The Dalai Lama has said many times that what all beings want fundamentally is to be well and happy. We did a survey at our course on Buddhism a few weeks ago when many of the students wrote in a booklet about what they hoped to get out of this course on Buddhism. Most of their answers were to do with developing inner peace and happiness.

It is not often that we meet persons who say they have developed long lasting happiness. As it is our fundamental wish to be well and happy you would think over our lifetime we would gradually get better and better at achieving that for ourselves. But it doesn't seem to work out that way for most people.

Buddhism says you can achieve long lasting happiness for sure. Ajarn Brahm whom we listened to at last week's class tells the story about moving a pile of dirt with a wheelbarrow and says later in the same talk, he has found deeper and deeper levels of happiness through practicing Buddhism. In his words he says he experiences happiness upon happiness upon happiness.

From the Buddhist perspective the key to achieving happiness is to understand the real causes of happiness. According to Buddhism it is not a mystery at all. The process of how and why our minds experience happiness and suffering is what the Buddha found out. If we clearly understand in ourselves the factors that produce our happiness then we have an opportunity to work towards increasing the happiness in our life.

Our effort to be well and happy can only produce reliable outcomes if it is based on really understanding the way the system works. Most of us have already got some of the information about how to be happy. But if we only have half the information needed it is unlikely we will become progressively happier and happier throughout our life.

So I'm going to relate a story of something that happened to me many years ago as a way of illustrating the part of the happiness system we don’t know about. This is the part Buddhism tells us we need to find out each for ourselves.

During the early 1980's I was travelling in Tunisia and I had contracted food poisoning. Basically I had to sit in bed at the equivalent of a bed and breakfast for three or four days as I was too sick to continue travelling. I managed to find a local bookstore, however virtually all the books were in French or Arabic and I could only find 5 or 6 books in English. There was only one book which appealed to me, and it was about the development of the mind and insight.

For a couple of days I just sat in bed and read this book. The book itself was not very long, perhaps 80 - 100 pages but it had one section in it that was quite unique. The author was describing the Buddhist Teaching of not-self or no self (anatta in Pali). The author described the meaning of this teaching quite clearly so I thought I had understood it, but then he wrote something like the following: "you may think you have understood what was just explained however, believe me, you don't really understand it at all. If you really understood this teaching, right now you would be happier than you have ever been. Your mind would be free and lucid and you would have a transformed view of your own existence."

I sat in bed reading this page over and over again because I thought I understood what was written, but there at the end of the page the author had made this statement - "believe me, you don't really understand it at all". Normally if we are just reading a book we would stop for a moment to puzzle over what the author had written and then continue on to read the next page. However I was stuck in bed and couldn't go anywhere for two days, so I remember reading this maybe 15 - 20 times. I really wanted to figure it out!

Then one time, in an instant, my mind new directly that the "self" I had been relying on and serving for my whole life was only a concept.

The thing about myself I had the most firm conviction was "real" actually was not real. The "self" I had always known had vanished. In its place was a luminous vibrant peaceful energy which filled my mind. My sickness completely disappeared instantly and I could get up. I was happier than I had ever been, just what the author had said would happen.

For several days I had this bright, happy, lucid view of everything. I walked around the town where I was staying in a mixture of delight, vibrancy and joy. But then gradually it began to dull and by another day or so I was back in bed with my sickness.

In Buddhism it is taught that there are two levels of reality. The first level is named conventional or deceptive reality. This is the part every one of us already has understanding about. From this level of reality comes what we know about how to create happiness for ourselves and others.

We operate successfully in the world by understanding conventional reality and building the skills and attitudes from childhood to relate to our life that way. However in Buddhism it is sometimes called deceptive reality because it appears to us that it is the only type of reality that exists.

Buddhism says there is another level of reality called absolute or ultimate reality. This is the fundamental reality which is not so much to do with what appears to us to be happening from moment to moment, but more to do with why those particular things are happening, and how they happen.

Let us explain this view of two levels of reality by using the example of the Buddha when he was young, before he set out on his path to enlightenment. His name was Siddhartha. You may know that he was a Prince who lived a wonderful life in a royal palace in Northern India. Whilst his living conditions were fabulous there was still discontent in his mind. He was looking at the life with concern because he could see the suffering other beings experienced.

He wondered about his life and the life of others. He was deeply affected by the things most people tend to accept as being just part of life. Such things as sickness and old age, sadness and sorrow and finally, death. He saw these things as fearsome burdens and difficulties which we all must face. His wife, father, children, in fact everyone he knew would have to die, and yet, at the same time everybody he knew lived their life seemingly unconcerned about these things. They were unconcerned because they believed there was nothing that could be done about it.

Siddhartha however could not be unconcerned. He wanted to find out why the world was like that. He wanted to know what was the truth about life. What was really going on. What caused these different sufferings to happen in unequal measures to individuals and was there any way that could be found which would stop suffering?

This is where we get back to the difference between conventional and ultimate truth. Siddhartha was asking questions which could not be answered by understanding conventional truth. He had reached the ceiling, the limit of what conventional truth could say about the world.

No one else knew the answers to his questions. Even though some holy men at that time, known as Siddha's or Yogi's, did know of deeper levels of truth than conventional reality, they did not know the ultimate reality. That was Siddhartha's quest.

It is history that the Buddha eventually became enlightened. What we mean by that is that he did discover what he had vowed to find out. He discovered it when his mind penetrated to another level of reality besides conventional reality. It is referred to as being an ultimate reality. An ultimate means there is nothing further, nothing higher, nothing more than this.

