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Guided Meditation: Mudita Samadhi 1

Hello and welcome. This week, the theme of these morning meditations is muditā samādhi^[1][2], being immersed in the meditation on appreciative joy. My hope is that last week's meditations and teachings have prepared the ground to really immerse oneself, to dip deeply into this capacity we have for joy in appreciating and enjoying the success and happiness of others. We want to really make it for a brief time a real focal point, something that we give ourselves over to fully to receive the benefits of that.

Last week's meditations were touching into contentment, appreciation, gratitude, and the ability to say yes to joy, to happiness, and to the goodness in this world. And then to appreciate how joy begets joy. How the joy of appreciative joy is the joy in someone else's joy. There's our joy in experiencing it. And then there's a third kind of joy, which is the joy of opening to it and appreciating it, and we can almost think of it as a gift to the person, to others. So it's just a joy that keeps growing.

Today we'll specifically do the meditation on appreciative joy. We'll start with a category of a person for whom it's easy to have appreciative joy—someone whose happiness, success, and good fortune are uncomplicated for you. Someone for whom you can have an empathic or a sympathetic resonance with their goodness, their well-being, their fullness, and their joy. For whom it's an uncomplicated resonance that you just are delighted by it, and you're satisfied by it.

So to assume a meditation posture, and when doing Brahma vihārā^[3] practice, sometimes the emphasis is on being comfortable in the posture. Sometimes it's maybe even useful to lean into the comfort of the meditation posture, maybe more than the alertness. Gently close the eyes or lower the gaze and take a few minutes to let your attention roam around your body, touching into the various parts of your body, those that are comfortable and pleasant, and those that are not. Let the attention float around so it doesn't linger anywhere, doesn't react, and doesn't do anything with what it touches into. It just touches in briefly and moves on.

It is a kind of generous attention that acknowledges, allows, and then moves on to be with more of who you are. And then gently take some fuller breaths that fill the rib cage. Lift the shoulders perhaps. Spread it; it opens up the back rib cage ever so slightly. And then as you exhale, relax all of that. When you come to the end of the exhale, maybe relax and let go a little bit more so there's a second phase of the exhale that briefly settles you deep into your belly. Let your breathing return to normal. Continue for some breaths to feel the expansion, the filling of the inhale, and the relaxing and letting go of the body on the exhale. Both the inhales and the exhales are grounding you in your body.

Become aware of any tension, pressure, or tightness associated with your thinking—the physical tension that I call the "thinking muscle." Feel it on the inhale; just allow it to be there. On the inhale, and on the exhale, let it relax and soften.

As you relax the thinking muscle on the exhale, as you come to the end of the exhale, settle more fully into your body so that whatever thinking is left is clearly part of the wholeness and fullness of your whole body-mind. Thinking is not prioritized; it's a piece of the whole that can relax.

Now bring to mind some person that you know directly or indirectly, personally or from a distance, for whom it's easy for you to appreciate. Easy for you to be delighted, to feel just a simple joy that they're happy, have good fortune, or that they have such goodness or kindness. If you visualize well, you might visualize the person with a happy face and happy eyes. Or you might remember a time or a situation where you most clearly experienced this person's joy, happiness, or good fortune in a way that relaxed something in you, where you appreciate the person and their qualities. Maybe there's even a gratitude that we live in a world where this kind of goodness is present.

Rather than doubting, questioning, or hesitating, as you exhale or inhale—whichever is best for you—say yes to this joy, the joy of this person, and maybe your joy of knowing it. Gently and quietly, the fullness of this appreciative joy might fill out even more. Quietly, gently, let the soft, quiet mind give expression to a deep wish. "May your happiness continue. May your good fortune and success continue."

Maybe choosing one of those sentences: "May your happiness continue." Let it be like dropping a pebble onto the surface of a calm lake, and a beautiful ripple spreads out. Like the lake says yes to the pebble. "May your happiness continue." Dropping it into your heart, your body, to feel the body's expression of joy, delight, appreciation, and gratitude. Maybe saying your sentence with the exhale, giving yourself over, immersing yourself for these few minutes in this practice of appreciative joy as if it's the only thing you need to do for the next few minutes.

Staying close to this joy. Whatever way you can get close, feeling the joy of others, your own joy at their joy, the joy of wishing that it continues for them. So that the pleasure of the joy keeps welcoming your attention here. Stay here. Feel this. Enter into this joy with your whole being.

For another minute, do not doubt joy. Do not doubt that it's all right to give yourself fully. Listen to whatever joy you feel in the joy of others—the delight, the appreciation, the gratitude, the yes. For a minute, you don't need to give heed to fear or envy or other topics.

As we come to the end of this meditation, see if you can expand that appreciation, gratitude, and joy out into the world. Not worrying if you have to have a reason for it. Simply, it's good for you to radiate, to open, and to soften into a broad appreciative joy where you wish for everyone who has joy, who has success, who has well-being, "May it continue. May I share it so that it has a better chance to continue. May my appreciation contribute to you having more room, all of you, more room for your own joy, your own delight, and happiness. May all happiness everywhere continue. May all happiness be allowed to be there safely and peacefully. May the ways people are happy not be threatened or taken away. May clean, good happiness be free to live and fill everyone's heart. May this world know more happiness and joy."

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (60) Appreciative Joy for Easy Person

Hello and welcome to this first talk of the week. No, the second week we're doing muditā, appreciative joy. Yes, last week was meant to be laying down the foundation, all the foundational pieces for appreciating it, knowing it, and recognizing it. With that, now we're ready to practice it, to do the practice of appreciative joy. That is one of the four divine abodes, Brahma vihārās.

There's a classic way of practicing each of these where we bring to mind a person or people for whom the particular form of love is evoked that we feel it easily. Then we take that easy way of feeling it, grow it, develop it, and give ourselves to it more fully.

