Now sometimes people confuse happiness with pleasure. For example, not long ago I was speaking to an Indian audience at Rajpur. I mentioned that the purpose of life was happiness, so one member of the audience said that Rajneeesh teaches that our happiest moment comes during sexual activity, so through sex one can become the happiest." The Dalai Lama laughed heartily. "He wanted to know what I thought of that idea. I answered that from my point of view, the highest happiness is when one reaches the stage of Liberation, at which there is no more suffering. That's genuine, lasting happiness. True happiness relates more to the mind and heart. Happiness that depends mainly on physical pleasure is unstable, one day it's there, the next day it may not be.

--from The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D.

When we refuse to acknowledge the presence of unwanted feelings, we are as bound to them as when we give ourselves over to them indignantly and self-righteously.

--Mark Epstein, MD

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or a willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

--Vaclav Havel

But there is a kind of doubt which must be respected for is own sake, a sort of question which does not have an answer but which is answered by long discussions about one’s feelings, moving deeper and deeper into one’s heart, uncovering all sorts of material. Somehow you end by feeling better. You are more clearly understood, you are slowly turning in the direction of change. Often these discussions, so common among women, touch upon something which is apparently unrelated but is the very secret that needed sharing, the one pressing so painfully and so invisibly upon your sadness. And although once the connection is exposed it all seems a fortunate accident, that is not the case. Rather, it is the process of quiet, loving, insistent identification, and repeated testifying of one to the other that unlocks the doors and unravels the tangles.

excerpt from: The Mother Knot, by Jane Lazarre