Do you want to be happy? The standard of happiness is relative. A documentary covered a poor country in Africa. As we expected, people there were starving and as skinny as a skeleton. They have always suffered from starvation due to a shortage of water and food. However, they looked much happier than city people. We easily find news about people committing suicide, sometimes a few cases per day. It would probably be because things did not work out as they wished. They are pessimistic about their life and believe that they would rather die because they lead an unhappy life. But people there in Africa really have nothing. If we were told to live like them, we would not be able to endure even a day.
They do not have iPhones, TVs and computers. They don’t have money for Starbucks coffees and they don’t even have bank accounts or credit cards. They really have nothing. Compared to them, we have a lot more.
Nevertheless, we always live with complaints. We think that what we own is not enough all the time.
However the tribe in Africa smiled innocently and said that they only worry about dying from starvation and they don’t have any other worries at all. They said they themselves are so happy, and they really looked a hundred times happier than people living in the city. It is very ironic that the tribes in Africa who are dying out of starvation as they don’t have any food for tomorrow look happier than people living in the city. Aren’t they supposed to be happier because they own much more?
Why is it so? Some research result suggests that the happiness index is lower for people living in more developed and affluent countries.
Many philosophers and sages often said that the more you own, the more pain you suffer.
People might think that they would become happier if they have a lot of money, luxurious clothes, luxurious cars and big houses. However, the more you try to own, the more distant you get from happiness, as your mind becomes lonelier and comes to expect bigger things and greed fills the expectations. For example, a pro golfer who always had the lowest rank,but luckily got into the top 30, would then be extremely happy. But if a top player like Tiger Woods, who is always ranked at the top,falls to a 30th ranking one day, he would be extremely stressed and think that it is a disappointing result. In the same way, if a rich man suddenly becomes bankrupt and moves to a shabby unit, he would feel like he is in hell.
People try to own money and fame to become happy but these things never make us happy. However, if people empty their mind, let go of greed and live according to their status, happiness would come. However, it is not easy for them to control,as people’s greed could infinitely fill the world. Just through the meditation of emptying the mind and pulling out the root of our greed, we would find the life of nature’s flow and the true mind,which would really make us happy.
Now, it is a generation of emptying the mind and a generation in which anyone knows that one becomes unhappy as they own more money and fame.
Emptying the mind does not mean that you become poor in the material aspect. It does not mean that you really throw away your money on the street. But as you have no attachments to your own materials, your business would become more prosperous and you would earn money more successfully.
Nature always looks calm and peaceful without greed and mind. That’s why people like nature.
The time when people empty their mind like nature and live with the mind of true happiness, has come.
To conclude, let me introduce a writing by teacher Woo Myung, the real teacher of the generation whom I admire the most.
From teacher Woo Myung’s book <Stop Living in This Land. Go To The Everlasting World Of Happiness. Live There Forever.>
The Time Of Subtraction When Man Can Fulfill Human Completion Has Begun
Man is born with a mind that wants to possess, so he seeks satisfaction and happiness through possession. However, there is no end to such means; ultimately, he cannot be satisfied or happy.
All greed arises from his mind of inferiority and when he is not able to have or achieve what he wants, this turns into feelings of regret and bitterness. Only when he discards this, will those feelings of regret and bitterness truly disappear.
Until now, man has lived trying to possess what he can because of his mind that wants to make everything his. At present, this is the way all people live.
The world is in a state of instability, people have lost their trust in each other and they live struggling to appease their feelings of inferiority; in this age, rather than learning how to possess, learning to not possess is the way to become complete and the way to live a better life. This is because instead of just thinking that we must discard money in our minds, we will be able to carry it out into action.
A mind full of greed is always anguished; and a life lived following one’s anguish is without action; it is a life with thoughts leading only to more thoughts.
If the past was the age of adding to one’s mind, now the age of subtracting what is in his mind has begun. One who subtracts his mind in this time will recover his original nature; consequently, the whole human race will become one and the world will become complete because everyone will live for others and the world.
Human completion is becoming God’s mind by subtracting all of one’s own mind. One will then be able to live well for he will have wisdom and his mind that is the Soul and Spirit will live eternally.
Subtracting all human mind – all the mind one has, that he has “eaten” – is completion.
