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Be, See, Free, We (7 of 10) Happiness

There was a monk from Thailand who would come to Spirit Rock to teach sometimes to retreats or different teachings. Many people would come to hear him, and the meditation hall there would be full. He would enter into the hall after everyone was already there. He'd enter from the back of the hall and walk up the aisle to the front. He didn't know much English. He knew some, but as he entered the hall and walked down the aisle, he would exclaim in a loud, booming voice, "Happy, happy, happy." That wasn't the usual way that things began at Spirit Rock. With him saying it, I think everyone kind of perked up and smiled, and were delighted at what he was saying.

In the time of the Buddha, the Buddha was recognized as being the happy one. There were many titles the Buddha had; one of them was he was the happy one. His community of monastics were apparently recognized by people round about as being happy, joyful, and smiling. You can read that in the ancient texts, but it's easy to read those ancient texts, especially in English translation, and not pick up on how much joy, happiness, and well-being is integral to the Buddha's teachings, and also the spirit of what the Buddha was trying to do.

There are all these words in Pali^[1] that are words of well-being that are integral to the path of liberation. Last week in these 7:00 a.m. sittings we talked about the gladness pentad: gladness, joy, and happiness. There's also contentment and bliss, the bliss of blamelessness. I love the topic of contentment. Contentment is a wonderful feeling of well-being. And there are words, concepts, or experiences not automatically associated with well-being or happiness that provide a tremendous sense of well-being. Tranquility. The embodied tranquility that comes with practice is like a healing force within the body that feels so good to experience. The embodied peacefulness that's possible to feel feels so good. And some of these experiences of joy and happiness in the ancient texts are described as being quite intense. Some of the most intense forms of joy, rapture, and happiness a person can experience come from doing this Buddhist practice.

Here in the modern world, many people have an ambivalent relationship with happiness. There are some people who are afraid of it and are reluctant to feel too happy because they're afraid it's a setup. They fear that if they're really happy, they're going to be really disappointed, betrayed, or have to experience the opposite in some difficult way. So, better not be happy to begin with, because then you won't be disappointed. There are people who feel that they don't deserve to be happy, that other people are suffering so much, and so in that context, it feels wrong to be happy when other people are miserable or challenged a lot. And sometimes there are certain social situations, some families, where love is conveyed by worrying for each other. Only by worrying, or occasionally only by being angry at the world around us, is there a bonding and connection within the family. So you have to participate in the shared complaining, the shared hostility to the world around because then we create our tribe, we create our consensus of being united.

There are many forces, many more than I can mention, of why happiness is not prioritized or not allowed. Buddhist practice and teaching, I'd like to suggest, is a challenge to all of that. It challenges us to maybe take a risk, take the chance to cultivate well-being and happiness. Sometimes it takes courage to do that. Sometimes to develop happiness goes against many of the currents of what's expected, what's wanted, what's valued, or what we think is important. There's also a lot of negativity bias that many of us have where we tend to notice what's wrong. We tend to be worried that something bad is going to happen, worried about difficulty. The chronic anxiety that many people have are feelings and sensations that don't allow room for happiness. It kind of crowds the psychic mental space. And so we don't notice the simple happinesses and well-beings that are here.

I have been doing a lot of biking recently. That's mostly my main mode of transportation these days, and I really enjoy it and find a lot of joy in the biking. But yesterday I had an occasion to drive my car, and I thought to myself, "You know, I enjoy riding the bicycle so much. Is it possible for me to relax into the driving and enjoy the driving in a way that I normally don't?" I found it was actually relatively easy for me. I felt kind of cozy in this little cab and safe, kind of flowing along. I felt maybe like someone from 120 years ago, when the first cars were being made, just delighted and thrilled at the ability to roll across these streets at this amazing speed. I was probably going 25 miles an hour. It didn't take much to kind of get a whole different perspective of driving where I just felt comfort and delight in sitting there in this comfortable chair, sitting back and being carried along by these four wheels.

Now, the question is: in this 7-minute drive that I took, or less maybe, allowing myself to feel this delight and happiness and just contentment, was that unrealistic of me to do? Was that selfish and indulgent to do that? Was that somehow ridiculously sentimental, or a ridiculous waste of time to enjoy and appreciate a little drive? After all, I was polluting the air. I was using up resources and I was contributing to the decay of the globe and climate change. I could have easily just been depressed. Here I am driving a car and causing all these problems. I'm responsible, and I really needed to take responsibility and feel the weight and the burden of the damage I'm doing, because how could I ever do differently if I don't really get depressed about driving?

