Smile, how simple it is..

Today, I was inspired by the teaching of an American monk named Vimala Ramsi and I would like to write it back what I've got from the talk. He taught about meditation and how simple it is based on Sutta/ the origin of Buddha's teaching.

Meditation is purely to bring happiness for us thus we always see Buddha with a little smiling expression. We always think that this life is full of pain and suffer. We feel suffer because we have desire and attachment. While we can fulfill our desire we feel suffer like sadness, disappointment and all negative feelings come up. Could you still smile when you feel suffer? Yeah, everybody could.

Smiling every day would bring happiness even though we are in a bad mood. It is part of meditation though. When you aware with your anger or sad feeling you would not take it personally and see it as "it's only..." . You will not fight back or indulge in that feelings but just see it as "Oh, it's anger.." not "I'm MAD!"..... Of course, you have to practice it over time and I believe everyone can do it. It's important to know, hear the truth and when you can just "laugh" to it, you would feel relief and happy. Knowing the truth sometimes makes you deeply painful but then when you can just laugh to it, Why should I bother? It is a good thing!

We could radiate love and kindness by smiling, it shouldnt be reflected by our face but we can smile from our heart. When we see people suffering we CAN'T help to let go their pain, because it is "theirs".. we can not do nothing and we do not have to add more people by sharing pain..(this is the ultimate point for me, because I always think we should be sad in the sad situation or meeting sad people). Well.... we do not have to laugh or crazily smile while facing terribly sad situation but instead of doing that we could radiate our love and kindness, hope that they will be happy in their life and make them smile. Believe it or not, smile expression can stimulate positive signal to our brain and bring out happiness feeling. Plus, it is contagious! when we smile to others they (of course) have to smile back so that we give them one shot happiness ;p..

Overall, keep practicing smile to everybody and spread happiness, love and kindness from our heart. When happiness is an option, why we can not choose it as part of our life, having fun with problems and hurts (this is my words) and in the end you just look back and smile to it.