Our mind is the source of all our happiness and all our suffering. If we can control our mind, if we are the master of our mind, we will have the source of our happiness and we won’t need to rely on any outer objects to make us happy. If, on the other hand, we don’t control our mind, we will always fall prey to thoughts, to negativity, and no matter how many outer pleasures we possess, we will never be able to enjoy them. Without control of our mind we won’t be able to fulfill our wishes, because within us there won’t be the real cause of satisfaction, and again we will end up suffering. That is why the very first teaching of the Buddha was the importance of learning how to control, how to tame, how to train our mind. This is because with great insight and compassion the Buddha saw that an untrained mind was the pimary cause of all beings’ suffering and happiness.

The Buddha did not say that we must stop looking for happiness and must contiue suffering. It is the universal wish of allbeings, wherever they are, whoever they are, to be happy and not to suffer. However they are not able to achieve this because they don’t know the way to find happiness and avoid suffering. So what the Buddha did was simply to show how we could achieve happiness and how we could eliminate suffering.

When the Buddha showed the means to achieve happiness, it wasn’t in the form of terrible austerities and asceticism. He showed that all happiness can be achieved through one thing: knowing one’s mind and eliminating ignorance; this is the source of all happiness and the key to ending all suffering.

From “The Middle-Way Meditation Instructions of Mipham Rinpoche”, Thrangu Rinpoche