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Roots of Dharmic Happiness

Introduction

So tonight I'd like to talk about the roots of dharmic happiness. As an introduction, if you're a visualizer, imagine that you're on a path winding through an ancient, cathedral-like forest canopy, like a rainforest or something similar. It's very quiet, with a very deep silence. There are maybe a few bird calls, and light is filtering through the leaves. There's a sense of presence, growing things, and reverence.

As you walk, the path turns a corner and you come upon a clearing. In the middle of the clearing, there's this massive, beautiful Bodhi Tree^[1]. The path circumambulates around the tree so that you can see these big, sloping partitions of the tree going down deep into the earth—the roots. There's a feeling of silence, awe, and deep trust in the majesty of this place.

Trust in the Path

Tonight I'm going to talk about some important roots, which are sources of dharmic development and happiness on the path. These are attitudes that are onward-leading in both personal and spiritual maturation and joy. One is a kind of trust or confidence in the path itself, and the other three are called the "three wholesome roots" in Buddhism: non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion.

First, let's explore the trust or confidence in the unfolding of the path of practice. There are two Pali words commonly used that translate to "trust" or "confidence," and they're both very closely related to the word for tranquility or calm, passaddhi^[2]. Those two words are saddhā^[3] and aveccapasāda^[4]. Saddhā is "to rest the heart upon." It's a certain kind of trust, a settling at the heart. Aveccapasāda is often called "verified faith." It's the taste of something good that's already unfolded or come from the practice—some little taste of freedom, or maybe a big taste of freedom. I am talking a little bit more about the first one here—that settling of the heart, the trusting in the path—but in either case, they involve trusting the process, the intrinsic journey of the joy itself.

Just being on a path can be satisfying. Maybe some of you have reference points for this. When I was a kid, I went hiking on the Appalachian Trail with my parents and my sister for weeks. The act of hiking itself was really part of what was enjoyable: being surrounded by trees, nature, silence, rhythms, and water for all that time. Occasionally we would come upon these viewpoints, and they weren't that different from the sorts of places you could drive up to in the Appalachian mountain range, but the view was so much more beautiful because we had sunk into it. We were in the process; we were working with it. It's a completely different experience than driving up, parking, hopping out of the car, taking a picture, and going on. There's a satisfaction that deepens as we commit more to the path, commit more to the process.

Trust can also come as a sense of trusting the benefits of training the heart and mind. The conditions of our lives are rarely chosen in their entirety. Some of them we choose, but a lot of them just come to us: genetics, happenstance, culture, family. But still, our choices matter. They create new conditions. The dharma teacher Susie Harrington has a simile I really like. It's of a kayaker going down whitewater rapids. The kayaker doesn't choose the way the river cuts through the land, or even the amount of water in the river. She certainly doesn't choose how intense the rapids are, or the eddies, or the fallen trees, or any of the challenges. Yet, choice matters. There's a skill in operating that kayak. Even though all the momentum is going in one direction in the stream of life, she dances through it. There's a way through.

So this sense of trust can also be trusting the unfolding process while making wise choices. Committing to virtue, to goodness, is a really powerful form of conditioning. There's a power and a purpose in putting that boat in the water, in choosing the path.

The Three Wholesome Roots

The next three foundations for dharmic development and happiness are actually called the "three wholesome roots" in the teachings. They are, as I mentioned earlier, non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion. This kind of clunky wording is classic ancient Buddhism. It's often framed in the negative, or in the absence of the negative. It's via negativa, and there's some wisdom in that. Non-greed encompasses a huge range of things. It's not just generosity or contentment; it's all these different ways of being.

I will talk about a bit of the range of each of them, but as I'm talking, just notice what branches of each root you might recognize or see in your own heart, your mind, and your life.

Non-Greed

With non-greed, there's a range of meanings. The first is simple contentment. Contentment in being on a path, contentment in showing up for yourself for the moment.

