If we are having trouble discovering happiness, the principal reason is the same as any instance where we are having trouble finding something. Everything that we can’t find is lost for the same reason: we’re looking for it in the wrong place.
We have to ask ourselves, where am I looking for happiness? It’s very important to be deliberate about that question. The Buddha’s miraculous discovery was that happiness does not exist in some place that is external to the monotony, routine and responsibilities of our daily lives. On the contrary, these features of life are precisely where satisfaction is to be obtained.
There are very few lives being lived, especially in the west, of which there is not someone who is jealous. If your life is good enough for someone to be jealous of, surely it’s good enough for you to be happy. This is a definitive illustration of the fact that the state of our lives is not really the problem. The problem is that we are not paying attention to the lives we lead.
The solution to our problems, generally, is to train ourselves to pay attention on a regular basis to the kind of life that we are living. This means knowing what we’re doing on a moment to moment basis but it also means becoming more aware of the overall features of our lives and how those fit into the context of the world around us.
These are the various kinds of present moment awareness that we should look to so that they can lead us away from suffering and towards greater happiness and satisfaction.