The Happiness Chapter

Five sessions into our Dhammapada series, we arrive at the theme of happiness. The teachings are so often heard as suffering, suffering, suffering… and yet there really is a whole chapter on happiness.

Ah, so happily we live, without ambition among those with ambition.

(verse 199, trans. Gil Fronsdal)

Now don’t be mistaken — this is not about withdrawing from the world. We are part of this ecosystem, and we are participating.

We simply stop letting its agitations reproduce inside us.

Someone else’s anger in the office does not have to become our anger.

A consumer culture repeating “more, more, more” does not have to turn into a sense of lacking within us.

The text tells us that victory gives birth to hate, that the defeated sleep in anguish, and that those who give up both sleep happily.

Modern life is very much organised around a scoreboard — who performed better, whose opinion won, who was right.

There is suffering on both sides of that board, and this includes the winning side, when we hold tightly to what we win.

There is nothing wrong with winning, of course, and nothing wrong with aspiration; in fact, our practice carries one of the largest aspirations of all — the complete freedom from suffering.

The invitation is a little quieter:

Can I give myself wholeheartedly to something without making winning the condition for my peace?

With this, our understanding of happiness moves from a merely pleasurable experience to freedom from what we are bound to or compelled by.

Happiness comes from what we choose to put down, not what we acquire or add to our lives.

So this week, before reaching for one more thing, let us notice what is already present, and see that just being here, alive and breathing, is perhaps enough.

At Take A Pause Live on Insight Timer over 22-23 August 2026, we cultivated a sense of enough-ness with a body awareness meditation. We then listened to the poem, So Much Happiness, by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Tap Play to Practice Together:

1–5 October 2026 · Siem Reap, Cambodia

with Erin Lee

*Early bird rate available

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