Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Amy Miller opens this four-minute talk by inviting listeners to reflect on a core Buddhist insight: the impermanence of pleasure. She traces a familiar pattern in our lives—the new car, the latest gadget, the wonderful partner—where initial joy inevitably fades into boredom, leaving us hungry for the next thing. She then pivots to a deeper observation: beneath all these surface pursuits lies a single shared wish. All beings, from world leaders to beggars, want exactly the same thing—to be happy and free from suffering. Yet somehow happiness eludes us while suffering remains our constant companion. Miller frames this course as an opportunity to understand why happiness proves so fleeting and to reconnect with what she calls our true nature: a vast wellspring of goodness, positive energy, and loving-kindness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: amy-miller-nutshell-no-details-1-17-our-personal-experiences-copy
Teacher: Amy Miller
Collection: Nutshell no details (Amy Miller)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~405
So ask yourself for a moment. What happens when I can’t seem to hold on to my happiness? For a moment, maybe a beautiful holiday, we get a wonderful gift, we have a wonderful partner, whatever pleasurable experience you are having, and it’s wonderful. And we want to keep it for all time. But what happens?
It changes, it dissolves, it turns into something else. So the new car you got, the new pair of shoes that you had to have, that were so wonderful, the latest computer with the new software programs doing it faster and better than before, And you can show these things off to your friends as we do in a very proud way. But slowly, slowly, the enamoration begins to fade. And a year later and two years later, we’re looking for something new. We’re bored, tired of that thing.
This happens to us again and again. What happens to the happiness, the satisfaction? And isn’t it true that basically what you really want in life is to be happy and not to suffer? Check for a moment. Is that accurate?
Is there something else you might want? Isn’t this what everybody wants? To be happy and not to suffer. Isn’t that amazing that we now have a common thread with every other living being. So whether they are a leader of a world power and we disagree with their politics and whether they are a beggar on the street of Calcutta, India, we all want the same thing, to be happy and not to suffer.
But somehow, happiness continues to evade us, and suffering is an extremely familiar experience for all of us on many different levels. So hopefully also through this course, you’ll gain a better understanding of things that may be able to help you be happier and avoid more suffering and come a little bit more in touch with your true nature that is a vast pool of goodness, positive energy, and loving kindness.