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We all want to know the secret to everlasting happiness.

Our experiences have proven that we can find it within our most intimate relationships and deepest hopes. We taste small bits of happiness every day when we eat our favorite food, watch our favorite series, hang out with our favorite people, or listen to our favorite playlist.

Sometimes we even trick ourselves into being happy and it works. Happiness isn’t hard to find, but…it’s hard to keep. That’s why happiness seems so elusive, so impossible.

When grief, depression, or loss effortlessly steal our most precious moments of joy, we wonder if happiness is real. In Buddhism, happiness is a state of mind, but we rarely experience it because we constantly link it to pleasurable experiences and emotions.

However, when confronted with misery and we experience negative emotions, we disconnect from reality. Happiness, in Buddhism, should keep us connected to our present moment regardless of its quality. True happiness that is rooted in wisdom remains unaffected by external factors.

Lama Yeshe who was known for bringing fun and joy to his Dharma talks wrote about happiness and the power of the mind extensively. His words continuously inspire me. They help me to understand the complexity of my mind and why happiness seems so elusive at times.

They also help me to understand that I’m the only one who’s responsible for my state of mind right now. No matter what life throws my way, I have the inner power to choose how to respond to it.

Those 10 quotes by Lama Yeshe explain it perfectly:

1. “Over and over again our experiences prove that it is our mental outlook that is fundamentally responsible for whether we are successful or unsuccessful, healthy or ill, attractive or ugly, happy or depressed.”

2. “Your up and down emotions are like clouds in the sky; beyond them, the real, basic human nature is clear and pure.”

3. “No matter whether you are a believer or a non-believer, religious or not religious, a Christian, Hindu, or a scientist, black or white, an Easterner or a Westerner, the most important thing to know is your own mind and how it works.”

4. “It’s the foggy mind, the mind that’s attracted to an object and paints a distorted projection onto it, that makes you suffer. That’s all. It’s really quite simple.”

5. “Problems come when you are not living in a natural state of mind. Then, no matter what you are doing, your mind will be on something else. You are supposed to be cleaning your house, but your mind is thinking about going to the beach and eating ice cream. That is when you run into difficulties.”

6. “If you don’t know your own psychology, you might ignore what’s going on in your mind until it breaks down and you go completely crazy.”

7. “If you know the psychological nature of your own mind, depression is spontaneously dispelled; instead of being enemies and strangers, all living beings become your friends. The narrow mind rejects; wisdom accepts. Check your own mind to see whether or not this is true.”

8. “You must recognize that your real enemy, the thief who steals your happiness, is the inner thief, the one inside your mind – the one you have cherished since beginningless time. Therefore, make the strong determination to throw him out and never to let him back in.”

9. “According to the Buddhist view, there is no human problem that cannot be solved by human beings.”

10. “Without understanding how your inner nature evolves, how can you possibly discover eternal happiness? Where is eternal happiness? It’s not in the sky or in the jungle; you won’t find it in the air or under the ground. Everlasting happiness is within you, within your psyche, your consciousness, your mind. That’s why it’s important that you investigate the nature of your own mind.”

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