This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Dharma Samadhi (4 of 5) Happiness

So today is the fourth talk on the Dharma samadhis^[1]. These are five qualities that are an integral part of how the Dharma practice unfolds when we kind of get into the flow of it. When the settledness, that letting go, and really being present in a deep, connected, intimate way happens, it seems to give life to something which is not necessarily something we do, but it's certainly something we create the conditions for and that we allow to bubble up. Today the topic is happiness.

Happiness is maybe not the best translation, and for all these words, you're welcome to find your own word that maybe fits better. What's important is not so much the exact word, but that you appreciate the sequence of how there's a settling or a deepening opening, a going from more activated states to more sublime and wonderful, quieter, harmonious, unified, connected states.

That sequence goes from gladness, which is a little bit more evaluative and maybe involves more thinking, to some deeper connection that comes with stronger concentration and stronger settledness, to joy. We see how that flows and moves to a kind of tranquility, which flows now to a kind of happiness. And then tomorrow I'll talk about how that opens up to concentration. It's that sequence, that flow, which is actually one of the important things to understand.

If you understand that it is a going from more active states of being to more quiet or peaceful states, from coarser states to more sublime states, there is a flow. The Buddha uses the example of the flow of river water down a mountainside. The rain falls on the mountainside, and the raindrops come together to create little rivulets or streams. Those go into little creeks, then to streams, then to rivers. As long as it's high up in creeks with boulders, it's very noisy, but when it gets really big and down into the plains of India, it flows quietly and fully.

We are kind of going from something that's a little bit noisier in the mind and the body to the harmony of a big river that is just flowing quietly along. We're in that stream, in that full current. So there's movement from gladness through happiness, and then concentration is actually something getting bigger and fuller, but quieter and stiller. To go from coarse to more quiet is not becoming more diminished as a human being; it is actually becoming fuller. It's that sequence which is important, rather than necessarily knowing exactly what each of these states are. That gives you some room to choose your own English word that you associate with it, to put you in the ballpark of the words that I offer. And then, how is it for you personally? I suspect for each person there's a little different way these things are felt and experienced, and maybe you would choose different words. At different times, it may be experienced a little differently.

When I get to happiness, sukha^[2], sometimes I like to just call it "well-being" because that seems like a very broad word that allows all kinds of things to fit into it, and people can find themselves in it a little bit easier than the English word happiness.

Some people will point out that happiness comes to us in a different way than pleasure. Pleasure is something we can do for ourselves. You can go out and drink alcohol for the pleasure of it. You can go out and get a massage, maybe, or stand in the sun, or do all kinds of things to get pleasure. You can even pay for pleasure. But joy, and even more so happiness, takes more than doing something. Deep contentment, deep feeling, satisfaction, and well-being cannot be bought. They cannot be made to happen. It's not like, "Let's go out and get some deep satisfaction by buying more or doing more worldly experiences." We have to allow something beyond our own little actions. These are the wellsprings of some of the deepest forms of happiness and well-being we can have.

In Buddhism, it's a lot about creating conditions. Mindfulness, being settled, and meditation are creating the conditions. Letting go is creating the conditions for this flow of the Dharma samadhis to happen within us. At some point it comes to what's called in Pali, sukha, and I like to translate it as happiness. Maybe there are other choices for it, depending on people's association with the word "happy," but it is something very sublime and very embodied.

It's often said that the joy that happens earlier in this flow is more mental. It is a mental thrill that might thrill the whole body, but it's more like excitement—a little bit of really being connected, involved, and in the flow of it all. Whereas with happiness, that excitement has been tranquilized. It has become calmer, and now there's something much more sublime. People often report that this happiness feels very embodied. Because it has such a strong embodied feeling, Bhikkhu Bodhi^[3], the translator, will in this context translate sukha as pleasure. But "pleasure" to me has whole different connotations than what's going on here. It is a deep wellspring of a sublime sense of deliciousness and calm. It is the kind of feeling of coming into a warm room on a cold day, having hot chocolate, and just really feeling content, happy, and settled. To say that's "pleasant" or "pleasure" seems to miss a lot of what is happening there.

