The Secret to Happiness

I’ve been slowly working my way through a book by Thich Nhat Hahn titled

The Art of power.
I’m in search of that occasionally or often times elusive inner peace and happiness.
I know it needs to come from within, that is where I found it before.
Happiness can’t be handed to me, purchased for me, or prayed over me.
I have to re-discover and uncover its secret all on my own.

I am only able to absorb this book a chapter or two at a time.
Today I read the 2 chapters; Getting What We Really Want and The Secret to Happiness.

A number of concepts and ideas are rolling around in my head.  I want to spend more time with the simplicity of, 

“Your action, what you do, depends on who you are.  The quality of your action depends on the quality of your being… To make another person happy you have to be happy yourself.  So there is a link between doing and being.  If you don’t succeed in being, you can’t succeed in doing. 

Happiness becomes possible when we realize we have a path, when we know where we are going. If you don’t have the impression that you are on the right path, if you don’t know where you are going, you suffer, you feel lost and confused.  Happiness is feeling that you are on the right path every moment.  You don’t need to arrive at the end of the path to be happy.  You are happy right here and right now.  

…  When you have a path and you enjoy every step on your path, you are already someone.  You don’t need to become someone else.  You already are what you want to become, practicing nonaction, the art of being. 

… When we pursue individual happiness, our satisfaction is always ultimately fleeting, because individual happiness is not possible.  Our happiness, our existence, is dependent on the existence and happiness of everyone and everything else “

Since quitting my job in December, well, no that isn’t true…
Since leaving my job in the summer of 2006 I have been wandering and wondering if I was on the ‘right path’.
My spirit has felt lost.
I have been confused.

I am hoping I am on the right path now.
I believe I am on the right path now.
I hope this path is a path of happiness for everyone and everything else.

Because if it is, then I too will find the happiness I have been searching for.