My name is Ben Curtis, I’ve been living in Madrid, Spain for many years, co-running the Spanish-learning website Notes in Spanish with my wife Marina.
I once asked a Buddhist monk what being a monk was all about, and he replied that it was about ‘looking at ideas… ideas about what society thinks brings us happiness’.
I thought, ‘Great, I don’t have to become a monk to do that.’
In fact, this is something that I’ve been thinking about, reading about and spending a lot of time on over the last few years – happiness, mindfulness, Being… it almost certainly started with a philosophy degree in the 1990s, and a module on Buddhist philosophy.
For many years I attended summer retreats at Plum Village in France, home of the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, and in 2013-14 spent a year helping to organise a two week tour of Spain by Thich Nhat Hanh and 50 of his monastics.
This website, Being Happiness, started out simply as a way of sharing my personal experiences and discoveries in these realms – with the idea that others might find these interesting and useful too. Now, it includes the Being Happiness podcast.
Many thanks for your visit.
– Ben Curtis
Contact
To keep life simple, I handle all contact via the support pages at our other website Notes in Spanish, where my wife and I teach Spanish. Thanks.
Notes from Ben 