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Guided Meditation: Joy

Introduction

Good morning, good day. Greetings, Redwood City, and I am happy to be sitting here with you all. Reflecting on that today, the topic for the talk will be joy, and how there are many different kinds of joy. There is a joy of contentment with what you have in the moment. There can be joy or happiness with one's ethical behavior. There can be joy and happiness with one's faith—faith in the practice, faith in the Dharma^[1]. There is joy and happiness with how one engages in activity, one's interest and involvement, and that is particularly the joy of the Seven Factors of Awakening^[2].

Part of that is the joy that comes from a feeling of rightness—the rightness of being present for what is. Even if things are difficult, there can be a feeling that it is right, it is okay. It is the right thing to do to really be present for the experience of that, to acknowledge it, to be open to it, and certainly not resist it or spend a lot of time in the control tower judging it or judging oneself, planning, fixing, or imagining futures. But rather, the rightness of really embodying the experience and being present for it, as if everything that is coursing through us is to be respected and made room for, to be met with a presence of mind and body. Part of the joy of the Dharma is a suffusing feeling through the body that is refreshing.

Oddly enough, even when things are quite difficult, not to resist anything but really be present and to take one's stand, to take one's place where one abides in the meeting of things, really being there for it. I put my hands together like this and say "this meeting of things" because it's a respectful thing to do. It may be even a sacred thing to do, to really be here and to meet what is happening.

Guided Meditation

To begin this process, take a meditation posture. A posture with which you're going to meet yourself, to meet the experience of the moment as it's experienced subjectively. Subjectively in the sense that we're experiencing from the inside out, as opposed to our thinking about it or evaluating anything. What I mean by subjective is inhabiting our bodies, and in inhabiting our bodies, experiencing all things from that reference point of the body.

Taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Feeling maybe the ribcage stretch and expand as you breathe in. Feeling the release of the ribcage, the diaphragm, and the belly as you exhale. Perhaps, if it's not difficult, participate in the releasing, letting go of the exhale. Maybe there's a simple way of releasing more fully at the end of the exhale.

And then letting your breathing return to normal. Searching around your body, feeling your body to see where you might be able to relax and release some of the holding in the body. Around the muscles of the face, the shoulders, the belly. Maybe if there's any tension or pressure in the brain area, behind the forehead, perhaps you can relax and soften, especially if that area is associated with a lot of thinking. Softening and relaxing the area of thinking.

As you are here with your body, is there any place in your body—even if it's just the slightest little corner—where you feel something that feels refreshing, contented, or joyful? Maybe a certain pleasure of just being, the "beingness," a sense of aliveness. And if there is such a place, breathe with it, breathe through it. Very gently, without any ambition, let that joy or contentment have a gentle influence on how you're aware. So how you're aware also somehow brings you a sense of contentment, ease, pleasure, or even joy, or a feeling of rightness to meet the experience, to be here.

For these few minutes we are meditating, you do have permission to not think about anything beyond the meditation. It is okay to allow yourself to really immerse yourself in your lived experience of the present moment. Perhaps immersing yourself in your breathing. Meeting the breathing, becoming the breathing, enjoying just breathing. Or enjoying your ability to meet your breathing, to be aware of it.

Now that we're sitting here for a few minutes, perhaps your body is a little bit more settled than when you started. It's possible to let go of your thoughts and settle in more into your body, to allow the settledness in^[3] the body to be a support, a meeting place where awareness can reside. Sensing and feeling whatever is enjoyable or pleasant in the body, without expectations or trying to make more of it. There is a way to more fully have a way of being aware that itself is enjoyable. That present moment awareness feels refreshing or satisfying. What would it take for that to occur?

Reflections

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, I'd like to evoke the feeling of gentle joy. A quiet joy, a kind of capacity, a quiet appreciation, a quiet delighting in other people. It doesn't have to be exuberant or even recognized by others, but we do have the capacity to appreciate, value, and even delight in others.

As we meet them and they're meeting us, perhaps that could be in the forefront for us. We can meet them with our joy, delight, or appreciation, more than meeting them with our preoccupation, our anxiety, or what we're trying to do, accomplish, prove, or apologize for. To be able to be settled in, at home, and at ease with ourselves, and in that ease become a little clearer channel to being happy to know someone else, to delight in them, and enjoy them. Not that they have to know it.

May it be that this practice we do, in seen and unseen ways, conveys our deep appreciation for other people, our love or delight in others. May we meet others and talk to others with that appreciation. May we take the time to be present so we can appreciate and delight in the other. In so doing, our meeting of others, our thinking about others, or talking with others might carry in it a deep, heartfelt wish^[4]:

May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings be healthy.
May all beings know that they're appreciated and valued, that they and their lives matter to us.
That we belong to each other.
The kind of appreciation where we know that we're all kin to each other.
May all beings be happy.