September 24, 2000
Rev. Annie Holmes
When the family of my childhood would all
pile into the car and go on a
vacation to our cottage, often the five of
us children would begin to fight
and argue, my sister was fond of saying,
“Mom, he’s looking at me!” And then
it would start, “Are we there yet?” My Mom
would turn around and her words
are still ringing fresh in my ears, “This
ride, in this car, right this
moment, may be the happiest and best time of
the whole vacation. This time
right here together in this car. So pay
attention and don’t miss what might
be the finest time we will have all summer!”
Oh, what we have missed in our lives by,
either wishing our time away,
wishing for a better time, a happier time,
or by simply not paying
attention. How to find happiness? Isn’t that the question of the hour, the
day, the millennium? Maybe happiness is simply paying attention.
If you
want a tough challenge, try staying focused
on the present moment for more
than 5 minutes!!!
Happiness, contentment, pleasure, gladness,
delight, exhilaration, joy, how
to find them, how to sustain them, how to
make them real in our lives, that
is the question that is on most people’s
lips, whether it is spoken or not.
All the media deals with the pursuit of
happiness endlessly. We are told to
drink this liquid, pour this stuff on our
bodies, listen to this music,
travel to these places in order to be
happy. There are 30 million books a
year sold on how to find it. People have
been known to sell all they have in
order to possess it, walk mountains and ask
gurus where to find it, and yet,
search their whole lives to only get a
glimpse of the bliss, the merriment,
the excitement of being truly deep down
happy.
Listen to a story from China of one such
seeker of happiness…
There was once a poor stonecutter who
labored all day cutting stone slabs
from a mountain. The sun beat down on him
mercilessly while he worked. One
day, he stopped for a minute from his labors
and thought about his life.
“This is a poor life. I have no power, I am
not happy. I spend my days
cutting slabs out of a mountain. How I wish
I could be as powerful as the
sun beating down on me. Then I would truly
be happy!”
The gods heard his complaint and decided to
give him what he wanted. In the
twinkling of an eye, the stonecutter found
himself in the center of the sun
and now he beat down upon other poor souls.
“This is more like it,” he
exclaimed. But within a short time some dark
clouds blotted out the sun’s
rays and there was no one to beat down upon.
“Oh dear,” said the
stonecutter, “the clouds are even more
powerful than the sun.”
At once he become one with the clouds as
they moved across the sky as they
created rain and thunder and lightening. But
very soon a strong wind came up
and the clouds were dispersed. “Oh my,” said
the stonecutter, “how fine it
would be to be as powerful as the winds.
They can cause the clouds to
disappear.”
And immediately he was transformed into the wind and went with
it as it danced and howled around the world.
But the stonecutter noticed
that try as the wind might, there were
certain things that it could not
move. When it came to a mountain, nothing
the wind could do would move or
change the mountain.
Before the thought was fully formulated the
stonecutter became the mountain.
“Now,” he thought, “I am really powerful.”
But then he felt the mountain
flinch and through the mountain’s senses he
felt the small, determined tread
of a stonecutter on the mountain’s edge. He
felt the strength of the
stonecutter’s tools as they chiseled a block
of stone from the mountain.
“Ah,” sighed the stonecutter in
understanding as he slipped back into his
own body. “Ah, I do have power. I shape my
own happiness from my
circumstances, my abilities and from my will
- even as I must be aware of
the inter-relatedness of all power and
happiness.”
Do you ever find yourself reasoning, if only
the whole world would stop,
then I would finally have a chance at
happiness. If only the whole world and
my life would go as I think it should, then
I would be happy. If only I
were richer, or prettier, or smarter, or in
a different job or, well, you
fill in the blank. The message of our
society is that if something happened
to us on the outside, then we would be
happier on the inside.
Here are some thoughts from others on
finding happiness…
John F. Kennedy - Happiness is the full use
of your powers along lines of
excellence in a life affording scope.”
Thomas Jefferson - The happiest moments in
my life have been the few which I
have passed at home in the bosom of my
family.
Archibald Rutledge - One of the sanest,
surest, and most generous joys of
life comes from being happy over the good
fortune of others.
Helen Keller - When one door of happiness
closes another opens; often we
look so long at the closed door that we do
not see the one which has been
opened for us.”
