That iPhone (and your happiness) is impermanent

It's a truth of existence that material things won't bring you lasting happiness. Things break. Or get outdated. Maybe the iPhone 5 brought you bliss -- but now the iPhone 6 is about to be introduced. And that might make you even happier. Until you find the bugs in it or the 7 is rumored.

Expecting things to make us happy only leads to disappointment, which leads to wanting new things. That desire for something to improve the present moment is what creates stress and dissatisfaction, aka unhappiness, the Buddha said.

A new study, Waiting for Merlot: Anticipatory Consumption of Material and Experiential Purposes,  found that people get more enduring happiness when they spend money on experiences than on acquiring things. That extends to waiting in line for those things.

People tended to be more competitive about purchases, and a comparison of news reports about people waiting in line found that long waits for material purchases were more likely to end in violence, researchers said.

One of the study's authors, Amit Kumar, a doctoral student at Cornell University, speculates that experiences give people the opportunity to bond and socialize. Even when if you aren't guaranteed a ticket to a concert or a taco from the cool new food truck, people often enjoy waiting in line. "While waiting for concert tickets, people reported singing songs together, or people would be playing games with each other while they're waiting," he says.

Waiting for the experience became part of the experience, not something that was preventing acquisition of The Thing That Would Give Us All the Happiness.

Westerners speak of the "pursuit" of happiness, which generally depends on running after external conditions ... There is only one problem: The very nature of desire is that it cannot be satisfied -- at least not for long.

The happiness that I'm talking about is not "pursued." In fact, the more we remains elf-contained and do not pursue thoughts or fantasies, or rush from one attractive object to another, the more we can access a wakeful contentment that is always with us. ... This wakeful state of ease is quite joyful and approaches a profound sense of well-being. -- Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

It's important to note that contentment doesn't require you to renounce your smartphone or wear nothing but caftans. It's OK to like things -- just know that the happiness they bring is conditional, impermanent, and dependent. It won't last. Contentment, though, is unconditional, luminous, and always there. Pursue that.

Applying kindness

You can get smartphone apps to share photos with friends, tell your friends where you are, find out where they are, let them know when you're about to meditate so they can sit down too.

Now you can get an app to send them random compliments.

Kindr is an iPhone app that "users can send pre-crafted or original compliments to their friends and earn points along the way. Ready-to-use compliments include things like: 'Who always sees the glass half full?' 'Who do you admire for their dedication to their fitness?' and our favorite, 'Who's so smart that if they were turned into a zombie, they'd just seem like a normal person?" the Huffington Post reports.

The story doesn't explain why the compliments are worded as questions, which seems oddly impersonal. Or say what good the points are. Is it a competition -- the nicest person is the one with the most points? Can you redeem them for a whining binge? (It does say HuffPo will be providing content. It also provides the image at right)

The Kindr website includes a link to studies the document the benefits of kindness.

Of course, the Buddha listed them 2,500 years ago.The most ancient extant Buddhist collection of texts, the Pali Canon, identifies a number of benefits from the practicing of metta meditation, including:

One sleeps easily, wakes easily, dreams no evil dreams. One is dear to human beings, dear to non-human beings. The devas protect one. Neither fire, poison, nor weapons can touch one. One's mind gains concentration quickly. One's complexion is bright. One dies unconfused and – if penetrating no higher – is headed for the Brahma worlds.


If you're interested in practicing kindness, you could do metta, or lovingkindness, meditation. It's described here.

And if you want to get digital with it, you could just set an intention to text one compliment every day -- maybe after your metta meditation session. Make it one that you write yourself, from your heart. You'll feel good. The recipient will feel good. (Although I once, in a metta haze, texted my son, who wrote back, "Is this a generic text?") And if enough people feel good ... it'll be a movement.