So, in those five minutes that I had, what was the best use of that time? Was it better to be preoccupied by the next activity I was doing and hardly even take in the opportunity of driving in a happy way? Was it better to be depressed about all the harm that I was doing in those five minutes? Or was there something valuable about taking those five minutes to feel some sense of delight and contentment and joy? I think there are times when the last choice is the best choice. The last choice prepares us for the world in a better way. The last choice allows us to address some of the important, difficult challenges of our life much better than if we're burdened, suffering, feeling heavy all the time, or depressed all the time. I use that example of yesterday because it was a relatively small, incidental event in the course of the whole day to have that little joy of driving. I think many times driving I wouldn't have availed myself of it. I wouldn't have allowed myself that possibility. But there it was. It was nurturing, nourishing, and satisfying. It created a very different feeling in my mind and heart than if I was driving in other ways.

To develop happiness and well-being, it is necessary to begin to let go of clinging, let go of grasping, let go of resisting. It's not possible to have a healthy sense of joy, delight, gladness, and happiness without a movement in the direction of liberation and freedom. A movement in the direction of openness, of allowing energies and forces within us to bubble up and move through us without us controlling it. It's often said that we can control how much pleasure we feel by the foods we eat, what we drink, paying someone to give us a massage, or going to do something that's physically enjoyable and pleasant. But you can't do the same for happiness. Happiness must include some kind of willingness to open and allow some deeper source within us than simply having pleasure. Our capacity to feel happy, to feel joyful, is a precious resource. It's not a crime to be happy, and it's not an incidental thing to be happy. It actually brings all kinds of good qualities to our attention to the world and to our mindfulness. The deeper realms or deeper connections of Buddhist practice are built on a foundation of well-being.

When I was in Burma practicing on Vipassana^[2] retreats, I remember once in a long retreat I was starting to have a lot of joy and happiness. Every time I sat, every time I did walking meditation, there was a strong upsurging of happiness and well-being that happened. It came a lot because I'd given myself over so fully to being absorbed in the activity of walking or sitting. Like being absorbed in a good craft, playing an instrument, or reading a good book, there can be a sense of contentment and well-being. So, it was just really there.

Then one day I was doing walking meditation, and something opened in my mind in a new way. I was kind of stunned, in awe, shocked almost, that I saw something in my mind—the nature of my own suffering—in a deeper, fuller way than I had ever seen it before. I had no idea how pervasive suffering and stress are in the whole mental system. But more importantly for me, I realized, Wow, if this is true for me, there's so much more suffering in the world than I ever imagined. That could be a depressing thing to experience. It was actually the opposite. It wasn't inspiring, and it didn't make me happy to see it, but because I was feeling all this happiness and joy, that was the container, that was the context in which to see this immensity of suffering. It was more okay to do it. It was like, This is the truth. It's good to see the truth. I wasn't burdened by it. I wasn't diminished by it. And it wasn't a painful thing exactly to see. It was actually inspiring for me. Yes. To be honest and see this world clearly for what it is, that's the way forward. That's onward leading.

To cultivate and develop well-being, to allow that to come, is partly a result of availing ourselves of the amount of well-being, joy, and happiness which might already be here. That is not found because of the negativity bias, our preoccupations, or because we haven't trained ourselves to be willing to open and recognize how we can be content or joyful here. There are all these reasons for that. But not to be Pollyannaish, so that the eyes and hearts and minds can open so we can see this world realistically. And so that we can open to suffering and plumb to the depths of it, where we'll find our freedom and liberation, the mahasukha^[3], the great happiness.

So, thank you. I hope I haven't made you unhappy with a talk like this. [Laughter]

For those of you who are participating on YouTube, you're welcome to come at 4:00 California time today as I give this 4:00 talk to this retreat. It's kind of continuing the series that I'm doing this week. At 4:00 we'll do the characteristic of dukkha^[4], of suffering. Hopefully today can be a day of happiness until this topic comes up at 4:00. Thank you all very much.