It can also range towards generosity. Cāga^[5] is the Pali word for that, and it is the primary practice of most Asian lay Buddhists. Sometimes it's their only practice, and it is a powerful one. It develops a sense of non-self-centeredness, and it's a type of letting go. It's also really powerful for relationship building. There is a quote that is actually on one of my walls: "Kindness and giving creates love." I'm not necessarily talking about romantic love here, of course, but connection. Connection between us. There's this sense of the open hand, the gesture of offering, the open heart, and the letting go that happens through this.

Another dimension of non-greed is simplicity itself. The simplicity of wants and needs, the simplicity of one's schedule. This leads to a word that's not very popular in English: renunciation. Renunciation is another level of non-greed. It begins with not needing. It's less about giving away and more about not needing to take, not needing to grab more. This is very counter-cultural in our society, where we get all these messages: "More, more, and more. You need to buy this or get that to be this way." This is instead a sense of enoughness. Just enough. It's okay.

This kind of commitment to simplicity opens up time. Time is a gift that allows for extra space. Excess baggage doesn't have to be taken with us; it's traveling light on the journey, so to speak. I learned this in a really powerful way maybe fifteen years ago. I was traveling on an extended trip through South Asia, and at the time I was quite injured, so I couldn't take very much stuff even though I was gone for almost a year. I had a carry-on wheelie and an ergonomic, very light backpack. I couldn't put a lot in it. That taught me so much because, on that trip, occasionally I would get things, and I realized every time I got something, I had to give something else up because I couldn't carry all of it. As the trip went on, gradually I was shedding more and more, giving more away. As many veteran travelers know, it's kind of a pain to manage all that stuff, to track it all, to keep it safe. It actually does not lead to a better experience. It's a little bit harder to see in our daily lives, but there's truth there too. How much time do we spend keeping track of all of our stuff and managing it?

This is true of thinking and the information we take in, too. The endless grasping for news or internet information can be stressful. So there is enoughness: "Okay, this is enough. I've seen enough headlines for today. I've seen enough social media for the year." Psychologists talk about the circle of concern and the circle of action, or efficacy. It's two concentric rings in a diagram. A very valid predictor of human happiness is how close those circles are to each other. If my circle of concern is massive and my sense of efficacy or action is tiny, what does that lead to? Overwhelm, fatalism, stress. It's not to say we shouldn't be aware of what's happening around us, but we need to balance those two. Take actions that link those two, and have a wise diet about this stuff.

It's a kind of simplicity that I've really come to value, and it does quiet the inner mental chatter as well. It's hard to have a peaceful evening meditation if all I've done is listen to the news for the last two hours.

The simplicity of thinking also involves a simplicity in our relationship to life, to our interpretations of things. Our minds are interpretation, meaning-making organs. That's what minds do. And yet, there are ways of having a simpler relationship to what that is, and to maybe not taking it so seriously all the time. I remember one of my teachers used to say, "Yada yada, blah blah blah," when he was talking about the mind, because it just goes on. There's a way of stepping back and being simple with that. Over hours, days, weeks, and years of practice, the mind starts to do it less. I was really struck by this at one point. I don't remember when it was in my practice, but I realized the inner narrator just doesn't talk very often anymore. I was like, "No wonder there's so much more space. Wow." That can start to happen, and then everything else opens up.

There are times it comes up again, of course. For us humans, that's what minds do. But even then, there's the distance. It's like the difference between being inches away from a flat-screen television versus being on the other side of the room and having a lot more space and context—or maybe even being outside the house, glancing at the TV from across the street through the window. We don't have to be glued to the content of our thoughts when there's simplicity. It's just thinking, conditioning, or mental habit.

And then there's a simplicity of awareness itself, which is more of an attribute of mindfulness and lucid awareness, which I'll talk a little bit more about later. But all of those things—contentment, generosity, simplicity, renunciation—are all branches of the root of non-greed.

