The One Piece of Buddhist Advice We Need on How to Be Happy

An angry email lands in your inbox. You get passed over for a promotion at work. Or maybe you are just having one of those days where you miss the subway by half a minute, it’s raining, you don’t have an umbrella, and the weight of the world is falling squarely on your shoulders. In these moments, instead of doing the habitual, not-so-helpful thing we normally do of wallowing in despair, we could benefit from a shortcut to joy.

There is a beautiful Buddhist text dating back to the 14th century known as the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva. Bodhi can be translated from Sanskrit as “open” or “awake” while sattva can be translated as “being,” so one potential translation here is an open-hearted being. A meditation master known as Ngulchu Thogme composed these verses so that we could live a full life with open hearts, in order to be helpful to those around us and show up more fully for our day-to-day life. He has a verse that offers us a specific equation for moving from focusing so intently on our suffering over to a point of view of true joy:

All suffering comes from yearning for your own happiness.

The perfect Buddhas are born from the intention to benefit others.

Therefore, to truly exchange your own happiness for the suffering of others