Butterfly outside my window before the rains came.
Teardrops - 涙 from Lisa Yallamas on Vimeo.
Japanese composer Masaya Misono (雅也御園) describes his composition Teardrops as New Age Ambient Piano Music - I call it gorgeous.
I like the atmosphere of the song: 曲の空気感が好きですね。
I discovered Misono on SoundCloud:
His diagram resembled the image on the left. He asked people all over the world to rate their happiness on a scale of one to seven in a survey that also asked them what they rated more important in their lives: love or money. The happiest people rate love most important and money least important - destitute people rate friendship, family and community above money.
Funny that the shape of the diagram is like the shape of infinity with its ends missing. There's a message in this. The Brisbane Convention Centre is full of people searching for Happiness - at lunch time the restaurants and cafes and takeaways are packed with Happiness people. The sky is blue, the sun shines, the birds sing. And we spent the day in a hall talking about happiness.
On the bus home I looked out the window and watched fluffy, white, billowy clouds drift in slow motion across the top of Woolloongabba.
The other thing the sticks out about everything that was said about being happy is the need to be mindful on a "three-time scale".
Your ability to do this - to put other sentient beings before your own self-interest (and not just your loved ones) - "is an expression of what you are within".
The Dalai Lama's French interpreter, Matthieu Ricard, is a French monk. The "three-time scale" means three different time periods: a moment (short-term), a lifetime, and eternity (the environment).
Research published by National Geographic in a 2005 cover story called What's In Your Mind shows that monks and people who have meditated on compassion and cultivate mindfulness actually have better control of their brainpower - training yourself to think of others is just like learning a new language or to play an instrument. It's brain training.
HOWEVER! (And this is why it's not something everyone does.) It takes effort, practice over many years and it will not make you rich. It will however make you happy. So make up your mind already! Do you want to be happy or do you want to be rich? You can't have it all - even if you are rich. And you can be in the pink without a dime.