I enjoy a reasonably good quality of my life. Do I need to strive to be happy?

Although such a state of constant fulfillment is rare, surveys have shown that where the conditions of life are not especially oppressive, most people claim to be satisfied with the quality of their lives (75 percent in the developed countries).

It would be counterproductive to reject studies and surveys that reflect the opinions of hundreds of thousands of people interviewed over the course of a dozen years. But it does make sense to question the nature of the happiness that the subjects are referring to. The fact is, their average satisfaction remains relatively stable because the material conditions of life in the developed countries are generally excellent. On the other hand, it is eminently fragile. Should just one of these conditions suddenly vanish — due to the loss of a loved one or a job, for instance — that feeling of happiness would crumble. And in any case, declaring ourselves satisfied with life because there is no objective reason to complain about its conditions (of all the countries studied, Switzerland has the most “happy” people) in no way prevents us from feeling ill at ease deep within ourselves. By the age of thirty five, 15 percent of North Americans have experienced a major depression. Since 1960, the divorce rate in the United States has doubled, while reported rapes have increased fourfold and juvenile violence fivefold.

This distinction between exterior and interior well-being explains the apparent contradiction between some of these findings and the Buddhist assertion that suffering is omnipresent in the universe. When we speak about omnipresence, it means not that all people are continuously in a state of suffering, but that they are vulnerable to the latent suffering that can arise at any moment. They will remain vulnerable so long as they fail to dispel the mental toxins that cause unhappiness.

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