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Guided Meditation: Appreciation

Hello and welcome to this guided meditation. We are continuing now this week with the topic of sympathetic joy. Today will still be kind of an introduction to the topic.

One thing I want to say is that some of you are maybe quite familiar with the idea that Buddhism teaches that everything is impermanent, anicca^[1]. What often happens is that teaching is made as a universal teaching, a universal idea. In a sense, it's taken out of context. In context, yes, the idea of seeing the inconstancy, the changing nature of our experience, is very important at a certain point of practice. But it's interesting; the Buddha doesn't really say that everything is impermanent. There are some things that he never says are impermanent, even though they don't last.

There are wholesome states, really good experiences, that he doesn't say, "See that these are impermanent and changeable." But rather, wholesome states like loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity are to be pervasive. Those are supposed to be enduring for a while. The emphasis there is how they saturate us or fill us and continue for a period of meditation or for part of a day or in a situation.

The difference here is that the primary thing that's emphasized as being inconstant and impermanent is the whole inner world of our reactive mind, the constructive mind—the mind that thinks and constructs and reacts to things. I call it the surface mind. And there's a whole other deep mind or deep physiological experience that has more to do with hormones coursing through us and enduring for a while. Those hormonal or chemical ways in which serotonin and different chemicals work in us leave a kind of enduring glow. Not forever, but they don't arise and pass quickly. There's a way in which they saturate us, fill us, and stay.

So, yes, seeing that our thoughts, our judgments, our opinions, and our constructs of self are fleeting, empty, constructed, and constantly in flux is very valuable. But it's also very valuable to linger and allow for the continuity of joy, of happiness, of love. It's possible to let those linger, stay, and fill us. We're not supposed to be looking upon them thinking, "Let's see how impermanent they are." The Buddha talks about letting them radiate and fill our experience.

The idea is that we're allowed to experience joy, allowed to feel deep appreciation and delight, because it's healing. It's beneficial. And so, appreciative joy is a wonderful state because it benefits both oneself and maybe the person we feel appreciative joy for if we're in contact with them. But by not having appreciative joy—having non-appreciative grumpiness, non-appreciative resentment, non-appreciative discouragement—we harm ourselves. We contract, we limit, we irritate, and we create a mood that is not helpful for us.

When we can appreciate other people, value them, see their beauty, and take delight in them, it sets in motion wonderful inner states that benefit us. It maybe sets the conditions up that we're more likely to have positive relationships and are more likely to benefit other people as well. So, this movement to discover appreciative joy is a movement of deep appreciation, taking time to see in others what is really good, what is nice, what is beautiful.

Of course, human beings are mixed bags. There are all kinds of things which are challenging, and maybe enough things that we disapprove of. But that's not all that a human being is. People have many sides. And just like it's important for us to begin nourishing and nurturing our capacity for love, joy, and happiness, and have those kinds of states suffusing us, it's good for us to begin looking at others in a more holistic way. This allows us to take delight and allows us to not harm ourselves by closing down, being resentful, and complaining. We certainly don't want to overlook things which we disapprove of, but we don't want that to feed our inner state. We want to feed a positive inner state and let our wisdom take care of what we need to take care of in the world.

To appreciate others and ourselves is a foundation for appreciative joy.

So, assuming a meditation posture, gently close your eyes.

Maybe it's okay to assume that all of us are a mixed bag. That we have things which are wholesome and unwholesome in us. We have things which we do well and things that we regret, or are not the best thing we could do, feel, or think. And perhaps we can take care of what is unwholesome in ourselves better if we gaze upon it from a settled, wholesome place. Maybe we're wiser and more honest, more truthful about things, if we include the wholesome as a foundation.

So here, now, what aspects of you, what aspects of your present moment experience, maybe sitting in meditation, do you appreciate? That you enjoy.

Maybe if you've meditated for a long time, it's simply assuming the meditation posture. A kind of homecoming in the body.

Maybe it's an intention, a desire to care for yourself or care for others that brings you to meditation.

Maybe there's a feeling of softness or gentleness. Kindness somewhere in your system. However small.

