Meditation gives contentment and contentment builds happiness

May 23

From facebook - a monk
All craving is reaching out trying to achieve happiness. “If I can just get this one more thing, then I’ll be happy. If I can just get that car, then I’ll be happy. If I can just get that beautiful girl, then I’ll be happy. If I can just get my sickness healed, then I’ll be happy. If I can just get my meditation correct, then I’ll be happy.” It’s always craving and it’s always happiness in the future. It’s the same thing that motivates some people to just keep going to church or to the temple, to ensure they’ll go to heaven. It’s just another form of craving that’s all.

We think that all we need is to satisfy just one more craving, “I’ll just get this one more thing, and then I’ll let go” – but of course it never works that way. There is always one more thing afterwards: another one more thing and one more thing, until you die, and after death, one more thing.

There has to be a stopping, a letting go now, a time to say ‘no more craving’. What I’ve got now is enough, my mind is good enough and my body is good enough. It doesn’t matter how old and sick it is, my body is good enough.The thought that ‘this is not enough’ is a delusion. It’s craving. We know it’s delusion because it has kept us going for so many lifetimes. It’s kept us going for the last twenty-four hours. We’re always doing something or else we want something more, we’re never standing still. If we realize that this is good enough and we trust in that one hundred percent, we discover that this really is good enough, and we have as much as we’ll ever need. We stop wanting more. We stop craving. When we stop craving, we stop thinking and we stop moving.

When we stop moving, we’re in the present moment, we’re silent. The longer we keep that stillness the more chance contentment has to build up. We realize that all the jewels and wealth in the world are right here. All the bliss and happiness we could ever want are right in this moment, and we may even start crying with happiness. We realize we had it all along, but we always throw away the jewel of Nirvana for something else.
We always want something else. But if we just stop, be empty and be still, we will find out that contentment is happiness. The more contentment we have the more happiness we build up.

Happiness upon happiness upon happiness! If you do it this way, I’ll guarantee that there is so much happiness you won’t know how you will be able to take anymore. You get more bliss, more sheer pleasure out of meditation than you do from anything else. That’s my experience anyway. We get that, just by stopping, by letting go.

The pleasures of deep meditation, stillness, letting go, giving up, renouncing; stopping, these are all words referring to the same thing: emptying – going to that emptiness, just fathering that emptiness, and seeing it grow like a beautiful lotus flower.

This is the opposite of suffering. This is freedom, vimutti. This is happiness; the best happiness we’ve ever had. This happiness is what keeps me going as a monk, the serenity, the peace, the letting go. That freedom is what is behind the smile and the peace of all the great mystics, and the great Arahants in the world. It’s the serenity, the peace, and the understanding of what happiness is. That’s the Dhamma being taught to you. It is insight, vipassana, seeing the Buddha’s teaching. It’s seeing the teaching that the Buddha saw under the Bodhi tree. That, which is the truth of happiness and suffering, you’re discovering it for yourself in your letting go. If you repeat that experience as much as you can, you’ll be undermining the illusion which keeps you running backwards and forwards, both in this world and between worlds.
We’re finally finding out what real happiness is and we’re ending suffering. This is something that we can experience for ourselves, that we can appreciate for ourselves

Soul
Today. I can identify with this.
When I was doing my breathing meditation..just contentment. don't want to move, don't want to do anything else.
Now my favourite meditation is just sitting and watching my breathe. So much contentment and no doing at all.
This feeling of contentment is similar to the quiet time after the end of practices.

My card for today in Saturn
My Daily Card
The Four of Spades
The Four of Spades is a card of satisfaction and stability in both health, work and all affairs in general. Recovery from illness and any work-related problems can be expected under this influence. It can mean working hard and steadily, but usually this is a welcome situation, making us feel more secure and stable in our lives.
Essentially, the Four of Spades is the strongest card of security and foundation in our life.When it shows up in our reading, we will always achieve this kind of satisfaction.