering continues.

Anatta, or “no permanently abiding self or soul” is at the very heart of the Buddha’s teachings. However as Rodney Smith in The Undivided Mind puts it : “With our Western emphasis on psychological health it is perhaps inevitable that this essential aspect of the teaching is downplayed or even avoided. Emptiness, after all, stands in opposition to many of our most important values such as self-reliance, individual initiative, and the pursuit of pleasure. We want the contentment, happiness and inner peace promised by the Buddha, but with “me” fully stabilized and intact.”

I have often heard retreat participants say that they have come into retreat “to find their true selves”. We often have a notion that lurking somewhere deep inside of us is a “true self” which is somehow in opposition to the ego! A true practitioner of Buddhism understands that there is no such thing as a true, substantial, independent self. This type of self is the self of grasping. As the Venerable Master Jen-Chun reminds us: “The Bodhisattva makes offerings to all sentient beings with a pure selfless mind”

To find true happiness and inner peace requires us to generate Great Bodhi-Mind through the great Bodhi practice and this in turn requires us to make radical changes in our life. The Venerable Master Jen-Chun in his collection of Dharma talks speaks of Great Change, Thorough Change and Immediate Change. The habits that we have acquired throughout our life time that actively encourage and support the ego must change. We must make mental examination of these habits and with a determined mind make immediate changes. This is not about changing relationships like changing our socks. Buddhism is better practised in the thick of life in the midst of our relationships with one another. The change that must be made can only be made deep within ourselves.

Changes can not be made by watering down the dharma. It is only through the wisdom of the ageless Dharma given to us by the Buddha that we are able to apply the teachings. Without dharma wisdom we are like a sailing boat trying to navigate the immense ocean without sails or compass.

Pure Land Buddhism gives us the most expedient method to apply to our changes. Through constant mindfulness of the Amitabha Buddha through the verbal and mental reciting of his name we begin to purify the mind cutting through all delusion. Through concentrated effort in our Pure Land practise we begin to make changes and develop the Bodhi-mind following the steps and example of the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin. In this are found true and lasting happiness and an abiding inner peace.