W. Beran Wolfe - If you observe a truly
happy person, you will find them
building a boat, writing a symphony,
educating their children, growing
double dahlias in their garden, or looking
for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi
desert. They will not be searching for
happiness as if it were a shirt
button that has rolled under the table. They
will not be striving for it as
a goal in itself. They will have become
aware that they are happy in the
course of living life twenty four crowded
hours of the day.
Montesquieu - If one only wished to be
happy, this could be easily
accomplished, but we wish to be happier than
other people, and this is
always difficult, for we believe others to
be happier than they are.
Storm Jameson - Happiness comes of the
capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy
simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be
needed.
To know that others need you and to be open
to the needs of others,
experience shows knowing those and living
those needs to the fullest, may be
the door to happiness. But doing good for
others is not often simple. Doing
good often means uncovering and evoking the
good that is already there.
Doing requires more than simply knowing what
is wrong. Sometimes it calls
forth from us the hero that lives in each
one of us.
There is a story I have told here last year,
but because of its power and
authority it bears repeating. This story
takes place in Dachau, the camp of
hard labor, torture and ultimate death in
the gas chambers for most of the
Jews who were sent there. The story goes
that a certain Rabbi had asked the
prison officials if he couldn’t be given a
chance to do a sermon for the
prisoners. He was told he could.
And on the Saturday of his sermon, as he was ready to climb the scaffold to
preach, the guards stopped him and told him
he could indeed preach as they
had promised, but he could say only one
word. Laughing to themselves, they
felt they had played a pretty good trick on
him. The Rabbi, as he walked up
the steps, sadly put away the notes from the
sermon he was about to give,
and as he looked out into the hundreds of
faces before him. He took a deep
breath, and said his one word that he was
allowed, he said to those
starving, hurting, scared, anxious
people, “Others.” What the Rabbi
realized that with all that had been
stripped away from them, all they had
left was compassion for each other. If you had only a one-word sermon that
you were asked to deliver, what would your
one word be?
I guess you know by now that I am going to
tell you that it is not by owning
stuff, or making lots of money, or trying
new gadgets, or seeking new
adventures that you will find happiness. If
that were so many more people
would be supremely happy and there would be
no need for this sermon today.
I can tell you that happiness, true, deep,
lasting happiness comes from
compassion, sympathy, care and love that is
shown to others. Too bad too,
that the advertising world, the media and
others haven’t figured that out
yet. But then how would you bottle
compassion, how could you sell empathy?
Real happiness is found in compassion for
yourself and others.
We all have an equal right to happiness.
And, as we stop self-striving
happiness will take over our lives. Think of it, everyday life gives us
innumerable chances to open our hearts, if
only we would take those
opportunities.
Sergol Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist monk
living in the United States,
reminds us - be vulnerable. When reaching out to others, if your fear
touches someone’s pain then it’s pity, but
when your love touches someone’s
pain, it’s compassion. And it is that love that fuels compassion
that
brings about happiness.
__________________________________________________________
My friend Marie was a clever, intelligent,
caring individual in the middle
of her “mid-life crisis,” she liked to tell
people. She had been offered a
promotion in her job, a promotion that she
had worked for, for over 15
years. The glass ceiling was well
established in her profession. But she had
broken through. It had taken years and years
of working 15 hour days,
week-ends and holidays. She worked harder
than anyone else in her department
of her company. She had been better trained
than any other person she knew.
And she knew that the administration knew it
too. They could no longer
ignore her and her achievements and now,
finally, in this, the middle of her
life, she had reached it, the goal, the end,
nirvana, THE PROMOTION! Now,
she was going to be the boss of people who
had stepped over her and on her
for years. Now, she was going to be able to
tell people where to go, what to
do, how to prioritize, oh happy day, oh
happy day. It was all so sweet. She
kissed the bonus check, she sat on her desk
and called her best friends to
celebrate with her right after work. She just wished she was still married
so she could wave the fat new check and the
promotion in his face. Oh golly,
this felt good, Marie giggled.
As she took a cab home that night, she
didn’t feel so well. Maybe it was the
shrimp scaloppini that she had had with
friends to celebrate. As she got
closer and closer to home she realized that
she was feeling worse and worse.
Her head was hot, her stomach hurt, her eyes
ached, her heart was racing.
