Equinimity - Why budhists pursue peace rather than happiness

Actually that’s not true – Budhists for example are not concerned with pursuing happiness because they feel that like all emotions, happiness comes and goes. They try to be equanimous (from the word equinimity: eveness of mind or temper about all things).

The budha believed that all suffering is caused by craving and aversion. We crave feeling happy, love, money, sex, warmth etc. and we have an aversion to pain, suffering, cold, lonliness, etc. He believed it is this constant seeking or avoiding that causes us to suffer. Nothing, of itself, is good or bad, only your judgement makes it so (this is not the same as advocating amorailty but this is not the place for that conversation).

One thing that I like about laughter is that it helps you put things in their place - to accept what has happened and laugh it off thereby increasing your equnimity.

A couple of parting thoughts:

"If you maintain a feeling of compassion and kindness, then something automatically opens your inner door. Through that, you can communicate much more easily with other people. And that feeling of warmth creates a kind of openness.
You'll find that all human beings are just like you, so you'll be able to relate to them more easily. That gives you the spirit of friendship. Then there's less need to hide things, and as a result, feelings of fear, self doubt, and insecurity are automatically dispelled."

- HH, Dalai Lama, "The Art of Happiness".

Everyone Pursues Happiness