Chocolate

We Love Chocolate. Perhaps so much so that on some level we may believe, “As long as I have chocolate, I’ll be happy.” This is the power of attachment at work. And based on this attachment, we create a chocolate-based philosophy and order our life prioritizing chocolate. But sometimes, we can’t get our hands on any chocolate. And when the chocolate disappears, we get nervous, upset: “Oh no! Now I’m unhappy!” But of course it’s not the absence of chocolate that’s making us unhappy; it’s our fixed ideas, and our misunderstanding the nature of chocolate. Chocolate, like all our pleasures and all our problems, is impermanent.

Chocolate comes, chocolate goes, chocolate disappears.
And that’s natural. When you understand this, your relationship to chocolate can change, and when you deeply understand this, you will truly have no fear of anything at all. Chocolate comes, chocolate goes, chocolate disappears. Ultimately, you can’t rely on chocolate. Chocolate isn’t always with you—when you want it, it’s not there and when you don’t feel like it, there it is in front of you. All such transient pleasures are like this—and if your search for happiness causes you to grasp emotionally at the sense world, you will find so much suffering—because you have no control of the sense world, no control of impermanence.

But take heart! There is another kind of happiness available to you, a deep abiding joy of silent experience, a joy that comes from your own mind. This kind of happiness is always with you, always available. Whenever you need it, it’s always there. And you can discover this happiness by studying your own mind. Observing and investigating your mind is really very simple, so simple. With practice, wherever you go, at any time, you can experience this happiness.

And after all, all beings want happiness. The desire for happiness drives so much of the world. From the manufacture of the tiniest piece of candy to the most sophisticated spaceship, the underlying motivation is to find happiness. Beneath the entire course of human history is the constant pursuit of happiness, or, in a sense, the pursuit of more and better chocolate. Of course we all know that it’s impossible to find lasting happiness and satisfaction through chocolate. We know where to find chocolate—but what about deep and lasting peace... even when the chocolate runs out?”

~ Lama Thubten Yeshe, When the Chocolate Runs Out