Happiness is in the news. Everywhere you look, there are blogs, websites, and videos about how to be happy. Colleges and universities are designing courses and research projects about happiness. It's a subject at professional conferences where presentations focus on new scientific studies. Meanwhile, the media pursues any new angle on the popular subject.

All this attention has shown that many factors contribute to happiness. Many people, however, insist on seeing it only in material terms; s/he is happy who has the most toys and perks. Even worse are those who have cynically given up on the whole happiness quest as a waste of time and energy.

In the books and films we cover at Spirituality & Practice, we look for evidence of the spiritual nature of happiness. For this map, we have chosen 12 books and 12 DVDs that offer a multidimensional understanding of its sources and effects.

12 Best Books about Happiness

The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living
Drawn from interviews between psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, this book explores what Buddhism says about cultivating happiness by shifting one's thinking and engaging in regular spiritual practice. Detachment, contentment, and a sense of inner worth are the basic sources of happiness.

Be Happy: Release the Power of Happiness in You
Robert Holden offers an entertaining and enlightening survey of being happy. He reviews 16 years of work with the Happiness Project which he directs, an eight-week course he created around it, and a variety of spiritual practices. Holden discovered that happiness is not only very important to people around the world, it is a goal that unites everyone.

Choosing Happiness: Life & Soul Essentials
Against a modern milieu where people can find great material and career success and yet remain basically alienated and depressed, Stephanie Dowrick, a psychotherapist and interfaith minister, presents practices to help readers achieve greater self-understanding and confidence to cope with the real world. Her analysis probes the riches and depths of happiness.

Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk, shares his understanding of happiness as the deep sense of flourishing that arises from a healthy mind as well as a way of interpreting the world. It is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Thoughts such as desire, hatred, and envy become our own worst enemies, whereas happiness is connected to kindness, humility, optimism, going with the flow of time, and facing death with equanimity.

Guideposts to Happiness: Prescriptions for a Wonderful Life
A lecture given in 1989, this book contains the teachings of Ryuho Okawa, a self described doctor of soul who is very popular in Japan. Believing that much of what ails modern humans is spiritual in nature, rather than simply mental or physical, Okawa emphasizes the need to resist being brought down by negative thinking. Instead, we should retrain ourselves to draw happy images on the blank canvases of our minds.

Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment
This book offers material on how to be happy from the positive psychology professor, Tal Ben-Shahar, whose course on the same topic at Harvard is very popular. In chapters on happiness in education, happiness in the workplace, and happiness in relationships, Ben-Shahar shows how we can reframe and add richness and depth to our everyday experiences of this pursuit.

Happiness: Essential Mindfulness Practices
This is a glorious, down-to-earth and practical book containing the key practices developed by Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh over the past 60 years. He offers ways of being mindful in every moment of life, including those in which one might be angry. Being truly present is the key to a genuinely happy life.

Happiness: How to Find It and Keep It
Using a dialogue format between a seeker and a wise friend, this book by Joan Duncan Oliver offers a broad range of material to help us understand the elusive bluebird of happiness. She links happiness to such qualities as kindness, beauty, love and faith.

Happiness and the Human Spirit: The Spirituality of Becoming the Best that You Can Be
Abraham Twerski, a self-improvement psychiatrist and rabbi, explores what he calls "Spiritual Deficiency Syndrome (SDS)," a malaise that seeks to find comfort in various forms of nefarious self-indulgence. He probes the connection between happiness and spirituality, in which happiness is shown to be "becoming the best human beings we can be" and is found to be the only real cure for SDS.

The Happiness Makeover: How to Teach Yourself to Be Happy and Enjoy Every Day
M. J. Ryan is convinced that happiness is a feeling of lightness and well-being that can be achieved through mind-training, but that we are frequently disrupted by habit energies that interfere with our natural ability to tap into contentment in our lives. This book presents many basic mindfulness and positive thinking practices that can be used to achieve happiness and get beyond hindrances at work and at home.

How to Be Happy
Co-founder of The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, an international network of Buddhist projects, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explores the path of happiness via meditation, compassion, the good heart, and subduing the mind. He writes that the dissatisfied mind is one of the main causes of stress; we burden ourselves with expectations that are basically selfish. Dedicating everything we do to the well-being of all people and being compassionate through serving others helps us experience every moment of life as precious.

The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want
Through extensive research, Sonja Lyubomirsky reveals that 40 percent of our capacity for happiness is within our power to change through the ways we act and think. In light of these findings, Lyubomirsky debunks three myths about happiness and where it can be found, and suggests 12 happiness-enhancing activities from expressing gratitude to taking care of your body. She makes a good case for practicing optimism and putting others ahead of ourselves.

12 Best Films about Happiness

After Life
In this Japanese film, a group of just dead men and women are ushered into a halfway house where, with the help of a counselor, they are to choose one memory to take into eternity. As this diverse group sifts reviews their lives, we see how happiness comes in moments – a train ride, a dance, a view out a window, a shower of cherry blossoms, the comfort of a mother's lap.

Been Rich All My Life
The Silver Belles are five African-American women, 84 - 96 years of age, who have been happily performing in front of appreciative audiences at various entertainment venues from the Apollo Theatre in Harlem to Carnegie Hall for most of their lives. This charming documentary presents their love of dancing, their camaraderie, and their ability to weather the storms of life and particularly of old age.

Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears A Who!
This animated film, based on the beloved children's story, is a joyous and kind-hearted romp with Horton the caring elephant who is on a mission of mercy. When he discovers that the miniature town of Whoville and all its inhabitants are floating on a speck in the wind, he decides to find it a safe resting place. His happiness and enthusiasm sustain him through his quest, even when the situation looks bleak.

Hairspray
Based on the 1988 screenplay by John Waters and the 2002 musical stage play, this is a jubilant, funny, and phantasmagorical movie music about an outsider who finds a way to fulfill her dreams. Plus-sized Tracy finds happiness in singing, dancing, being with her friends, and finally, by standing up for justice and equality.

Happy-Go-Lucky
This British film is one of the best portraits of an enthusiastic person ever put on the screen. Poppy is a schoolteacher who simply delights in being. Her enthusiasm inspires most of the people around her, even as it irritates a few others. This film dwells on the empowering and infectious nature of genuine, persistent happiness.

Mr. North
Based on a semi-autobiographical work by Thornton Wilder, this story focuses on a smart and sensitive young man who finds fulfillment in freeing others from unhappiness. It encourages us to turn our attentions to the art of healing, the choices involved in personal ethics, and the little virtues of life. By resisting the prevalent, often shortsighted attitudes of authorities in his town, Mr. North demonstrates how happiness can result from serving others.

Patch Adams
Patch Adams is the true story of a Virginia medical student who breaks all the rules by daring to proclaim that the best medicine for patients is love, laughter, and play. Inspired by his own experience during a brief stint in a mental hospital, Patch discovers that joy and laughter often do as much or more to alleviate suffering than procedures and medication. He makes happiness the centerpiece of his medical calling.

Shrek 2
Shrek and his new bride Fiona are set to live happily ever after, until they are invited to a fancy ball in their honor hosted by her parents; others in the kingdom have no idea that they are both ogres now. The movie's central point is that happiness has nothing to do with external beauty and everything to do with this couple's love for each other and their delight in being in their own skin.

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
This story examines the interconnected lives of five New Yorkers and the obstacles they face in the pursuit of happiness. The top-drawer screenplay is filled with many moments of subtlety and keen insights into human nature.

Travellers and Magicians
The director of this film, shot in Bhutan, is a prominent lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It's a wonderful exploration of the malady of unhappiness created by mind games. A government official from a remote village in the Himalayas embarks on a journey to America. His experiences along the way prove that to remain attached to an idea about the future is to miss the marvels that abound in the present moment.

Year of the Dog
This is a comedy about a lonely young woman who follows her bliss and finds all she needs in the companionship of animals. After the death of her beloved dog, the main character, Peggy, struggles to connect with people, and discovers that her real happiness is found in fighting for and associating with animals.

Young@Heart
This extraordinary documentary focuses on a senior citizen chorus that performs modern pop songs. Although their lives are full of challenges, including the deaths of one members of the troupe, they exude happiness as singing opens their hearts, provides them with fresh energy, and connects them with others.

A Mini-Course on Happiness

Frederic first shared these 30 quotations on happiness via his Twitter account (www.Twitter.com/FredericBrussat). Since tweets can only be 140 characters each, the quotes are short and easy to assimilate. To practice with them, choose a favorite and copy it on a card to carry with you or post near your computer. Several times a day, reread the quote and contemplate how its message is evident in your life.

For more of our coverage of happiness on the website, put "happiness" in the Google-powered "Search This Site" engine at list and visit the homepage for the spiritual practice of Joy for more recommended resources to supplement this map.

Who is rich? One who is happy with what he has.
— Ethics of the Jewish Fathers

True happiness is born of letting go of what is unnecessary.
— Sharon Salzberg

Your happiness is a gift because it literally brings out the best in you.
— Robert Holden

Always leave enough time... to do something that makes you happy, satisfied, even joyous.
— Paul Hawken

I caught the happiness virus last night / When I was out singing beneath the stars.
— Hafiz

True happiness is found in unselfish love,a love that increases in proportion as it is shared.
— Thomas Merton

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
— Abraham Lincoln

The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart.
— Thich Nhat Hanh

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy that makes happiness.
— Charles Spurgeon

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing or that but simply growth.
— William Butler Yeats

Remember that happiness is the way of travel — not a destination.
— Roy M.Goodman

One who plants a garden plants happiness.
— Chinese Proverb

Genuine happiness is a symptom of a balanced, healthy mind.
— B. Alan Wallace

To seek happiness outside ourselves is like trying to lasso a cloud. Happiness is a state of mind.
— Yogananda

Being happy isn't about feeling good, it's about doing good.
— Irwin Kula

The key to lasting happiness is to stop looking for it, and to know that you already have it.
— Deepak Chopra

Contribute to other people's happiness & you will find the true goal, the true meaning in life.
— His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Happiness is not having the most, but needing the least.
— Abraham Twerski

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This is happiness: to be dissolved into something completely great.
— Willa Cather

The supreme happiness of life is that we are loved; loved for ourselves.
— Victor Hugo

This very moment is the seed from which the flowers of tomorrow's happiness grow.
— Margaret Lindsey

It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis.
— Margaret Bonnano

The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
— Carl Jung

In every corner of our life, to lose oneself is a gainer, to forget oneself is to be happy.
— R.L. Stevenson

Thanks are the highest form of thought, and gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
— G.K. Chesterton

The summit of happiness is when a person is ready to be what he is.
— Erasmus

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
— Mahatma Gandhi

For ongoing happiness, nothing matches a relationship that excites, enriches, and uplifts.
— Joan Duncan Oliver

Here is the secret of happiness: Forget yourself and think of others
— Paramananda