Venerable Lopen Lungaten Gyatso
Royal University of Bhutan
Continuity of happiness and prosperity is what every human being aspires to, irrespective of race, creed, faith, nationality, status, age and gender. However, we are not always happy and prosperous, even though each one of us pursues happiness in the way we want the best. All good and bad things that happen in this world are directly or indirectly the result of our pursuit of happiness. Our unhappiness, despite fulfillment of our desires for which we invest much of our life, is simply because we have not understood happiness in a true sense and have not understood how happiness is fulfilled. My presentation will try to define what true happiness is, and also try to look closely at the total scope of human needs and their fulfillment for continuous happiness and prosperity.
I will also try to link GNH, which aims at striking a balance between material growth and spiritual development, to happiness as a holistic and all-encompassing and enabling factor. I will highlight the indicators of happiness on which GNH primarily focuses in order to ensure the conditions of happiness and I will highlight GNH’s unique approach to understanding the needs of the body and the mind and their fulfillment for continued happiness and prosperity. Only when the needs of the body and mind are fulfilled in proportion to the degree of need and priority, can continuity of happiness be ensured; otherwise any fulfillment of the needs of the body alone will result in only momentary happiness, which is largely sensation based and is subjective. Any good feeling that one may call happiness attained through sensation is short lived and cannot be continued. This is the reason why some people feel unhappy despite the fact they have everything.
Finally, I will try to define happiness and prosperity so that everybody is at the same wavelength and then talk about the possibility of being happy and the pursuit of happiness based on right understanding and right feelings.
(Presented in the 2015 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum: Understanding Happiness, 16-17 July 2015, Le Meridien Bangkok Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies and Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University)