Maybe it's an appreciation for these minutes of meditation. You can put down so much of your concerns to enjoy the simplicity of being. And letting the thinking mind become quieter. [Laughter]

So you can feel your body. Feel whatever is good in your body. Whatever pleasure. Wholesomeness. Even if there's pain or discomfort in the body, is there also pleasure? Peace or calm?

And then within your body, as part of your body, become aware of your breathing. A simple awareness that allows your breathing to breathe itself. With your attention gentle, light, becoming aware of the body breathing.

With the experience of breathing, maybe at the edges of the sensations of breathing, also being aware of what feels good—a pleasure, a delight—and if there's something you appreciate. Maybe enjoying relaxing on the exhale.

Might there be some very simple, maybe modest, global feeling of calm or pleasure, well-being, in the middle of which you're breathing. Your breathing is like a gentle breeze that's fanning the flames of a campfire that's keeping you warm.

With every breath, touching, feeling whatever it is that is going well. Whatever is pleasant, enjoyable, or peaceful here. Feeling it in such a way that quieting the mind, quieting the thinking, allows you to feel and enjoy what is going well here more fully.

Letting there be a little more quiet in the mind. So there's more room in awareness to sense and feel and recognize whatever it is that you can appreciate in the present moment. An appreciation which is more about feeling and sensing what is here than it is about thinking about what's here.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, do feel whatever way that you're calmer, more relaxed at the end of this sitting. Maybe a bit softer, gentler, tender, peaceful. And how it might feel good to be more settled, be more this way. And how it might dispose you to be more open, more receptive to the environment you're sitting in.

Maybe the ears can be more open to sound. Even with the eyes closed, the body is almost like an antenna that is open and available to what's around.

Begin bringing to mind some of the people in your life: neighbors, colleagues, strangers, and appreciate them. Gaze upon them from the point of view of their precious human life. To wish them harm and wish them ill desensitizes you to the openness, the calm, the receptivity, the antenna of our body.

Take a few moments to simply appreciate that some things must be going well for others, even in their challenges. They must have some good qualities in spite of some of the things you've seen. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Allow yourself to appreciate the people in your life. Their goodness, their success. What's good about them.

And take delight. Enjoy it. Have joy.

Almost as if your joy, your appreciation can be contagious for them. It can help strengthen, bring forth more of what is good in them if you gaze upon them with appreciation for their inner beauty. Their precious humanity.

Wishing: may they know how precious they are. How their inner beauty, their inner goodness—may it continue for them. And may my simple, non-assertive appreciation contribute to greater joy and goodness in this world.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (56) Mudita and Appreciation

Hello and welcome back. Welcome to this week's series on appreciative joy, appreciating others, and feeling joy and delight in this appreciation we can have of other people.

There are some people who go through their life seldom appreciating others. They're mostly afraid of others, cautious, pulling back, and unsure. Maybe they are even a little afraid to appreciate others because they fear that's going to make them more vulnerable or defenseless.

There are people who are bitter and resentful, and the very bitterness and resentment that they carry feels so uncomfortable that it self-generates more resentment and more bitterness. It's like the negative feelings of anger, resentment, or bitterness are enough proof that things are bitter and bad in the world.

Some people identify so strongly with their capacity to complain, their capacity to be "insightful" into how terrible things and people are. Their identity or sense of value comes from being an opinionated person, being someone who can complain and see what's wrong. I saw that very clearly when I was in graduate school; the medium for academic conversations, especially among graduate students but also about professors, was to be critical of all other scholarship. People would seldom praise or appreciate other people's points of view, but always look for where the weaknesses were. They would always look for the problems. Sometimes it was downright mean how people were, and people prided themselves on being able to do that.

What we learn through doing this practice is the self-harm that we do to ourselves when we carry negative states of mind. When we carry negative ways of thinking, orienting, and forming opinions, it can create a mood which is deflating. It can create tension and tightness. It can be physically unhealthy to go around all the time angry, always triggered, and upset. It's bad for the physical heart.

Through practice, we begin seeing the cost of some of the attitudes which we carry into our life—always being anxious, always being afraid. The hope is that meditation is a place that's simple enough and safe enough that we can begin dropping all that. We drop all the constant busyness or activities of the mind that are harmful, generated by our thoughts and feelings. There's a choice and an engagement in this: as the mind gets quieter in meditation, those things quiet down. We stop doing those things.

