Santa Clara Meditation Happiness Matters – Where can we find happiness?
Everyone wants to be happy in life and each person does many things to become happy. Some people look for it in promotion, some try to find it by studying, some look for it in a good spouse, and some look for it in wealth. I also tried to look for happiness in those things because that’s how I was taught, and I believed the happiness really did exist in those things.
I was born in Korea. Korean society is extremely competitive, especially regarding education. I went to school in Seoul, the capital city of Korea, and something that I was always told from when I was little was that I should study hard. That I should study hard and go to a good college, and then you’ll get a good job, which will give me a lot of money, which will allow me to have a better wife and make a happy family. At that time, although I agreed with what I was told, I always had a question about it on my mind.
People walking around on the streets of Seoul did not look happy at all. They were always so busy as if being chased by something and no one had a smile on their faces. I used to be a happy boy who laughed a lot when I was younger, but as I went into teenage and hit puberty, I started losing smile. My family, the society, and the entire country forced me to push aside every other talent that I had and to only focus on school study. I was a confused teenager. They say you have to live diligently, that you will become happy later if you study hard, but on the other hand, what’s the point of all this if I’m not happy right now? I wondered. And not everyone had the talent for studies at school. I myself wasn’t too talented either. I failed to get admitted to the college that I wanted to go two times, and I couldn’t tell anyone about it because I was so ashamed of it. My father had tried to get admitted to the top college in Korea, but he failed as well after two attempts. He never liked to talk about it, and I naturally took it as something to be deeply ashamed of and feel inferior – the fact that I wasn’t the brightest at school. And then, when I was about 20, I came across meditation. As I meditated, I was able to calmly reflect on how I’ve lived my life until now.
I was constantly being compared to someone else or I was comparing myself with others. I was thrilled when I did something right, but at the same time I felt like I was always being chased by someone. And since there was so much comparing going on in my life, I started despising being compared to others from certain point. Happiness to me was something that I could only get when I achieved something. But then my achievements had to be compared with someone else’s achievement again, so that happiness didn’t last long and kept accumulating in my mind as inferiority again and again.
Naturally, my mind drifted toward negativity. That negative mind made me sick, and I was sick for 3 months in summer. Before meditation, I couldn’t figure out the reason why I was so sick. Through the meditation I reflected on my life, and then I realized that I have caused all of this misfortune for myself. And then, I started looking back on the countless minds that I’ve accumulated in life and started to discard them. The more hours and days I put into meditation, the more I started noticing changes in myself. My mind started feeling lighter, and my sick body started regaining energy. My mind was changing from being negative to being positive. And then I realized that the happiness that I’ve been after until now, the happiness that comes from achieving or obtaining something was nothing but a mere illusion, like a dream. The true happiness was inside of me all along.
If I didn’t do meditation, if I didn’t empty my mind, I would have been chasing after the illusionary happiness forever. Happiness was inside of me. When I sincerely looked back on my mind and emptied it, the true happiness that has been there all along was revealed from within my mind. It’s been 20 years since I first started doing meditation. Now I’m living my life being grateful and happy every single day.
If you’d like to know more about where to find happiness, please click on this video.
by Eugene Jeong