Non-Hatred

Next, we get to non-hatred. Avera^[6] is the Pali term. Non-hatred has a very esteemed place in the Buddhist teachings; it's a really big deal. It's often a cognate for mettā^[7]—goodwill, loving-kindness—and that's a beautiful quality. But it also encompasses a whole range of non-hostility.

Ajahn Pasanno, on a mettā retreat early in my practice, noted, "You don't have to start out by loving all living beings. That's a really high bar. Why don't you practice not being averse to them quite so often?" That itself is a high bar, depending on the being, my mind, and the day!

This broad flavor of non-aversion and non-hatred includes respect, non-contempt, equanimity, appreciation, kind curiosity, all the way up through goodwill, benevolence, altruism, and compassion. Maybe you can think of others. Even not particularly caring—just letting someone be—is a form of non-hatred. It is allowing.

There's a distinction that has become clearer to me over the time I've practiced this path. Even the smallest movement of the heart or mind can be considered an action. Sometimes in meditation, you might actually feel the "about-to-ness" of getting up, or the leaning forward of wanting, or the leaning back of not wanting. These really subtle actions aggregate into broader life actions. To quote Saint Thomas Aquinas, "To love is to will the good of the other." So there's an active component to it.

Compassion, anukampā^[8], is the natural compassion that arises. It's a quivering or movement of the heart. It is caring, and it holds an implicit wish to respond. You may not be able to respond depending on the context or the circumstances, but that movement of the heart is there.

This kind of love, compassion, and kindness belongs to all humanity. It doesn't just belong to Buddhism or any single religious tradition; it runs through all of them and underpins all of them. Whether it's "love thy enemy," mettā for all beings, or simple generosity and charity for those who need it, these all interweave. The ultimate aim in this tradition of mettā is to hold everyone in that kindness without wishing harm on any of them. That is avera, non-harming, ahiṃsā^[9]. These are powerful intentions to cultivate and powerful moments to experience.

What is it like to hold that intention without harming or deprecating oneself when it's not there? When it's not actionable? When I might want to be feeling love and kindness, but what I'm actually feeling is grumpiness, irritation, or even rage? Can there be kindness toward the mind or heart that isn't feeling kind right now? Is that possible? It requires discernment not to buy into the unwholesome tendency, but instead to honestly turn towards it with awareness.

This kind of practice strengthens the muscle of emotional and spiritual maturity. It requires discernment—understanding the subtle differences in what's happening in the mind or what causes certain reactions in our hearts.

There's a story I love from a podcast, Invisibilia, from some seasons back. It's the story of a family having a cookout in their backyard on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. They've got something grilling, food on the table, and everybody's hanging out having a good time with a little bit of wine. It starts getting towards dusk in this semi-urban environment. Out of the dusk, from the space between the houses, comes a man with a knife intending to rob them. He brandishes the knife and demands money. The hostess, without missing a beat, stands up, smiles at him, and says, "Welcome. Would you like some food? Here, have a glass of wine." The man is dumbfounded, completely perplexed. He was young, and the way the story goes, his lips started quivering. He accepted the wine, put away the knife, and ran off. They didn't see him again, but the next morning when they were finishing their cleanup, they found that wine glass empty, very carefully laid against the side of the house. He didn't even take the glass; he made sure not to break it.

That is the power of mettā, of kindness, in the face of something quite different. In psychology, this is called a non-complementary response. When someone comes at you with rage, what's the most natural thing any of us would feel? Fear or anger. There might be a fight, flight, or freeze response. It can be an extraordinary jiu-jitsu of the moment to have a completely different response than what instinct calls out.

