Extractos

Chapter 2. We Are the Authors of Every Next Moment.All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. -the Dhammapada What has gone before in your life has most probably convinced you, first, that the statement "Everything that happens to me is the best possible thing that can happen to me" is not true and cannot be true and, second, that a book based in part on that premise is not going to do you much good. It may seem futile to even attempt to put that to the test. But this is a new day. We have begun a new century and a new millennium, and you may discover in reading this book that it is your time to take on a new belief that will bless your life from this time onward. We are the authors of every next moment. We are powerful beings, creating our futures with our thoughts and actions. We are the mechanism by which life is controlled, and we control the events in our life by our personal philosophy, which determines how we respond to those events. Each of us has a personal philosophy, but few of us have defined what it is. Although you may have never sat down and defined what your philosophy is, it is fully operative and working in your life at all times. It deals with what you believe about the world in which you live, about its people and events, about how events and circumstances affect you, and about how you affect them. If you were asked about your philosophy of life in general, you might say, "Life is great, good things happen to me, I'm a lucky person, and I believe the world is a wonderful place with wonderful people in it." Or you might say just the opposite: "I'm unlucky, bad things happen to me, the world isn't a very nice place, people take advantage of me, and they're just out for what they can get." You might believe in Murphy's law-"If anything can go wrong, it will." Many people say that bad accidents happen, that unfairness is not only possible but likely. They say that real happiness is hard to come by and usually short-lived, that we come into the world, live, and die and what we experience in between is mostlya struggle and a continual compromise between what we want and what we get. Because that is what people have generally believed, their actions have been based on that belief and, as a result of natural law, they have brought about that end. Then they have said, "I told you so." Excerpted from Zen and the Art of Happiness by Chris Prentiss All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.