We start feeling there's a whole other way of being. We start seeing that those thoughts and opinions are impermanent. They are fleeting. We just kept them going very quickly, one after the other. But as we start feeling better, there's a different sense of well-being that is not so fleeting, that in and of itself is more suffusive and continuous. Not forever, but it's more like the weather than it is like lightning. The temperature of the air generally stays somewhat constant. There can be big shifts that are relatively fast, but it generally stays constant, slowly warms up, or slowly cools down.

So we can have deep moods that persist for a while. Sometimes those persistent moods are painful, but there are also good moods. In the Dharma, good moods like calm, joy, peace, happiness, and love of different types are considered to be good states of being that we don't look to for their impermanence. We look for how to grow them. The Buddha talked about wholesome states where we try to maintain them. We grow them, expand them, and bring them to fullness.

This is not a minor teaching of the Buddha. This is embedded in the teachings on the Eightfold Path^[2], where he talks about the wholesome states we can have. He says, "When they're there, maintain them, grow them, expand them, bring them to fulfillment." He doesn't say, "Look how impermanent they are and don't get attached." He says, "No, let them grow. Let them feed you."

One of the things that we learn from this—the more we have a sense of inner well-being—is how we harm ourselves. One of the ways we harm ourselves is through some of the attitudes we have about other people. Whether or not those attitudes, beliefs, or opinions about others are accurate or appropriate is a separate issue from whether we are causing harm to ourselves. If we see we're causing harm to ourselves, even if our opinions about others have some accuracy, can we hold them in a different way? Can we hold them so there's no self-harm?

One of the things about not closing down, not getting tight, and not getting contracted is that we then have the ability to see people in a richer, fuller way. Yes, people might have some things which are off, but they also might have something that's very positive. It's possible to enjoy the basic humanity of people.

I've gone to a park, sat on a bench, and just enjoyed every person that walked by. There was something fresh and alive about it, like looking at the squirrels or the rabbits. Not that people are like squirrels or rabbits, but just everyone is appreciated. Everyone is just their human entity and I want them to do well. I don't want them to be killed or harmed as I'm watching them. I want them to thrive, be happy, and enjoy being in the park.

There's a natural way in which it's healthy for us in Dharma practice to begin allowing ourselves to appreciate other people. We can take in the joy, be delighted in it, and relax with it. Having appreciative joy for others is good for ourselves.

But it's not only good for ourselves. If we only focus on "me, myself, and mine," we can't really generate genuine goodwill. We get caught back in the reactive mind, the constructive mind. There's this wonderful way to appreciate others and linger there. Not only do we benefit ourselves, but it protects us from our contractions, resentments, and conceits.

Appreciating others is a phenomenally useful practice for Dharma practitioners. It involves seeing the beauty in others, seeing what is delightful in others, and looking into people for their best qualities—what's really going well. And feeling joy in that. Seeing people's successes and what is going well in their life, and feeling joy and delight as opposed to resentment. It's appreciating what they enjoy rather than judging what they do to enjoy it.

There are some teenagers in our neighborhood who make a lot of noise on these little electric motorcycles going up and down the road. It's a little bit annoying. But I don't want to focus on that. I just appreciate that they're having a good time. They're enjoying themselves. I wish them well. I wish them safety. I wish them delight. I take joy in their joy.

So when I see them, I'm more likely to comment in a nice way about them and their motorcycles. I'm not there to scowl at them or complain, "You know, it's too noisy." That's not good for me, and it's not good for them. This kind of joy is about appreciating joy, delighting in joy, and finding joy in the joy of others.

You might try this. You might try to spend today, the next 24 hours, looking at people and being with people to see if you can appreciate them more. See their beauty, see their joy, and see what they're doing well. Speak to that. Appreciate people: "Oh, you said something really nice." "Oh, that was caring; that was done carefully." "You seemed to enjoy that, and it was wonderful to watch and see."

Maybe you don't say all these things, but begin finding appreciation by sharing in the delight and joys of others. Let it be contagious. Let there be a feedback loop between their joy and your joy, and let it continue through the day.

Thank you for today. I appreciate very much you all being here and sharing in this, and I look forward to continuing tomorrow. Thank you.