A FOUR-WEEK course aiming to find happiness through inner peace begins in Northwich next month.

'Meditations for Modern Problems' gets underway at Odiyana Kadampa Meditation Centre in Chester Road on Tuesday, September 3.

The classes start at 7.30pm and comprise two meditations and a talk, followed by discussion over tea and biscuits.

A spokesman for the centre explained: "In recent years our knowledge of modern technology has increased considerably and as a result we have witnessed remarkable material progress, but there has not been a corresponding increase in human happiness.

"Superficially it looks like our world is improving. We know so many things we didn’t know before and can do things we never even dreamt of but if we look a bit more deeply we will see that there are many problems that never existed before.

"People are suffering more from stress, anxiety and low self-esteem. It is clear that something is deeply wrong and that manipulating external conditions will not help solve these modern problems.

"The reason for this is the problems are internal problems and we can’t solve these with external solutions.

"Happiness is part of our mind, it is a feeling, so the real source of happiness must lie within our mind not in external conditions.

"If our mind is peaceful we will be happy all the time, but if our mind is unpeaceful we will never be happy however much we try to change our external conditions."

See meditationincheshire.org or call 01606 77034