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Muhammad Faisal

Professor Ditch

English 113A

28 February 2018

Discovering Concealed Contentment

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler in the article, "The Sources of

Happiness," together with Matthieu Ricard in his text, "The Alchemy of Suffering," touch upon

the central theme that happiness is subjective. Every individual possesses the capability to

instruct their brain to be happy and liberate themselves from the miseries and hardships that they

face in their lives. People want happiness, but they do not know how to achieve the level of

contentment. Therefore, these authors are telling us how to gain satisfaction in life together with

stating that internal power is stronger than the external force along with awakening hope in the

general population that they all have potential to achieve contentment. The objectives of the

authors are to empower, motivate, and change the perspective of their target audience who are

suffering mentally from any unfortunate event in their life. I can personally relate to this theme

because once I was unhappy in my life; in my high school, my fellow students bullied me which

caused suffering in my life. Nonetheless, I read the teachings from the anthology of "Pursuing

Happiness." As a result, I applied the philosophies of acquiring happiness in my life. Fortunately,

I was able to achieve my inner contentment.

My struggle has a long story. My high school experience became difficult for me to bare

emotionally and mentally as many incidences my classmates always ignored me, abandoned me,

and made me feel I am worthless. They gave me the cold shoulder. I was a victim of depression

and anxiety for an entire year. As a consequence, I lost confidence in myself leading me to
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become susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and clinical depression in the absence of love.

Due to lack of the element of belonging to a group in school; my need for belonging to a group

affected me severely, and I was not able to overcome the physiological security requirements,

due to intense peer pressure. One reason I was unable to achieve contentment in my life was that

I cared more about the external circumstances instead of focusing more on acquiring inner peace.

This indoctrination is supported by a quotation by The Dalai Lama that "happiness is determined

more by one's state of mind than by external events" (22). Further explaining that contentment is

self-attainable rather than external events occurring in the life of every individual.

I was immensely miserable for an entire year, but then I consulted a psychologist who

advised me and told me that I could overcome my obstacles, and that is to stop thinking and

caring about other people's opinion regarding myself. I should have confidence in myself no

matter what anyone said about me or made me feel; I should not let anyone get to my head and

allow them to manipulate me mentally. I started thinking about it, and I took a firm decision on

that day that now I will focus on myself, try my best to keep myself happy, become confident

and concentrate on my studies.

Therefore, I can relate and agree with this quote by Ricard that "Arising from

impermanent causes, unhappiness is itself subject to change and can be transformed. There is

neither primordial nor eternal suffering" (38). I also experienced my unhappiness being

transformed into happiness as somehow my positive attitude was radiating positive vibes and

students from junior classes started liking me when I would advise them and guide them

regarding their academic and personal life. With time I was able to achieve the respect of junior

students, they began to look up to me as a role model; eventually, they became my friends.

Gradually entire school realized that their behavior towards me was wrong and even my
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classmates realized it. As a result, I ended up becoming friends with all of my school and

classmates.

I am the kind of person who does not believe things told me easily unless I experience it.

One can say that I presume in the philosophy "seeing is believing." However, experiencing a

situation myself, left me no other option but to believe this quotation by Ricard "According to

Buddhism, suffering will always exist as a universal phenomenon, but every individual has the

potential for liberation from it" (37). Implying that suffering is inevitable but neither incurable

nor perpetual, as it takes time for misery to heal. I was compelled to believe this quote when my

life abruptly took a turn in another direction, and my sufferings were transformed automatically

into happiness.

Reflecting the same argument that to be happy we should attain control over the factors

that we can. For example, our attributes, thinking, personality and much more and do not focus

on the elements, for instance, our health, other people, their behavior and much more over which

we have no control. As in the article "From The Handbook of Epictetus" Epictetus states "Some

things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses,

desires, aversions-in short, whatever is our own doing" (88). Further elaborating, the idea that

concentrating on factors out of our control can lead to unhappiness and disappointments on the

contrary controlling the factors that we can achieve power upon can lead to self-satisfaction and

happiness. It is true because experiencing myself I realized that I am unable to control actions of

other people, whereas I can control my behavior, judgments, my desires, and how I react to

others. Applying these teachings in my life by working hard towards creating a balance between

the activities that I had control over. I was successfully able to achieve a peaceful state of mind.
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After reading these articles, I changed my way of thinking. I have applied the idea in my

life that happiness lies within us internally and we should not be confused and try to seek

happiness in external factors as that is not the right place to find self-satisfaction. Together with

another lesson that each human being is capable of identifying the problems that are a hindrance

in their way of achieving happiness and then eliminate that hindrance to reach our destination of

procuring happiness successfully. Ricard in the article "The Alchemy of Suffering" states "We

all have the ability to study the causes of suffering and gradually to free ourselves from them"

(38). Further elaborating, that each person can identify the problems that are the root cause of

their suffering and then try to make themselves believe that it not a problem and it does not

affect me anymore. Applying this principle in my life helped me obtain mental stability and

inner peace. As a result, I was able to alchemize my hardships into contentment and learned how

to liberate myself from the vicious cycle of their suffering. Together with unraveling a misery

with a definite ending by utilizing that unfortunate situation to transform it into a positive

outcome consequently, living a tranquil life.

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Works Cited

Epictetus. "From The Handbook of Epictetus." Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford Spotlight

Reader, edited by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2015,

pp. 88-95.

Lama, Dalai, and Howard Cutler. "The Sources of Happiness." Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford

Spotlight Reader, edited by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/St.

Martin's, 2015, pp. 21-32.

Ricard, Matthieu. "The Alchemy of Suffering." Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford Spotlight

Reader, edited by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2015,

pp. 34-41.