Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Personal Peace (06/01/06)
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TITLE: How To Be A Winner In The Game Of Happiness!!!!!! | Previous Challenge Entry
By
06/07/06 -
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The quest for happiness has taken mankind on many strange journeys. Many have arrived at destinations never imagined or sought. We lose our way frequently and end up with regrets and sorrow. Is there a sure way to find happiness?
Mind precedes all phenomena,
Mind matters most, everything is mind-made.
If with an impure mind
You speak or act, then suffering follows you,
As the cartwheel follows the foot of the draft animal.
On the other hand, here is the Buddha's recipe for happiness:
If with a pure mind
You speak or act,
Then happiness follows you
As a shadow that never departs.
Step l: Prioritize Happiness
Step ll: Know Thyself
Know the Self as lord of the chariot,
The body as the chariot itself,
The discriminating intellect as the
charioteer,
And the mind as reins.
The senses, say the wise, are the
horses,
Selfish desires are the roads they
travel.
Step lll: Enhance Your Self- Esteem
• Living consciously: The ability to be active rather than passive, to be in the moment, and to have a commitment for growth.
• Self-acceptance: The ability to be on one's side, to accept all feelings, thoughts and acts and to be compassionate with oneself.
• Self-responsibility: To take responsibility for the achievement of desires, one's behavior with others, and for one's happiness.
• Self-assertive: To know that we have the right to be who we are and that we do not have to live up to others' expectations.
• Purposeful living: To use our internal power for the attainment of our goals, including happiness, by taking responsibility for it, identifying the actions necessary to achieve it, monitoring our behavior to check if it is in alignment and so on.
• Personal integrity: When our behavior is congruent with our professed values, and ideals and practice match.
Step lV: Go Within
"If the will is unified from top to bottom, the moment anger surfaces you can transform it into compassion. The moment disloyalty arises you can transform it into love. Every negative samskara can be transformed in this manner, which means that personality can be remade completely in the image of your highest ideal."
Step V: Transcend Happiness
When the will becomes powerful enough to take on desire, the discriminating intellect (the charioteer, remember?) awakens. Buddhi, as it is referred to in Vedanta, is the center of discrimination. It views the situation on the whole and helps us to arrive at balanced and wise decisions that benefit the larger good instead of our selfish purposes.
Step Vl : Recognize the Other
You no longer require people to be polite, courteous, loving or unselfish. You can allow them the space to be themselves and take on the responsibility of the relationship on yourself. When this happens, you are cutting off all the cords that tied you to others and to circumstances. Awesomely enough, you are now free.
Step Vll: Be in the Moment
Still as a lake, our mind is poised in the moment, alert, joyous and free. With no identity to fetter us, no needs to tie us down, we surrender ourselves fully to life, experiencing, enjoying and letting go. We are home, free.
When all desires that surge in the heart
Are renounced, the mortal becomes immortal.
When all knots that strangle the heart
Are loosened, the mortal becomes immortal.
This sums up the teachings of criptures.
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Very interesting!