Now, this happiness is not exactly the goal, but it is considered a little bit the means. If you think of it too much as the means, making it a technique to get somewhere, then you lose the connection to the deeper parts of it. We have to let go so fully of even wanting or thinking about using it to get somewhere else. However, it is really a means to move further and go deeper. The purpose of this happiness is a deep sense of unification, of concentration. But that's not the ultimate purpose either. The purpose is to become free. The purpose is to see deeply, to see things as they are in such a way that we can let go of the clinging, the holdings, the cravings, and the fears that we're stuck with. Happiness is a stepping stone.

But we have to allow ourselves to feel it. I had the silly circumstance of trying to avoid happiness and joy in practice because I thought that was not really the point. I thought it was kind of silly to be happy or joyful, and I wanted to go to places where it was really deep and serious somehow. But that was silly, because you have to go in it. Happiness and well-being are a door to going deeper.

Of course, it's not easy to feel this well-being or happiness, and sometimes it can be months and years before it really opens up. We have to really appreciate the power of mindfulness in all circumstances of our life and not be ahead of ourselves, looking for the happiness. But at the same time, we want to know that happiness is part of the path. We want to be able to recognize it and get out of the way so that flow can come, so we can avail ourselves of well-being.

It is my theory that for most people, there is much more joy, much more tranquility, much more happiness, contentment, and satisfaction available at any given moment than they avail themselves of. We are so caught up in our thoughts, our concerns, our projections into the future, our fantasies, our desires, and our fears. These things sometimes predominate in such a strong way that we don't avail ourselves of the simple joys and simple happinesses that are available here.

There can be very strong resistance to becoming happy. Some people don't want to experience too much happiness because they feel it's bad luck, or that something bad is going to happen if they do, or that they don't deserve it. People resist it because they feel that in order to be a good person, or to do the right thing for their family or the world, they have to worry more. We feel we have to be alarmed and concerned, and show that we're with it, that everything has to be taken care of. "I have to do things, and we don't have time. I can't focus on myself; I have to focus on the disaster out there in the world."

That orientation can come from a very good place. But to discover that we can in fact take care of ourselves and the world from this place of happiness, from this place of being settled, is profound. To avail ourselves of our greater happiness, our greater well-being, takes a little bit of time. Though sometimes it doesn't take much. To realize that maybe you're at a traffic light in your car and you realize, "Wait a minute, I have 15 seconds to sit here. Why don't I simply relax here and feel something that feels good at this moment, something that feels some deeper satisfaction? And then I can be concerned about driving once the light turns green."

As our life unfolds in the Dharma with mindfulness, there are layers and layers of well-being and happiness that we can begin to appreciate. With time, that sense of happiness becomes stronger, bigger, and fuller, and it becomes a place that we live in or come from—a place where friendliness, kindness, compassion, and peace can arise from. That is very difficult if we center our life on our thinking, with all the crazy ways that many of us can think. To center our life in a deeper place, a wellspring of well-being, is to learn that that is a place where we can effectively work for justice, effectively work with calm compassion, effectively care for other people, and effectively be actively involved in the welfare of our communities.

It is the place from which we can engage in difficult conversations with others—including conversations around racism and politics that are becoming more and more important for us to deal with and look at—but without sacrificing our well-being. You realize that is a place where actually we can be more effective in the long term than if we come from anger and fear.

Eventually, this happiness leads to liberation and freedom. It is a foundation for it, and that is considered a whole different degree of happiness. Sometimes in Buddhism, it's called maha sukha^[4], great happiness. May your greater familiarity, your greater exploration, your investigation, and your greater contact with well-being and happiness lead to great happiness for you and for others as well.

You might, in the next 24 hours, see if you can kind of settle in and open up, and avail yourself of happinesses that are not as excited as joy, but are more sublime, more settled, more contented, and more embodiedly satisfying. See what it's like when more of the day is connected to it. Have reminders that remind you to "come back, come back, open to something here." Thank you, I appreciate it.

Community Announcements

I look forward to our time tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll do a Zoom. We'll move at 7:45 over to a Zoom room and have a YouTube community meeting. This YouTube community that we're creating over these months will have a meeting, and you're welcome to come for as long as it works for you. As part of that, we'll maybe answer some questions, but we will also have time for breakout groups so you get to meet some other people. You're saying hello in the chat, you're seeing their names, and maybe you've never met before, so you can have a few minutes together. Thank you so much.