Mipham Rinpoche's Advice on Happiness, p3

Having fame or wealth or popularity, none of these things are as important as the reliable and excellent friends that we can have. Fame and wealth and so on, they won't last. They are not dependable. They will not bring us happiness. Because of the people in my life, friends that I can rely on, I am able to have happiness and to feel stability. Because of that, I can practice. I can do my Dharma practice without obstacles, without difficulty. It's a very excellent support for the spiritual life to have these types of friends in our lives.

In order to appreciate these types of people, we should also look at the opposite. What is the opposite? Consider people who embody the opposite qualities, who are not at ease, who are not dependable -- what does that do for us? How does that make us feel? What are the results or fruition of such relationships? Once we look at the difference, then we can appreciate the positive people in our lives and how they support us, how they support our happiness as well as our spiritual practice.

Accumulation of merit

Mipham Rinpoche said that we should put great amounts of effort into the accumulation of merit and to accumulating positive actions in our lives. This is also a very important aspect of finding happiness, walking the pathway of happiness: the accumulation of merit and virtuous actions. Please do those accumulations, relying upon excellent people in our lives, excellent friends and excellent teachers. Rely upon them and look to them for guidance, that is also a very important part of approaching happiness.

Another important part of accumulating virtue is in performing positive actions and wishing to benefit others, to engage in positivity. This in itself is so very powerful. To have a thought that "I'm going to listen to the Dharma teachings in order to benefit all sentient beings," to have that thought arise or to actively bring that thought forth, then later in the day we can think, "Wow, I had this wonderful thought." Simply the fact of recognizing, and recognizing that we formulated that thought -- that itself can bring us happiness. Simply to recognize the positivity of that thought can bring happiness to us. Benefiting others in every way we can, thinking about others and genuinely wishing, wishing for their benefit, that can bring us happiness too. Wishing to benefit others, performing virtue, and relying upon positive friends and influences in our lives: all of these together make a more complete picture of what the Dharma is, and what it means to walk on the path of Dharma.

The accumulation of virtue, the accumulation of merit, this is an important factor in our experience of happiness, the root of happiness. It's important to gain a direct experience. We will, through our practice, gain experience, and the direct experience is crucial. When it comes to virtue and merit, sometimes it can feel very difficult, that we are engaging in difficulty and hardship, and it makes our life more difficult, physically or emotionally. It can seem to be a difficult path, a hardship for us. However, though it may be difficult at first, it will result in happiness. Let's take physical exercise as a metaphor: Sometimes when we're training physically, at first it can be a hardship, but in the end we feel better: our bodies feel better, the effort and hardship result in happiness. The same is true for performing virtuous actions. Sometimes it's difficult, but it results in happiness. And meditation is also like this. When we're meditating, sometimes it's very difficult to meditate, to put effort into that. But it results in a very stable mind, a happy mind.

The opposite is true for non virtue. Non virtue is something that can be very easy at first. It can bring us some kind of satisfaction in the beginning, but the result is going to be unhappiness. It's the opposite of virtue. Virtue can be difficult at first before it brings happiness, whereas non virtue is easier at first, but in the end it brings suffering. You can look into the opposite cases and see that the result then is suffering; it's useful to look at the opposites.

It's important to keep this in mind, that physical exercise or meditation or doing positive actions can be very difficult when we first begin. It can feel like something that's hard to do. It's important to remember at these times that, if we don't do these things, that will also make things difficult. So we should instead try to do difficult things that will result in virtue rather than completely abandoning all virtue, which will in the long run also bring us hardship. By remembering this, we'll increase our appetite for doing virtuous things, we'll get a taste of what it's like to accumulate merit and increase our appetite for accumulating merit and positive actions.

Contentment and appreciation

The great Mipham Gyamtso Rinpoche also said that contentment or satisfaction is very important. It is like being endowed with wealth when you have the quality of being content or satisfied. To recognize what you have right now, to recognize and to appreciate what you have, simply recognizing it itself is a way to to create happiness. When your sense of satisfaction with what you have in your life is stable, then you will experience happiness. Let's consider what happens when we are not content, when we don't have that stable kind of sense of satisfaction: we're always looking then to others, wanting to be like others and wanting what others have. We are envious of what other people have and we don't appreciate our own riches.

Let's use me as an example: right now, I have my hands, my physical body is intact. I have a house. I have eyes, I can see, I can hear -- I should really take a moment to appreciate these things, to recognize that I have all these things and just how wonderful that is, and then recognize that this comes about through merit. This comes about through the accumulation of positive merit.

To recognize and appreciate all of these things we have, it's such an important wealth that we can have right now. Otherwise, we look at things as very ordinary: this is just the way things are, it's business as usual. This house, we take it for granted -- the country we live in, our family members, we take those for granted if we don't actually appreciate them. We can never experience happiness if we can't appreciate those things that we have right now that are actually responsible for bringing us happiness. We will always covet the things that others have, rather than appreciating what is here with us right now. It's important to recognize those things that we do have, to have satisfaction and contentment and to appreciate and to recognize and feel gratitude for those things. The inability to do that directly causes us suffering. This is why Mipham Gyamtso Rinpoche said that to have satisfaction, to have contentment, is a wealth in itself. Contentment is endowed with richness.

Freedom

When we have satisfaction or contentment, we will experience happiness. The other effect of being content and having satisfaction is that we will have fewer desires. Our mind will not constantly be filled with craving and desire for other things because we will have an appreciation for what we already have. From an absence of desire for things that we don't have, then our mind is able to experience freedom or independence. The word is rang wang (རང་དབང) in Tibetan: it's freedom or independence or autonomy. This means you are no longer doing the bidding of your desires. You're no longer a servant to your desires, just doing whatever your desires are telling you to do. Instead, you have freedom. You have independence from that. And independence or freedom is something that we in this society place a great importance on, right? To be free, to have independence -- it's also true for the mind, it's very important to let the mind experience freedom and independence as well. This is what contentment can bring. It can bring you freedom or independence, autonomy from being the servant of desires.

This is why we recite the prayer, The Great Clouds of Blessings, sometimes called the Wangdu Sol Deb. This is a magnetizing prayer, it lets us supplicate the wisdom deities, the magnetizing deities to grant us blessings so that we are no longer the servant of our desires and our negative emotions, but instead experience freedom and autonomy. This is what contentment can bring us too.

— Chakung Jigme Wangdrak Rinpoche, September 3, 2022