by Jerome Stone

Created on: September 13, 2009   Last Updated: September 17, 2009

Where is the happiness that exists outside of oneself? Is it in success and not in failure? Is it in wealth and not poverty? Is it in beauty and not ugliness? If happiness were an inherently existing quality to be found in any of these outer phenomena, then there would be more happy business people in the world and there wouldn't be so many happy and content people working for others. There would be more happiness in the community of runway models and less happiness in the mere mortals of everyday people. Such is not the case. There is no happiness to be found outside of oneself. Granted, to a certain extent, external circumstances can provide the means to a happy state of mind. However, ultimately when the external circumstances change, when one's stuff falls apart and breaks, one's good looks or good health collide with impermanence and change, then unless one has found the locus of happiness internally, the external circumstance that brought happiness in the first place become a source of suffering of the mind instead.

I'm happy when I get a new car; is that kind of happiness real happiness? No, because my car ends up in the shop, or I end up in a car collision. All of a sudden, the car is the source of some real suffering. How about my success in obtaining a great paying job in a corporate setting? Great perks, health-care benefits, stock options and then the company tanks! Happy now? No.

Few truly successful people ascribe their happiness to what they own, or to what they've done, built, sold or invented. The common thread of their happiness always comes back to how they felt while they were doing what they were doing, a sense of purpose in being part of something larger than themselves, whether that's God, Buddha-nature, the environment or nature, and knowing that what they did somehow helped others.

Where is this internal happiness and how does it relate to our success in life? Based on the premise that happiness can be found nowhere but within, one could say that success is the result of finding the ground of one's being, the ground of one's happiness within. Success is the ability to remain unperturbed in the face of whatever arises, and to still have a font of contentment bubbling away within one's heart. And happiness might then be the knowledge that one has that ability, the ability to find success in whatever one does, to feel content with what one has, and to know, truly know, that no external success or external event, will make one truly happy or successful.

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