After she got out of the cab, she made it up
to her apartment but barely
made it into the living room. There she laid
down on the floor, with her
coat still on and her heavy briefcase,
feeling like a noose, still around
her neck. “Crucified,” she thought, “I feel
crucified.” She began to cry.
On this the happiest day of her life, she
thought, here she was laying fully
dressed on her living room floor, too sick
to even call 911.
She laid there for minutes, hours, she will
never know, but she had never
been so tired in her whole life. She
slept. She dreamt she saw her
Grandmother and her aunts, all alive all
laughing and talking and baking
something. She saw her sister, in the dream,
the sister she hadn’t had time
to visit in years. There were her growing
nieces and nephews, they looked so
real, she could almost touch them, she hardly knew them. Then, she saw
legends of people all walking toward her
holding out their hands, asking for
things, begging for help. Then she was
handing out bandages and food as fast
as she could, but they wouldn’t stop, they
just kept coming and coming,
marching, bleeding, crying, asking,
asking…Marie woke up with a start. “Oh,
my” she said holding her head, “what is
going on?”
After finally being able to stand and hang
up her coat and put away her
briefcase, she drew a hot bath and made a
pot of tea. As she sat listening
to the rain and watching the fire she had
built, Marie heard something
coming from her memory, something she had
not thought of in years and years.
She had taken a Transcendental Meditation
class in her twenties. Om Mani
Padme Hum, she heard clearly in the yogi’s
throaty chant. It was the
Buddhist mantra of compassion. Om Mani Padme
Hum. She had to smile. All
those teachings came back to her and felt to
her parched soul like the
healing rain outside must have felt to the
dry, parched ground. Healing
words continued, almost as if they came from
the fire, “As we search for
ways to be compassionate in our lives, we
realize that our separation from
others is artificial. It is only our own egotism that leads us to
define
ourselves as individuals.”
Marie went to her closet and got out her old
journal from eons ago. There,
in the front of the journal was a picture of
her, much younger, what a smile
she had on her face. She lightly touched the
cheek of the younger version of
herself. “Where has that girl gone,” she
asked herself? She turned the
yellow pages of the old book and saw where
she had written, “If we allow
life to change our way of thinking, we will
understand our essential oneness
with all people, with all things. As we are
compassionate, we begin to
uncover our own best heart, our fundamental
goodness and that is the aspect
of ourselves that we identify and encourage.
It is important that we begin
by working on ourselves, strengthening our
love and compassion, before going
on to help others. Otherwise our “help”
could ultimately be motivated by a
subtle selfishness, it could become just a
burden to us and to others.” “A
burden, a burden,” yes Marie thought, this
promotion is a burden. I have
felt burdens, untold burdens.
For one afternoon, Marie felt what it was
like to sell out. In that one
afternoon she had lost her integrity, she
found in this new position, it was
in her to act no better than those who had
hurt her for so long. She needed
to find the hero with herself. The
courageous one within her who would help
her find a new way to be a boss, a compassionate
boss, a boss without
selfishness. She understood for the first
time that that was the only way
she could be happy, truly happy in this new
position. Oh my she was so
tired.
“Maybe a few days off were in order,” Marie thought. Yes, a few days
to bring into her life a new sense of what
is truly important. It had been a
harrowing night, full of storms and demons,
ghosts and unknowns. “Funny,”
she thought, “I thought I had it all
together, and here I am falling apart.”
Marie finished her tea and rinsed out her
cup. She went to bed feeling
quiet, hummm, what was the word -
happy, yes, she felt better knowing that
happiness didn’t always consist in getting
what one wanted, or getting rid
of what can’t be got rid of - but rather -
in a different vision.
Peacefully, Marie slept.
Happiness runs, happiness runs. It runs to us and often it slips out of our
fingertips and we only have memories of what
it was like to possess it.
Karma means the ability to create and to
change. Happy karma to all of you
this week, as you go through your daily
routines or make life changing
decisions. Remember to change and create
with compassion and heroism.
Happiness is learning to mix knowledge with
a healthy dose of experience,
experimentation and contemplation. Happiness, as we reach out to others, is
the sum total of being human. Glory halleluiah!! We have only this
ordinary moment, this present time, this
day. We have no time like the
present to begin the journey of self-care,
traveling toward courageous,
confident, bold caring for others and find
ultimate happiness for ourselves.