Buddhism argues that happiness comes from how deeply or mindfully you’re absorbed in an experience.
What with positive emotions being, shall we say, thin on the ground these days – in public life, anyway – I was pleased to encounter this wise insight into how to generate more of them, courtesy of the German-born Buddhist nun Ayya Khema: “We may believe that it’s the quality of the sunset that gives us such pleasure, but in fact it is the quality of our own immersion in the sunset that brings the delight.” That seems like a technical distinction and, to be fair, Buddhist teachers do love making technical distinctions. But this isn’t one. It’s a crucial point about human happiness that might make us all more cheerful if we grasped it.
- The Guardian
