The Buddhist approach to happiness, according to Pico Iyer

clipped from happydays.blogs.nytimes.com We can’t change the world except insofar as we change the way we look at the world — and, in fact, any one of us can make that change, in any direction, at any moment. You make your way to happiness not by fretting about it or trafficking in New Age affirmations, but simply by finding the cause of your suffering, and then attending to it, as any doctor (of mind or body) might do. Think in terms of enemies, he suggests, and the only loser is yourself. Happiness is not pleasure, they know, and unhappiness, as the Buddhists say, is not the same as suffering. Suffering — in the sense of old age, sickness and death — is the law of life; unhappiness is just the position we choose — or can not choose — to bring to it. True happiness, in that sense, doesn’t mean trying to acquire things, so much as letting go of things (our illusions and attachments).