How do you choose happiness?

GEN Kelsang Dornying moved from Britain to Australia after a corporate career, looking to escape greed, to let go of anxieties and unhappiness, and find joy in the sun.

“It’s a cool way of life, but what I soon discovered was that even though the weather was better, I was still there, and there were just human problems, with sunshine,” he said.

“I decided to look inside to find some answers and became interested in meditation. I began to understand if I can be at peace, then I can develop the state of mind that will provide me with happiness in all that I do.”

More than 20 years ago, he became interested in Buddhism, and now a monk, he’s the resident teacher of the Kadampa Meditation Centre in the Dandenong Ranges.

He spends his days preparing, studying, and meditating, and is set to share his unique perspective with locals during a public talk at the Ballaarat Mechanics Institute on Wednesday, 1 February from 7.30pm.

Choosing happiness, and how to be truly happy in the mind, will be the focus of the presentation.

“Happiness can be defined as the experience of pleasant mental feelings,” he said. “If people try to create pleasant mental feelings by chasing external things, or eating chocolate, they’ll bypass happiness and start to feel sick.

“We don’t feel so good, and we immediately move onto something else, like maybe a cup of tea or glass of wine.

“When we do these things, we’re putting off our happiness because until we know how to make ourselves feel good inside in our mind, none of these things are going to work.

“It’s a bit like chasing mirages. We deeply long to be happy, but our efforts to find happiness are deceiving us.”

Gen Dornying said his aim is to educate people about methods they can use to feel mentally great, not just in the short term, but throughout their life.

“The main cause of these nice feelings is mental peace, and there are ways of thinking, in which meditation is a huge tool in that, that I’ll be explaining on the night, that cause our mind to generate pleasant feelings, a.k.a. happiness,” he said.

“I won’t be saying, stop having chocolate, delicious meals and holidays, quite the opposite. I want to explain how to make these things work.

“There’s a difference between trying to get happiness from a cup of coffee and being a happy person enjoying a cup of coffee.”

Visit bit.ly/3Wgiyw8 to book.