"Release the Cows!"

 

Contentment

“Happiness is impermanent, like everything else. In order for happiness to be extended and renewed, you have to learn how to feed your happiness. Nothing can survive without food, including happiness; your happiness can die if you don’t know how to nourish it.”

Thick Nhat Hanh (No Mud, No Lotus, p. 57; Parallax Press, 2014)

          A few days ago, I wrote about joy being a moment and not a permanent state. In No Mud, No Lotus, Thich Nhat Hanh tells us how to extend our happiness. The first step, he says, is identifying all the things that bind us. Many of those things—career, wealth, popularity—are not crucial to one’s happiness, but we have convinced ourselves that they are. Such beliefs keep us in a perpetual state of fear—fear of not achieving whatever we’ve told ourselves is essential. In Buddhist terms, this is attachment to worldliness and will only be an obstacle to joy.

          Step two is “releasing your cows.” (p.58) That is, losing your attachment to any of the narrow ideas we have about what is necessary for us to feel happy. Hanh tells a story of a man who comes to the Buddha’s place of meditation and asks whether those gathered have seen his cows. The cows were grazing in his fields, but now they are gone, and he can’t find them. The man says, “Now I’ve lost everything! I feel like killing myself!” This man believes that without his cows, his life is worthless. The Buddha teaches that we would all be happier without any cows to lose—in other words, our misconceptions about what is necessary for happiness.

Hanh says, “a whole country can be caught up in a single cow.” (p.59) America’s attachment to national power and glory are simply unfounded and non-essential. Achieving “super-power status” is not likely to bring us happiness. Believing that we must be “the best,” or “the greatest,” is a ridiculous cow. Our job is to release it.

Instead of assigning conditions for happiness, we could plant seeds of joy. Then, we could nourish them with plenty of nutrients like acceptance, appreciation, gratitude, and generosity. Pretty soon we would have a bumper crop of happiness that we could share with friends and strangers alike. Happiness, individually or collectively, is not bound by conditions. It's a free agent that comes when and where it’s welcome, and brings along its best friend, contentment. And, that's as good as it gets.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane