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Mindfulness of Breathing (46) Joy Factor of Awakening

Continuing on this series of the seven factors of awakening, the factor for today is joy. And the particular joy that's a factor of awakening is really a product of doing the practice of mindfulness. So it's not a joy that comes from reflection and that wonderful things are happening to us in the world; it's really a joy that arises out of doing the practice. Really engaging in the practice in a sincere, wholehearted way.

I like to think of this joy as being also an expression, enactment, or manifestation of our freedom that grows as we do the practice of mindfulness, and that these seven factors of awakening can all be seen as enactments of freedom.

Rather than waiting for freedom to occur in a big bang of enlightenment down the road—if we just huff and puff and get concentrated enough and still enough, and then eventually, maybe by magic, there'll be a big "aha!" moment or a big transformation moment, and now you live happily free for the rest of your life, having it made in enlightened retirement—it's much more valuable, I think, to appreciate that we're beginning to move. We're taking a seed—a little potential for freedom inside of us—and germinating it, caring for it carefully in the greenhouse, tending to it carefully, transplanting it out into the world, and letting it grow, develop, and mature into full freedom. Because then we're beginning to take a little bit more responsibility for this freedom thing ourselves, rather than thinking that something else is going to do it for us.

So, begin to recognize the little movements of freedom that we all use all day long. In fact, I would venture to guess that most of us have more moments of freedom throughout the day than non-freedom. But the reason we don't feel like we're free is that we let our attention prioritize or focus on the ways that we're unhappy, or on what we want and what we don't want. We get swept up into the world of thinking, where there's not much freedom. More often than not, people are kind of hijacked by our thoughts, our concerns, our fears, and our desires.

And so it might seem that in the important psychological ways we're not free, but there are plenty of ways that we are free.

If you sit down in a chair, you have a fair amount of freedom about how you adjust yourself into that chair. You probably never really gave much thought to how you sat in the chair and how you adjust yourself to be comfortable. But that movement of sitting down and choosing how you sit in the chair is an expression, a manifestation, of some freedom.

Reaching forward to open your front door is an expression of freedom—that you can do that. There are people who can't do that for all kinds of reasons.

There are lots of little moments where you choose to do something, and there's a freedom in doing it.

As we start doing mindfulness practice, begin recognizing how mindfulness itself can be an enactment of freedom. And that's hard to do if mindfulness is burdened by "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts"—"gotta do better," "supposed to get somewhere," "am I there yet?", "I'm not a good meditator," "someone else is a better meditator," or "I'm supposed to bear down and really strain," and "what's important, they say, is continuity of mindfulness, so when I'm mindful I'm just going to really push and make strong effort and really strain." So all this extra stuff comes along with mindfulness.

A moment of mindfulness is something phenomenally simple. It is just to know in the moment what's happening. In fact, you have many of these moments throughout the day where you know something without the burden of anything more complicated than knowing that it's there.

Chances are that at least half the time when you open the door, you just know—something inside of you knows it's a door, knows it's a door handle. And it's not anything more complicated than that. You aren't comparing your door handle to your neighbor's door handle, thinking about who has the better door handle, or thinking "I should have a better door handle." It's just a door handle.

But the practice of mindfulness is also the practice of appreciating that simplicity of awareness in the moment, and seeing it can feel like an enactment of freedom. There's freedom in that knowing before all the extra stuff is added on top of it.

And then there is the freedom to choose to investigate. As soon as you choose to investigate, to look more carefully, to recognize more carefully what's here, you're not being swept off in your thoughts. You're not being swept off in your agendas, desires, and wishes. It's a little movement: "I'm choosing not to be the old way, I'm choosing to take a better look, give a second look to what's happening." And that's an enactment of freedom.

Effort has to do with choices, choosing the endeavor which is more healthy for us. As soon as we make a choice towards health, towards skillfulness, towards wholesomeness, we're enacting our freedom.

As I keep saying, we don't recognize it so much because many of us carry with us this huge backpack everywhere we go, full of "shoulds," desires, agendas, self-concepts, self-criticism, aversion, and all this stuff that we carry along. And because of that heavy backpack, we don't recognize the ease, simplicity, and freedom in these choices to move in the healthy direction.

So part of this practice is to begin recognizing something that's probably been there to some degree all along: the enactment of freedom, the expression of it. And that brings us to joy.

The word for joy is pīti^[1]. It is usually translated as joy, sometimes as ecstasy, sometimes as rapture. But that's a particular Theravada or meditation slant on this word. Pīti could also mean pleasure, delight, or enjoyment. The Sanskrit word, prīti, can also mean friendliness, pleasure, and affection, which I think begins showing that it's an emotional quality.

We're tapping into an emotional connection to the practice and to being free. What becomes present comes from a kind of emotional contentment: "I'm doing a practice. I'm practicing a path of freedom. This is worthwhile. This is a healthy thing to be doing."

And we're enacting the freedom, which feels so good—to feel like we're not entangled, trapped, or caught in things, because the awareness, the mind, has become free in the enactment of these freedoms. And so the continuity of this free act of mindfulness, the continuity of mindfulness and concentration, tends to give birth to a variety of different kinds of contentments, joys, and happinesses. There are all kinds of different types.

But some of it is simply like sliding down a long slide. There is a joy in that freedom of just letting go and going, and it's just a delight.

In the same way, if you have the continuity of these moments of freedom, the continuity of choosing, engaging, and being mindful and aware, you'll start to get more of a taste for that freedom. It doesn't necessarily feel like a slide, but that same kind of continuity gives birth to a joy and delight—a feeling of, "Boy, am I lucky, this is a great thing."

It's not so much that we evaluate that or think our way into it, but there is a delight, a joy, a gladness just in the freshness. You know, it used to be in the United States that there was a reference point to the joy of driving on an empty, open freeway or highway. We may have forgotten what that is like!

But this joy is like that open, free highway of meditation and practice. And the amazing thing about this is that then it doesn't matter as much whether what's happening to us is pleasant or unpleasant.

Because we discover how to be free, mindful, and aware, how to investigate, and how to make healthy choices. This inner freedom is discovered even when things are unpleasant, even when things in the world around us are not so good. And what an amazing thing to have discovered! Because we know how to be mindful, investigate, make choices, and appreciate that we're doing this, there can even be joy and delight when, conventionally, the world expects us—or even the people around us want us—to be miserable. "I'm miserable, so you're supposed to be miserable! We're supposed to commiserate and commune in our miserableness: 'Isn't it terrible? Things are awful.'"

So what happens as we start moving through these factors of awakening? When I say what I'm about to say, you might decide to get off the path of the factors of awakening. Because what happens is when you get far enough along it, you won't be inclined to complain anymore. You have something much, much better to do—much more wonderful to do: the enactment of your freedom through mindfulness, investigation, effort, and this wonderful joy of freedom.

May you find that complain-free zone of freedom, and delight in it. Thank you.