Skillful Contentment

Buddhism teaches contentment. But if everyone was content with their life, how would human progress ever be achieved?

Virtues taught by the Buddha are to be understood within the overall context of his path to awakening. Whenever the Buddha spoke about contentment, he paired it with an energetic quality such as diligence, persistence or industriousness. He was careful to make clear that contentment is in no way connected to laziness and is not another word for passivity.

Contentment, in its Buddhist sense, must be appreciated in the light of the central importance the Buddha gave to human effort.The Buddha roundly criticized philosophies promoting fatalism and once compared heedless people to walking corpses. Contentment does not undermine effort but ensures the best possible ground on which it can be made.

Unenlightened beings commonly feel that they are missing out, that things they don’t possess would make them happier than the things they already have. Even when desire is fulfilled, the mind sated but the sense of lack found to be unchanged by the experience, this hope survives.

Learning how to appreciate the merits of what we already possess allows us to let go of cravings, frustrations and jealousy. We set ourselves realistic goals and apply ourselves diligently to creating the causes and conditions for realization of those goals.

But in the meantime, we enjoy, as far as possible, the present situation.

For it would be a sad thing to put all our hopes for happiness into a future that never arrives.

This reflection by Ajahn Jayasaro is from the book, Without and Within, (pdf) pp. 146-147.