In doing that, the principle is to always start with a person that's easiest to do it with. It's easy; it inspires this particular love the easiest for you. So it's easy to connect to it. There's less likely reservations, doubt, or resistances to doing it. It's just natural, almost, to feel it. Then to begin exploring what it's like to let it flow, let it fill you, let it be stronger, and let it be more and more continuous.

As a meditation practice, this is called a samādhi. When there's a continuity of just giving ourselves to this one thing during the time of the meditation. Some people call it to be immersed in it, to be absorbed in it, to be embodied within it, to feel the embodiment of it and just breathe with it, feel it, give it over. Let the experience of it be the primary activity.

To do this in the beginning, it helps to do it with someone that is really easy. For appreciative joy, someone that is natural to feel delight and joy in. Sometimes people have a hard time finding someone because everyone has mixed qualities and we have mixed feelings about them maybe. But the art of it is finding the person for whom it's easiest. It can still be mixed.

Maybe because the person is happy or recently expressed their happiness and delighted in something. Maybe the person has a certain kind of integrity and goodness that inspires you and is meaningful for you. Thinking about this person, somehow you connect to how this person brings you delight, sometimes even relief that such a person exists in the world. Sometimes the appreciation and gratitude for a person like this can grow when maybe we realize how few people like this we have in our life. You might want to do it for some people, but wait, there are challenges, there are tensions, they have some difficult sides. And sometimes just wow, here is someone for whom it's easy. Isn't this wonderful? Isn't this special?

And then to stay close to that, and let the whole mind become settled, stable, and absorbed continuously in just this, being that as if there's nothing else you need to do. Of course, there are all kinds of ways the mind gets pulled into other things and pulled into other feelings. There might be strong underlying feelings of fear or anxiety that have a lot of authority and a lot of momentum, and of course it can feel like we can't sit there and be feeling joy. There are dangers in the world and anxiety to pay attention to. The idea here is to not believe the authority that it's necessary to give ourselves over and get absorbed in anxiety or fear. We don't have to be opposed to it either. But this is not the time to give ourselves to it. This is the time to give ourselves to joy. So you might even say thank you to your anxiety and say, "No, just not right now. I'll get to you later." Here, now.

Some hindrances to this joy might arise as we're doing it. A classic one is envy, feeling, "This can't be that this person has joy," or "I want that." So it's jealousy or envy. Recognize that and again, you don't have to necessarily argue or struggle with it. Just say, "Not now. We'll give you full attention later when we're ready for mindfulness of envy and jealousy. But for now, thank you, I'll just let you be on the side here. You can be peripheral and I'm giving myself over to this appreciative joy."

Another hindrance is a kind of giddiness, a shallow excitement and bubbly joy that is more agitating than it is settling. For this to become a samādhi of appreciative joy, there's a deep settling and opening. It's very sweet and harmonious and there's unification. It's a gathering of ourselves around this one thing, like this is where we settle, this is where we find our wholeness. We're not fragmented, we're not agitated, we're not bubbly—that's more on the surface of things. But there's a feeling of depth, of being here in a deep way.

Practicing appreciative joy, even if it's just for this week, giving yourself to this practice is a way of expanding our capacity for joy. Expanding our capacity for samādhi, of being able to do something in an undistracted and undivided way. That's part of the joy of samādhi which compounds the joy of appreciative joy: that we are no longer divided between the different factions within us, the different forces, the different pools of thinking, of thoughts, of ideas, of imagination. We're not distracted by it. We have undivided, undistracted attention just here. To cultivate it with any healthy thing benefits us in other ways in our life as well.

Some people cultivate appreciative joy, the samādhi of mettā^[4], karuṇā^[5], and muditā, as a preparation for doing mindfulness practice. They can get focused and concentrated doing the Brahma vihārās, and then they bring that stable focused attention to doing their mindfulness practice. So the mindfulness practice benefits from that samādhi.

I'd encourage you for this week to spend time during the day thinking about or recognizing who are the people in your life that have some degree of happiness and joy. Maybe it's very particular for a particular event. Maybe something happens today that you see how delighted and happy they are. Maybe it's something as simple as they see a delightful animal and just feel so delighted and happy at the activities of the animal, and they feel joy and happiness. It's so different for them because often they don't have that. And now here they have it. So you kind of take it in, you appreciate it, you make room for it, you share in the joy, and maybe even have a kind of silent wish: "May it continue for them," in which you don't distract them from it.

They're appreciating, they're feeling joy at seeing children play in the park, and you appreciate it for a moment, and then you say, "Well, that's all fine and good, but do you realize how, you know, some world difficulty?" and you're distracting them. You're changing the topic. But what is it like to stay on topic with the joy, their happiness, and be able to share in it, delight in it, and join them in it?

This samādhi of appreciative joy can be strengthened and become stronger, more practiced, if we begin searching for places to have appreciative joy in our daily life. The samādhi of appreciative joy gives us a greater capacity to share in the joy of others, the delight of others in real time when it's happening for a particular reason. It is a way to realize how much joy begets joy.

This is a great gift we can give to the world: that we can enjoy other people, appreciate them, and thereby they feel seen, they feel appreciated, and their joy has more chance to continue to live in them. In some way, we are contributing to a world of more happiness than suffering.

I don't think we need to worry that we're somehow going to become imbalanced in joy or we're not going to see what's really going on in the world. All the suffering... the suffering is always going to be there waiting for us, ready for us. The ability to relax, open, and be available to appreciative joy will prepare us to have a healthy opening and an ability to be present for suffering as well in a good, healthy way.

So appreciative joy is a wonderful practice, and that's what we'll be doing this week. Thank you.