"Our attempts to rearrange the externals of our lives – money, relationships, careers – can only ever result in temporary satisfaction."

If, like me, you have a tendency to take yourself altogether too seriously, beating yourself up when things don't go according to plan; if you feel your chances of happiness are undermined by circumstances beyond your control; if you would like to be a kinder, more generous person, but your heart has been cauterized by hurt and fear; if you would, quite simply, like to experience a sense of meaning beyond "another day, another dollar," you may well find in Buddhism practices which are truly transforming.

Rearranging not the externals, but the internals

What, you might ask, can a tradition developed in a remote oriental fiefdom two and a half thousand years ago possibly teach Westerners in the twenty-first century about happiness?

One of the most amazing paradoxes of all is that the Tibetan Buddhist approach could have been developed with today's busy Western world specifically in mind. In the finest empirical form, it presents an approach to the human condition based on an unflinching analysis of fact. It provides tried and tested practices set out in clearly defined steps to lead us from our current mental state to greater happiness and, ultimately, enlightenment.

From the Buddhist viewpoint, our attempts to rearrange the externals of our lives – money, relationships, careers – can only ever result in temporary satisfaction, the reason being that all such attempts fail to take into account the only constant in life: change. Even if we do get things the way we want them for a while, inevitably something will come along to upset our plans.
This doesn't mean we should give up on happiness but rather that we should adopt a more effective strategy to reach that state. The Buddhist sage Shantideva once gave an eloquent analogy:

Where would I possibly find enough leather
With which to cover the surface of the earth?
But wearing leather just on the soles of my shoes
Is equivalent to covering the earth with it.

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