Pertinent:
We start each session with thoughts of goodwill, reminding ourselves of why we’re here, and of the fact that the happiness we’re looking for here is harmless. That’s what goodwill is all about: May all beings find happiness in a harmless way. Of course that means we need to find our happiness in a way that doesn’t take anything away from anyone else. In other words, each of us has to find happiness within. That’s why we’re here meditating.
So the fact that you’re not paying attention to anyone else right now is actually a very responsible thing, because you’re pursuing a happiness that will make you less of a burden. Any happiness you try to gain otherwise is going to take something away from other people, other beings. Or if you go to the other wrong extreme of self-torture, trying to find some satisfaction out of that, you’re not going to find true happiness at all, so that’s not responsible, either. As we’ve seen many times, people go back and forth between these extremes. They can be very self-denying until finally they snap; then they head off in the other direction, getting very self-indulgent. When they see the harm of indulgence, they go back to being self-denying again, back and forth. Nothing gets accomplished this way. Both ways of looking for happiness are irresponsible. The responsible way is to come in and see what inner resources you have that can be developed into a genuine happiness within.
As the Buddha once said, your most important resource, the most important factor of the right path, is right view. In another passage he said that the most important factor is right concentration. So you need to emphasize both. Everything else draws on right view and serves right concentration. The right view here starts with what I just said: If you’re going to find true happiness, it has to come from within because the sources of suffering also come from within. We suffer mentally not because of unpleasant things happening to us, but from how we shape our experience of those unpleasant things—or of pleasant things, as the case may be.