Happiness is a skill, emotional balance is a skill, compassion and altruism are skills, and like any skill they need to be developed. That's what education is about.
By breaking down our sense of self-importance, all we lose is a parasite that has long infected our minds. What we gain in return is freedom, openness of mind, spontaneity, simplicity, altruism: all qualities inherent in happiness.
Happiness is the main object of our aspirations, whatever name we give to it: fulfilment, deep satisfaction, serenity, accomplishment, wisdom, fortune, joy or inner peace, and however we try to seek it: creativity, justice, altruism, striving, completion of a plan or a piece of work.
If you don't have altruism, inner strength, inner peace, attention, then it's a trauma. It makes a difficult life for you and for others.
When you engage in compassion, and you hear a distressing sound, like someone calling for help, there is an activation in an area of the brain called the insular, which has to do with empathy and altruism, that is vastly more activated than in non-meditators.
Meditation is about cultivating constructive emotions, like altruism, compassion.
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