Not only did Buddha discover that an ultimate reality exists, he gave the world the method by which others could know it for themselves.

From his perfect knowledge of both types of reality the Buddha described the engine that powers an individuals experiences of suffering and happiness.

In ultimate reality view Buddha saw that just as there are laws of nature that operate in the physical world - the many laws we recognise through science, so there are also laws of nature which operate in the mental world and these laws together govern all the processes of life and living. In this way Buddha fully understood where and how suffering arises.

So now we come back to our own situation. The problem that arises for us and the reason we have not already developed sustained happiness in our lives is that our knowledge is missing fundamental parts of the process through which our happiness and unhappiness come to us.

So where do we start to fill in these gaps? There are approximately 40 volumes of Buddhist texts explaining what the Buddha found out, and the methods he taught his students so they could develop their minds to see ultimate reality directly for themselves. How do we get a vantage point that can help us use this knowledge to move forward in our own lives?

There is one natural law the Buddha discovered, beyond any other, which if we understand - even at an intellectual level, is a key to learning what Buddhist practice is all about. This is the Law of Kamma or the law of cause and effect.

If we can get an intellectual appreciation of ultimate reality we can begin to see the importance of applying that type of new information in our lives.

The Law of Kamma holds that every action we do intentionally, either through our body, speech or mind produces an effect that will be experienced by the doer at some time in the future. These actions we do may be:

As the Christian teachings put it "as you reap so you will sow".

The Law of Kamma applies not only to our physical world but also to our mental world and affects the destinies of all living beings.

It is described that each action we do with intention plants a seed or seeds which will fruit at some future time into an event or experience we will have.

When we actually experience the result or effect of this seed it is similar to what happens in nature. If we plant a seed of a tree it does not grow up instantaneously. It is in the soil unseen by us. When the natural conditions are right it germinates and then we see it. And also like nature, the type of seed we plant determines exactly the type of plant that grows as a result.

So it is described in Buddhism that our kammic seeds are like the fuel for all the events and experiences we have in our lives. As we live each event and each experience we use up and exhaust some of our kammic seeds.

Our morally bad or unwholesome kammic seeds are used up when we experience hardship, sorrow or difficulty, our morally good or wholesome kammic seeds are used up when we experience such things as honour, wealth and happiness.

We may know about the Buddha's teachings on kamma, but because we don't perceive the law of kamma directly as we live our life, it is very difficult to appreciate its true consequence. Unfortunately for us we cannot print a statement of the contents of our kammic savings account. We don't have the pin number.

But the Buddha and beings who have clear insight and knowledge about the way things work do have the pin number, they can see with their minds this type of kammic savings account does exist and that for all beings, from the day we are born in whatever birth we have, we are drawing on its savings in many, many areas.

As we have never been able to view the balance of our kammic savings accounts for ourself we rely on the conventional view of reality to determine our choices and decisions.

Our conventional view of reality may say that we acquire our wealth through our paid work, for example. We may feel it to be obvious that if we work more or work harder or work better increasing wealth will come. Conventionally that may be a true statement.

However Buddha says the reason why we receive wealth in the first place, no matter how we received it, comes from something totally different to what is happening when we get the money. How we get the money is we work and get paid for it, why we get the money comes from something else.

The Buddha taught that the wealth we receive comes from our own past generosity. Things we have given away in our past come back to us in the form of the wealth and goods we receive.

If work was the true cause of wealth everybody would get wealth from work all the time. That's what the word cause means - it means the results never vary. That is the proof that our paid work, whatever the amount, whatever the quality, whatever the type, is not the true cause of wealth. If something is a true cause, when the cause is made, the result must occur all the time, the same for everybody.

Many other persons in the world, who also don't know about their kammic past, work extremely hard yet live in pervading poverty. Actually they are doing much the same things as we are to get wealth, but from the absolute point of view, because of lack of past generosity, or because of other negative causes made negatively affecting the wealth of others, they have far too few kammic causes (seeds) available to them to germinate into sufficient wealth.

Since we cannot see this situation ourselves, beings such as Buddha, Jesus and other great spiritual masters advise us and teach us to do many good things in our life to accumulate the stores of good kamma we need to help secure our future happiness and wellbeing.

At some point along the Buddhist Path practitioners do see for themselves how the Law of Kamma works. At that point practicing generosity is not something they do from time to time, when it comes to mind. Their mind has the quality of generosity, and knowledge of the dependence we all have on making good actions every day of our life to ensure our kammic savings account grows larger as we get older rather than become nearly empty as we reach old age.

So from a Buddhist viewpoint we have to understand and look after the conventional reality as we already do, but the reason we are not getting great happiness and joy and everything else we may want to experience is because we are not looking after the absolute reality as well. We need to understand and look after both, especially because they operate in conjunction with each other.

Next week is an important week in our ten week course. Based upon what we have heard tonight we will provide you with a "Happiness Map" which illustrates how you can transform yourself and your life into what you want to become.

We can say this much already. Whatever causes we make over time becomes our future existence. Our future is a mixture of the causes we have already made in the past and the new ones we make from now on. This means ultimately we are our own creators.

So in Buddhism we think like this. In reality over time I will experience the kamma of my actions. Therefore by making the right actions I have the possibility of becoming what I really want to become.

This is how Buddhism empowers us to take responsibility for ourselves and gives us tools we need to be successful in what we want to achieve. We have to do so many things to look after our lives as it is, so we might as well do them in a way that makes our happiness and wellbeing increase throughout our life.