July 26, 2026
Dharma Message

We all want to be happy and we try to hold on to that stage as long as we can. According to the dictionary, “happy” is a feeling or a show of pleasure and contentment or joy. It is characterized by such. We have the satisfied feeling that something is right or has been done right. We welcome this feeling. Other words to describe this “happy” is cheerful, a state of peaceful happiness or content, delight, ecstatic, elation, and/or joy.

We desire this state of joy, peace and harmony. We want it to be permanent. Yet, we have come to understand that everything changes and nothing stays the same. We can try and try to maintain this happy stage, but there will always be something or someone who will come along and turn our world upside down.

However, there are some positive aspects to these upsets. We learn that no matter how hard we try, this stage of happy will not last forever. Yet, without experiencing the opposite of happy, how do we know what happy is. This is part of life, to learn, think and be grateful and thankful for those periods of happy, as well as those stages of sadness and suffering. We learn to deal with this unhappy stage with a better understanding and maybe with a different view of what our greed, anger, ignorance and ego is doing to our true self. We will again achieve bits of this stage of happy, but maybe the next phase will be with more appreciation and gratitude.

I bake a lot and when I am baking, I am happy. But my baked goods come out different each time. No matter if I use the same technique and same ingredients, the goodies are different from the batch before. Possibly due to weather or conditions, the goodies come out different. I become sad, yet there is a positive side. I learn from this sadness and what I can do differently the next time. My happy comes from seeing others enjoy the results and in a moment…poof, that stage is over. But at least for that moment, it is a happy time.

Although we flood our lives with material things that may help to create a little stage of happy, it is only temporary. No matter how hard we try to get back this happy, we can only gain a small part. The world, nature and life are always changing and it is difficult to gain this stage of happy again.

We have our Namu Amida Butsu/Nembutsu to “lighten our heavy hearts” when we want that stage of happy again. But we tend to think the opposite. We believe that “things” will bring about our happy stage. Yet, the novelty soon wanes and we begin yet another search for things that will bring about this stage. How much desire do we have to have to make us happy?

Questions to ponder are: can we ever go back to that level of happy? What truly makes us happy? Our happy stage is always in our hearts and minds and in our Namu Amida Butsu.

Gassho,
Rev. Seijo Naomi Nakano