Sukha – the happiness that depends on attitude.

The last time I went to a cinema that wasn't an art house cinema was before Covid. I also remember we watched Avengers: Endgame. Then came the pandemic, and with it a quieter, more introspective period. This was the time when I started to delve deeper into Buddhism. Not loudly, not spectacularly, just slowly, step by step, transforming everything I thought about the world and myself.

Five years looking back is a long time, and sometimes I feel like we've lived dozens of lives in those five years. Thanks to these five years, we chose a film inspired by the Dalai Lama after five years. I was able to watch this film with one of my dearest friends, whom I owe to these five years, which I owe to Dharmaral.

It would be too little for me to simply say it was a good movie, go watch it, enlighten yourselves, continue on your journey. This final conclusion holds true if you don't read further, but after five years, even behind an ordinary movie experience, I now try to see the layers of my own story. I strive to be present clearly and consciously, and that in itself is practice.

Arriving at the mall on Saturday evening, it was already impressive to see how many people this film reached, that's what touched me the most. So many different people were sitting inside: from children to very elderly people. And I felt grateful to be a part of it, and also to be able to share this experience quietly, with strangers. The experience of the world gaining insight into the Dharma, in a somewhat mainstream form, because that's how it becomes consumable. And in 2025, that's perfectly fine.

I won't spoil it, but the film started with such a strong impulse that my friend was later grateful that we booked seats in the fourth row. It's worth going just for that, go see it. A little spoiler: he said it was like stepping into my class. This wasn't meant for me, it was meant for the path we carefully nurtured together with love and compassion over the past few years.

I asked him if he liked it. He just said: „We've already talked about these.”

This sentence contained much more than just feedback. It encompassed the identity shift of my last five years, the journey during which I slowly became what I spend most of my time on today: the search for practice, mindfulness, awareness, and compassion.

And did I find out from the movie how to be happy?

I know this is the functioning of the order of Dharma in an everyday form, where the search for happiness begins not in a monastery, not in retreat, not in the roles of teacher and student, but in a simple cinema, squeezed between popcorn and silence.

Today I know that this is pure mudita, the practice of sympathetic joy. That kind of joy where it's not important what I get, but that others also encounter something that might make their lives a speck easier.

After five years, I learned that Dharma has as many faces as there are souls to hear it. For a long time, I thought Dharma simply meant a way of life. This is the word they teach, translate, and systematize.

But now, after years of practice, study, and journeys with hundreds of people, I see more clearly that dharma is not a teaching, but the order that sustains the world. It is not a single direction, but the clarity with which we are present in it. It speaks to everyone differently. In the past two years, I have seen on the faces of hundreds of people how they hear the same thing differently. Some cried, some laughed. Some rejected the teaching, and some opened up. Some fled from it because it brought them too close to their own shadow, and some found a foothold in it because everything else was uncertain in their present. I saw tension dissolve in their eyes, how someone dared to say for the first time what they had only felt before, and how silence became the answer for others.

There were times when they turned away from me, didn't even let me in. But I remember every hug and I was present in it. In these moments, there was no teaching, but an encounter, with ourselves. That kind of understanding was born that psychology calls recognition, and Buddhism simply calls awakening.

Because the dharma is never lost, it just waits to be recognized.

The words of the Dalai Lama truly resonate with me now: “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” “I am nothing special. I am just a simple monk who practices compassion.” “Suffering means different things to different people.”

These sentences contain everything the journey teaches: that compassion stands above religion, that true wisdom lies in silence, and that pain cannot be ranked, only understood.

Life is not always easy. Sometimes we get lost and become absorbed in the anxiety, fear, doubt, desire, and lack caused by external circumstances. But it is always in our hands to decide whether to examine all of this from the outside, and whether we choose well-being. This is sukha, the “well-being” that comes from within and is not dependent on external circumstances.

Our attitude shapes our world. We can all decide what we want to be part of: the past, old patterns that repeatedly spin us into fear, lack, and doubt, or the flow that embraces everything with acceptance and compassion.

Perhaps happiness is not a goal, but a decision to trust the process That life happens for us, not against us, even if we don't understand how at the moment. This change is not easy, but it must begin. Because when ten million people simultaneously say "I'm not enough alone", something shared is born: the space of empathy, where no one is alone.

And you? What truly makes you happy right now?

Namo Buddhaya, Reni