I've discovered this in my work as a chaplain, too. At one of the hospitals where I trained, I was called down to the waiting room. They did it once by accident, I think, because the person who usually dealt with such things wasn't available, and after they figured out that it worked, they kept doing it! A very, very upset family member was down there. They were yelling, spouting off angry comments, and making a real scene. I was happy to go talk to him. Security was in the background—they weren't coming up, but they were nearby in case things went south. It was absolutely amazing. Just going up to this man, very kindly meeting him, listening, eliciting all his concerns, and empathizing with his feelings... the emotion just went down. By the end of that conversation, he was praising the service. He just needed to be heard. There were issues we needed to help with too, and we did, but as far as the emotion went, it just needed to be heard and met with attention and kindness.

I want to name that this isn't always the correct or wisest response to these situations. A counter-story that Sharon Salzberg loves to tell involves her traveling in India by bicycle rickshaw in New Delhi. New Delhi is huge, busy, chaotic, and can be notoriously crime-ridden. She's heading off to see her teacher, Munindra-ji^[10], and the rickshaw turns down a side street off a massively packed flow of traffic. A man tries to jump on the rickshaw and pull Sharon and her purse off. It was terrifying. Together, she and the driver were able to fend the man off, and they made it to her teacher. Understandably very shaken, she looks at Munindra-ji and asks, "What do I do as a Buddhist in a case like that?" Munindra-ji looks at her, and with a lot of love in his eyes, he says, "My dear, with every ounce of loving-kindness in your heart, you hit him over the head with your umbrella." [Laughter]

Sometimes a really strong "no" is the wisest thing. This is not advocating being a doormat. Non-hatred does not mean opening ourselves up to violence or abuse. It's more about the attitude with which we hold the boundary, and having the discernment to know when a non-complementary response is appropriate, and when a really strong "no" is the most helpful response.

Non-Delusion

That brings me to non-delusion. Discernment, wisdom, and clarity all fall into the non-delusion category. From a Buddhist perspective, one could say this starts with sati^[11]—mindfulness and awareness—which eventually matures into clarity, discernment, and wisdom.

Sati is an information-gathering process. Mindfulness has many nuances, and one could give an entire talk on just what it means, but one aspect is to be present with what actually is. That is a really powerful underpinning for any kind of wisdom or non-delusion. If I'm caught in the virtual reality machine running in my head, my chances of non-delusion are a lot smaller than if I'm present with what's actually unfolding: what the eyes see, the ears hear, and the body senses.

Starting with mindfulness, wherever it's at—whether occasional or intentional—can sometimes feel labored. Guilt sometimes tells us there are parts of the practice that shouldn't feel like manual labor. But all of that still starts to cultivate the conditions for non-delusion little by little. Later, it can gain momentum, become useful, and even feel completely natural. For some people, it ends up becoming a trait. It actually shifts our minds over time; that neuroplasticity shifts in really beautiful ways.

This moment-to-moment process also includes a resonance of recollecting. There's a part of mindfulness that casts back just a little bit, enough to recognize the thread between the immediate past and the present. That's where wisdom can start to come, when we see cause and effect, or how conditions affect each other. It starts to gain momentum that way. It's like moments of mindfulness gradually widening, like puddles merging together to create a pond.

There's also the recollection of our virtues in the practice. Recollecting your own virtues is a form of non-delusion. For some reason, in our culture, it's so easy for people to feel like it's important to be down on ourselves, to have some kind of critical inner voice, or to believe we won't get stuff done if we're not hard on ourselves. Recollecting the good things we've done is actually an ancient practice. It's one of the fundamental practices. That too is a form of cutting through delusion, particularly the delusion of a negative mental habit about the self. For those who are more apt to cast blame outwards, a better practice is to recollect the virtues of others. Yes, even that annoying officemate or the family member who chews wrong or has the wrong political views.

This gradually matures into the kind of discernment I alluded to before. When mindfulness starts to mature into discernment, it's likened to being the gatekeeper of a village. Keep in mind, most of the similes in the Buddha's teachings are from Bronze Age India. The gatekeeper of a village monitors all the traffic going in and out. He knows how to get to the king, is judicious about who to tell information to, and is judicious about what to pass along: "Lord, you might want to keep an eye on this gang of people."

