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Introduction

Warm greetings from Redwood City, the Insight Meditation Center, and I am happy to begin the week with all of you. The meditations and teachings for this week have to do with joy. As an introduction to this meditation, I'd like to read you a short passage from the sutras^[1]:

"By basing your thoughts, your mind, on the Buddha, the Dharma^[2], and the Sangha^[3], and your own virtue, you will surely attain gladness, joy, and happiness as well. Then, when you are suffused with gladness, with joy, you will make an end to suffering."

We find in these teachings of the Buddha that they are—I don't know if "suffused" is too strong of a word—but you find sprinkled throughout them an emphasis on joy, happiness, and gladness. That is an important part of the path of practice. The focus on suffering and the end of suffering is not supposed to be a stern or stoic kind of meeting with the challenges and difficulties of life. There is a way in which, certainly, it is an honest, direct contact and mindfulness of life as it is—that's essential for the Dharma—but it also goes along with the arising of these happy feelings, emotions, and states. They serve as a way of supporting a very realistic presence or attention to the challenges of this world that we live in.

So, how do these two live together, and how do they interact? That is part of the topic for this week. For the meditation today, perhaps the orientation for the practice is something that is translated as gladness—pāmojja^[4] in Pali. That is to have a little bit of focus in meditation and practice on the things about the Dharma, about the practice, and about what you've discovered through meditation that you really appreciate and value. These can bring a sense of joy, gladness, contentment, or perhaps the right word is inspiration.

What inspires you in this Dharma practice? In that quote, it is the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. There might be people in your Sangha, the practitioners, teachers, teachings, yourself, or your own practice that are a source of inspiration. Or maybe you've changed your life somewhat, and you live a life of ethical conduct, virtuous conduct. Maybe not one hundred percent as well as you could, but it is an orientation you have. The Buddha over and over again emphasizes the gladness, the joy, and the bliss that comes from the degree to which we live ethically.

Guided Meditation: Joy in Meditation

Take a meditation posture. Choose a posture that has some possibility of ease for you, but an ease that also comes with being present in a clear, alert way. If you're sitting in a chair and you're using a backrest, perhaps you can sit up a little bit more so there's a little more sense of aliveness in some part of the spine, or so that your chest is a little more open and alive.

Softly close your eyes. If this language works for you, you might take a few moments to gentle your body. A gentling, a calming; maybe as you exhale, a softening of your body. A softening, a gentling that doesn't put you to sleep, but which comes along with an appreciation of being alert, being attentive and aware. Maybe with all the nerve endings you have that pick up the sensations of the body.

As you sit here, perhaps you can bring to mind, or bring to heart, what inspires you in the Dharma. When you think about it, what brings a deep feeling of rightness? Even if there are big challenges and grief—maybe we don't talk about joy or gladness in relationship to it—there's a presence and a willingness to be present, to be with it, that has a feeling of rightness given that this is happening. Of course, it's right to be present for it in its simplicity.

Or, if there is joy or gladness, to be present for its simplicity, and to feel whatever sensations are associated with it in the body, the mind, the heart. A lightness of satisfaction. Perhaps a feeling of delightful relief, like drinking cool, refreshing water when you didn't quite realize you were thirsty, and it feels so delightful. Here, perhaps you didn't realize how good it is to sit quietly without responsibilities for the moment, without needing to do anything or fix anything, just to be here in the moment in this body.

And then, become aware of the body breathing. The rhythm of breathing. Perhaps, as you sit here, breathe with your inspiration, your joy, your gladness. Breathe with the rightness of being with the experience of the moment in its simplicity of now. Whatever is happening now, perhaps it's satisfying to experience it in the simplicity of how it is in the lived now, with a lived experience of the moment.

Breathing with it, breathing through the delight, or the joy, or the rightness. Perhaps enjoying a gentle movement of the quieting of the mind, the quieting of the thinking mind. Maybe with every exhale, allow the thinking mind to become quieter, softer. Allow the thinking mind to softly and gently think about the joy, the gladness, and the good fortune of being able to sit here. You are engaging in a practice that people have been doing for thousands of years, a practice which is on a path of goodness and freedom.

Reflections

And as we come to the end of this sitting... we live in a world that's a cooperative. We live in a world where human beings and other beings share in making this whole life possible. One of the gifts that we can give to others is, in fact, our joy, our delight, our happiness. These qualities are contagious. They provide a nice context and reference point for breathing and being in the world together with others in this cooperative of life. Finding how to have sincere and authentic joy and happiness becomes a gift not only to ourselves but to others.

May it be that through this practice, through this meditation today, as we get ready to go out into the world or have contact with others for the next twenty-four hours, that maybe we can keep close by whatever joy, delight, happiness, or inspiration we have in being alive. Being alive with the Dharma, so that we become a carrier, a transmitter, of some modicum^[5], even if it's a little bit, of joy and happiness for others.

May it be that all beings experience joy and happiness. May all beings have the conditions that allow for their heart's natural capacity for joy to be there for them. May it be that all beings taste the flavor of happiness. May all beings have the satisfaction of joy and delight. May all beings become free of suffering, and so experience Dharma joy, Dharma happiness. May all beings be happy.