There is often a bright side to difficult situations. One of our teachers Ven. Ofer Adi from Israel says, “there are no problems, only situations.” What he means is that when we describe a situation as a problem we defeated ourselves because we have already made a judgement that it is only bad.

However, it is rarely the case that a situation is all bad or all good. The degree to which we perceive them as good or bad has more to do with tendencies of seeing the world that we’ve adopted over the years.

In other words, pessimism and optimism are choices that we make by how we decide to train the mind. When we train the mind with insight meditation, we are training the mind to accept whatever comes for what it truly is, an ever changing mix of positive, negative and neutral. That acceptance, leads to a more relaxed peace of mind and a real happiness that does not depend on conditions.

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(3) Choose Hapiness, B. Happiness