What would you think if someone told you the key to happiness is to forget your own happiness?

The things we typically seek for happiness—a new car, big tax refund, losing 10 lbs, or maybe a vacation—can be great but are superficial and fleeting. Or perhaps even motivated by envy—the grass is always greener on the other side. We’re always searching for our next “fix.” How do we sustain happiness in an impermanent world?

What I have learned in Buddhism is that happiness is neither a tally of the things we wanted and obtained, a score of the highs and lows each day, nor a one-person show. According to Dr. Nobuo Haneda in his essay, “What is ‘Happiness’ in Buddhism”, happiness happens when you encounter something more powerful than yourself and your attainment of desires—when you are able to forget yourself and your happiness. 

Forgetting the self may seem like the opposite way to be happy. After all, if we think of happiness as a scorecard, forgetting the self may feel like missing out points. To explain, Dr. Haneda provides a quote from Zen master Dogen, “Studying Buddhism means studying the self. Studying the self means forgetting the self. Forgetting the self means being attained by the spirit that is one with tens of thousands of dharmas.”

In his essay, Dr. Haneda summarized Dharmakara’s vows by saying the following: “If all sentient beings are not liberated, I will not attain liberation.” It is the idea of thinking and caring for others as an essential element of liberation and leaving a self-centered world. This is what brings happiness.

This can be difficult to comprehend, but I find resonance in a poem by Mary Oliver, called “To Begin With, Sweet Grass.” She ends her poem with this reflection:

What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.

Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.

That was many years ago.

Since then I have gone out from my confinements,

though with difficulty.

I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.

I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.

They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment

somehow or another).

And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.

I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.

I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,

I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?

Love yourself.  Then forget it.  Then, love the world.