What’s Really Holding You Back from Happiness

Sometimes you’re out with friends or on a dinner date, and want to be fully, authentically there. But you can’t. Mentally you’re checked out, thinking about that person that angered you earlier, or that new outfit you want to go home and buy, and you’re blindly ignoring right is what in front of you. When that happens, you’re trapped by (at least) one of the three poisonous emotions according to Buddhism:

• passion
• anger or
• ignorance

There is a beautiful Buddhist text dating back to the fourteenth 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 it 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 specifically discourages us from giving in to endless daydreams so that we can live a life that’s based in being present with whatever is happening right now:

Passion towards friends churns like water.

Hatred towards enemies burns like fire.

Through dark ignorance, one forgets what to adopt and what to reject.

To abandon one’s homeland is the practice of a Bodhisattva.