An example of our misguided search for happiness might be something like a story that I’ve heard here more than once with students who come to me for consultation or just to talk to me for awhile. They say well I don’t know what to do about my tendencies in, perhaps, relationships. In relationships it seems that I act a certain habitual way. It seems that I become attracted to people of the opposite sex who are not appropriate for me. They are not compatible with me. And under those circumstances, for a period of time, I generally feel a great attraction and then ultimately become very unhappy. Or perhaps in a relationship I cannot assert myself. I habitually act like an underdog or an underling, and I cannot achieve any real happiness in relationships. Or perhaps in relationships I habitually come on strong in the beginning and then after awhile I turn off and feel very much out of touch with the meaning of the relationship.
Whatever it is, I’ve had many students, many times during the course of my speaking with students, students will come to me I don’t understand this habitual tendency that I have. I don’t understand how it is that I continually engage in the same patterns. We all understand patterns. We all have patterns within our lives. And we don’t understand why it is that we often perpetuate patterns that bring us unhappiness, patterns that have never worked out before. So why should they this time? They continually bring us some disappointment. Why is it that we do that? Perhaps we think that maybe we don’t really want to be happy.
I don’t think that’s the case. According to the Buddha’s teaching, everyone wishes to be happy. Across the board, everyone wishes to be happy. But we all have these inner messages that we’re playing to ourselves. Like perhaps we think we’ll be the happiest if we’re unhappy, because we deserve to be unhappy in some strange way. Or perhaps we think that we’ll be the happiest if we can act unhappy so that others will comfort us, and that’s really want we want. Or perhaps we feel that if we act misguided enough, eventually someone will come forth with the answer for us. We have all kinds of hidden inner agendas that we play over and over again. And we should never mistake that the one thing we all have in common, no matter what our condition is, and no matter what our habits are, is that we wish to be happy. And we wish it deeply. We wish it very much.
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