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Introduction

A couple of words to end this meditation before switching to the talk. Because of the nature of these sixteen steps of Anapanasati^[1], there is more to teach as we go along. So maybe I will be talking and guiding more in meditation than usual.

What you might want to consider, if it works for your life, is to meditate a second time during the day, even if it is just ten or fifteen minutes or another half an hour. Perhaps having a little more practice with what we are doing in this guided meditation, and allowing more of it to percolate and develop, might support you more when you come back to the guided meditation. You might also appreciate the time to have more silence to explore this on your own.

Mindfulness of Breathing (19) Meditative Joy and Happiness

Continuing on the sixteen steps of breathing meditation that the Buddha taught. This comes from a variety of places in the discourses of the Buddha. The most common place is a text called the Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing, which is in a collection called the Middle Length Discourses^[2]. There have been a variety of complex books explaining or describing this. The descriptions of the sixteen steps are really just like CliffNotes; they are just brief sentences. Different meditation teachers will have a slightly different take or explanation of how these work or what they are, which is appropriate. There are many techniques, and these are just placeholders for a whole universe of experience.

We are coming into the fifth and sixth steps of Anapanasati. The fifth step says one trains—in other words, one practices. Like one practices the alphabet to really learn it, doing it over and over again, one trains. One trains that as one is breathing in, one experiences joy. As one breathes out, one experiences joy. And then the sixth step is: breathing in, one experiences happiness; breathing out, one experiences happiness.

These words for joy and happiness, some people will translate differently. The famous translator Bhikkhu Bodhi^[3] translates joy as "rapture," and what I translate as happiness, he translates as "pleasure." The difference between these two is that the joy factor is something that is a little bit energizing. It can be quite strong, but it is more like a thrill in the body, a delight. It is a flow of energy or pleasure in the body that is uplifting and delightful, bringing a lightening feeling.

Then the next one, what I call happiness and he calls pleasure, is when the energetics of joy quiet down. The pleasure of the joy, the happiness of the joy, remains as something more subtle, something that has more sense of contentment.

Some people get quite attached to the energetics of joy. Sometimes this feeling of ecstasy and rapture can be very strong. Cascading waves of joy can course through our body, and it can be quite intense. But sooner or later, people get a little tired of the energetics of it. Then the upwelling energy begins to settle and quiet, and there is a state shift. In retrospect, we see that the joy has a mental quality, a mental energetics to it. When it settles, we are more subtle in the body, and there is a feeling of contentment, well-being, and tranquility in the body. For me, that feels like a very sublime kind of happiness. Because it is more physical, some translators like to translate it as pleasure, as it doesn't have the mental energy as well.

The operating verb is "one experiences." You could just as well translate the Pali language word here as "one feels." Elsewhere, the Buddha says when this kind of pleasure or joy begins to surface, one allows oneself to feel it in such a way that it spreads through the body. As I said yesterday, the Buddha said this kind of pleasure or joy is not to be feared. It is not to be dismissed or belittled. It is actually quite a healthy thing to experience. Some people find it very healing when they feel it.

It creates a context in the body and the heart to better be present for what is difficult. It is not a denial of what is painful in our lives, difficult emotions, or what is happening in the world around us. But it is easier to be present for it without falling victim to it, being oppressed by it, suffering even more from it, or feeling self-pity. Because we have this goodness, this joy, happiness, and well-being in which to hold the challenges of our lives.

This joy and well-being that comes in this step comes largely from being absorbed, intimate, and continuous with the experience of breathing. It also comes when there is a sense of wholeness, where everything is included and nothing is being held at bay. The earlier steps of the body have to do with really feeling and relaxing the body. When the body is tense, it is in a certain way not whole; we are cut off from parts of it. But as we feel the body and relax it, there is a feeling of wholeness, of gathering together.

That gathering together and becoming whole is what contributes to the joy arising. It is like we are creating the channels and openings for this well-being to be there. That can come when we start becoming really intimate, connected, or continuous in our attention. The awareness itself gets gathered together to really be in the present moment with the breathing, as opposed to thoughts jumping around about what is for dinner, what we are doing tomorrow, or what we did yesterday. The mind itself now centers on the experience of the body just breathing.

This centering in the body breathing brings the joy or the delight of knowing the problems of our lives—the preoccupations, agitations, and anxieties that are fed and perpetuated by thoughts—begin to quiet down. Just that is a relief. Then, the combination of awareness's intimacy with the whole experience of breathing in and the wholeness of the body tends to produce a sense of goodness from the inside out. "Goodness" is my generic name for a whole family of things we might feel: joy, delight, satisfaction, contentment, pleasure, and thrill.

These wonderful feelings come for no good reason regarding what is outside in the world. Nothing has to be better in the world. It just comes because of this intimacy, this gathering together, this harmonizing of our whole being that can come when we are really present here.

The first four steps of Anapanasati can take a long time to do. They have a lot to do with finding ourselves really present here in a whole, embodied, and inclusive way. So it is not a narrow, tight little concentration, but rather a centering where everything is included.

The image I have for it is a big bowl. If you take a marble and drop it into this big bowl, it will go up, down, and around. If you lean into the bowl and push the marble, you can just keep it going; it keeps spinning forever if you keep pushing it. But if we stop pushing it, slowly it will come to rest at the center at the bottom of the bowl. The whole bowl is there, but the marble is resting at the center.

The same thing happens with our attention, our thoughts, and our awareness. We keep pushing the marbles in our mind with our thoughts, our involvement, our interest, and our reactivity to things. The thinking mind just spins and gets distracted. But as we leave it alone, everything begins to settle and gather together. We support it with our practice of intimacy and getting close to the breathing. With time, we find we get centered at the bottom of the bowl, centered on the breathing. This starts becoming a very pleasant and enjoyable experience, and the joy factors begin bubbling up from within.

The Buddha's description of this, as I mentioned recently, is that of an underwater spring flowing up into a lake. It just flows up from the inside and spreads out. For example, sometimes you can feel with the inhale that it is almost like there is an underwater spring deep in the torso, right down near the base of the body or the base of the chest. As we breathe in, there is an upwelling feeling of this. As we exhale, perhaps there is a feeling of it flowing all back down again and flowing out. There is a flow of this pleasure, this energetics, this lightness.

These feelings can be quite subtle when they begin happening. It is good to recognize them and realize, "Oh, this is actually a good thing to pay attention to." Don't look for it when it is not there. Don't try to manufacture it, and don't feel like you have to have it. This fifth and sixth step of Anapanasati only happens sometimes.

The core practices are the first four steps, and it is highly beneficial just to stay with them for a long time. In a sense, the longer we stay with the first four, the stronger foundation we allow ourselves to have for what follows. But unless you learn about this potential for joy and pleasure as part of the meditation practice, you might not appreciate or recognize it when it happens. Then you won't include it or let it spread and open, receiving it through your body.

All this requires some modicum of a quiet mind. It doesn't have to be completely quiet; there can be some light thoughts in the background. Don't be at war with your thoughts and think you must not think at all. That just produces tension. But there is a quieting that happens as we practice mindfulness of breathing.

I hope you will have opportunities through the day and through meditation to appreciate, value, and enjoy yourself breathing. Thank you very much.