From Positive Thoughts, June 17, 2015

Contentment is a balm, satisfaction is a friendly embrace, but happiness is a warm glow and tingle that arise from the health of both mind and body.

We all want to be happy, yet how many of us can with certainty declare that we are?  We all have little happiness that raise us up out of the mire of our daily struggles.  Perhaps we should be content with these small gifts, for the quality of perfect happiness is an uncommon state.

This little caution is a warning to those whose life is a perpetual search for the perfect happiness–a holy grail that requires an immense effort.  It is not found in a clean bathroom, although the TV commercials want us to think so.  Nor is it found in money or health or friends or lovers or travel or small packages.  These may lead to small happiness, and blessings on them all.

Perfect happiness is a well-regulated hierarchy of spirit, mind, and body.  The order is important, and anything that disturbs that order ruffles the surface of the lake of happiness.  Unregulated desire, as the Buddha knew so well, is a heavy stone dropped into the lake; equally disturbing is the tendency to forget about the spirit and to concentrate exclusively on the mind or the body.  Perfect happiness is not to be found in the leaps of aerobic movement nor in the dense concentration of scholarly research.

Yet we must not despair.  Perfect happiness is our birthright–it is only that we must work at it.

Edward J. Lavin from his book Life Meditations