It's similar in our minds when we monitor the in-and-out traffic. The Buddha talks about there being two kinds of thought: beneficial and unbeneficial, wholesome and unwholesome. It can be as simple as noticing the effect: Is this thought opening me up, settling me, and motivating me, or is it making me feel small, hopeless, and yucky? Is it resulting in actions that are helpful for myself and others, or actions that bring greater suffering? That's actually the definition of a wise person versus a foolish person. Any of us can be wise or foolish in any given moment, but a foolish person is engaged in actions or thoughts that bring more suffering to themselves, to others, and to the world. On a different day, that same person might be engaged in thoughts or actions that bring benefit to themselves and the world, and that is wisdom.

All of this discernment evolves into a greater wisdom. This includes a settled strength to see the opposites of the three wholesome roots—greed, hatred, and delusion, and all of their cronies and henchmen—without losing our seat and without being thrown off. Because, with the exception of very rare, fully awakened beings, all of us have some of these in our hearts. Just being human and understanding that, when held well, can actually increase compassion, empathy, connection, and wisdom.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn^[12] writes: "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." He goes on to say that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor through classes, nor between political parties, but right through every human heart.

It's what we do with it, how we relate to it, and how we act on it that matters. Some days it's more, some days it's less. You can do a ton of spiritual practice and work on yourself, and it's going to get really small. Even then, it's there. Many of you have probably heard the Dalai Lama laugh. He has this amazingly infectious laugh, kind of like a little kid's. At one point, I heard him say he laughs at seeing the selfish and sneaky parts of his own mind. The man's been practicing since he was four! When asked if his mind was fully purified, he said, "No, it tries to sneak up on me now and then, my mind." It's about holding it lightly. The tendencies start to attenuate when held lightly.

All of this starts to pull together when we notice the impact on our hearts and our relationships. Notice how we're relating to the things we don't like in ourselves, and notice the things we appreciate in ourselves and others—the non-greed, the non-hatred, the non-delusion. Because that, whether you believe in it in terms of energy or neurology, has ripple effects in our lives.

There's a second gatekeeper story, and this one is rendered in a much more human way in the ancient discourses. He's the friendly sort who talks to everybody. People ask him questions when coming into the village for the first time. One group passes by, and the head of the group says, "Tell me, what are the people like here?" The gatekeeper smiles and says, "Tell me what the people were like where you used to live." "Mean, cunning, conniving. You couldn't trust them as far as you could throw them. They were awful and rude." The gatekeeper nods. "I think you'll find people like that here."

A few hours later, another group comes by, and someone poses the exact same question: "What are the people like here? How did you find them?" The gatekeeper again asks, "How were the people where you used to live?" "Kind, generous, trustworthy. I really didn't want to leave, but my husband got this new job, and here we are. They were amazing, really good neighbors." The gatekeeper nods and says, "I think you'll find people much like that here."

Conclusion

So all of this wraps back around to trust and contentment in the path. Noticing that what we put out is a lot like what we receive—not always, but sometimes. Trusting the process of meditation, internal development, the commitment to cultivating virtue, and how that can shift things. There's a hidden, almost selfish joy with being involved in a path like this, particularly if it involves orienting around service to something bigger than we are, service to others. That can feed a light, healthy sense of a bigger picture that undercuts the greed, hatred, and delusion, and helps the roots of non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion to really grow.

Just to recap in closing: Trust in the unfolding path. Explore and express the many branches of these roots of non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion—branches like contentment, simplicity, generosity, respect, kindness, goodwill, mindfulness, and discernment. And enjoy it when you can.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Dedication

May our practice here together be a cause and condition for greater peace, happiness, patience, simplicity, goodwill, discernment, and wisdom in our lives. And may the benefits of this practice ripple out to all of the lives we touch, and all of the lives they touch, outward and outward. May all beings be happy, safe, peaceful, and free.

Thank you all for the sincerity of your practice.