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Guided Meditation: Mudita Samadhi 3

Welcome to our meditation on appreciative joy. With all the Brahma Viharas^[1], these divine forms of love in Buddhism, it can be supportive to know that it involves benefiting both self and others. There is a positive wish to love others, to wish well for others. Here in appreciative joy, it is just hoping, wishing, and aspiring that the joy and happiness others already have continues, grows, fills them, and nourishes them. It is a positive regard for them.

But we are also included in Buddhism. There is not a hard line that we only love other people. We are also allowed to feel the goodness of that intention, the goodness of appreciative joy. It brings a kind of lightness, openness, and pleasure to us to do it as well. This becomes important because there is a feedback loop between how it nourishes us, how it delights us, how it brings meditative pleasure when we do the samadhi^[2] practice, and the imagining, thinking about, and hoping for the continued happiness of someone else. You are using both to really grow and get immersed and absorbed in this appreciative joy.

Today's topic is to have appreciative joy for a friend. The principle is moving from what is easiest to what is more difficult, but that doesn't mean we have to do it fast. Choose a good friend where it is relatively easy to share in their joy and celebrate with them when things are going well. There can be complications. There are things you are troubled by with your friend, worry about, hold back on, resist, or are not quite happy about. The idea here is to find an appropriate way to have an unconditional positive regard for your friend. In the circumstances where you gaze upon them for meditation, you just want their well-being, goodness, success, and joy to continue.

Remember a time when you shared with them how happy you were that they were happy, when things were going well for them. Sometimes, it is nice to have an image or memory of them in your mind at a time when they were happy and delighted. You might imagine them at home, if they had a good family life growing up, sitting around the dining room or kitchen table with their family at a wonderful event—like a birthday breakfast—where people had positive regard and happiness, and there was love.

Recall and think about your friend in this way so that you get uplifted and a little bit delighted. That delight and pleasure becomes the fuel for wishing more for them: "May they be happy. May they continue." You are surfing on or carried with this wish, this positive regard for them: "May you be happy." Doing it in a meditative, contemplative way where the discursive mind is getting quieter allows the whole mind, the whole heart, the whole of you to participate in a calm, relaxed, and concentrated way with just this wish for their happiness. It is supported by the image, supported by your intention, and supported by your positive regard.

To begin, start with a positive regard for yourself. This is expressed in the posture you assume. The meditation posture may be a place where something really important for you has a chance to surface and to be. The way you hold yourself in meditation can be supportive and meaningful, putting aside some of the unsupportive ways you live, think, or are preoccupied. Just be here with a positive regard for yourself, with care and love. Within that positive regard, feel your body and open up into your body. It is as if positive regard is a positive sensing of the body, making room for all of what you are to be cared for and gazed upon positively, or at least kindly.

In a tender and gentle way, take a little bit fuller breaths, as if the gentle movements of breathing are movements of care and kindness. Then, perhaps take a slightly longer and slower exhale than usual. Trust into the body, relaxing, and let the breathing return to normal.

Bring to mind a good friend. Choose a friend for whom it is easy for you to feel friendship and warmth. Perhaps it is someone you have been with when they were happy, joyful, and successful in some way, and you celebrated with them or shared deep appreciation, delight, and joy. Know that they have a capacity for happiness, peace, and joy, even with their challenges. Think about how things are going well now with this friend, or find a friend for whom things are going relatively well now, so it is realistic for you to wish that their well-being and happiness continue.

Gently, in a meditative way that quiets the thinking and discursive mind and connects you to your well-wishing for your friend, say—or almost say subvocally—"May your well-being continue. May the good in your life continue. May your joy continue." It is usually good to choose just one phrase so that you can gather and connect the phrase to the well-wishing, alongside the image or memory of the person.

Feel whatever pleasure comes with sitting here like this with the wish. As I've said, when saying the phrase, perhaps the last word aligns with the beginning of the exhale, so there is a cruising, surfing, and gliding with that goodwill and joy as the exhale flows on: "May your happiness continue." Or perhaps it is a bit more involved; on the inhale, "May your happiness continue," and the exhale is an affirmation, saying "yes" to that wish. Let there be a feedback loop between your wish for them to be happy and the well-being and pleasure that this meditation might be giving you.

Harmonize your well-wishing in a rhythm of the phrases and with your breathing. With every phrase and breath, settle or open into the bodily experience of calm, pleasure, and joy. It is as if the inhale is spreading it through your body and mind, and the exhale quiets the mind, creating more room and awareness to feel the joy and the well-wishing.

As we come to the end of this sitting, bring this friend to mind again. Consider how, in the privacy of meditation, it is possible to love and have goodwill or well-wishing in an unconditional and unreserved way. Your friend doesn't have to know. This unreserved, loving appreciation of their goodness, success, and happiness doesn't require you to do anything, tell them, or put yourself in any compromising relationship with them. Take a few moments here to see how open the heart can be. Open the heart wider. For a few minutes, without reservation, practice close to an unlimited well-wishing for all beings. Wish that their joy, success, and well-being continue, grow, and expand. Whatever well-being people have, even if it is small, may it grow and expand. May your unconditional positive regard have infinite room, space, and allowance for the joy of others.

May all beings grow in their well-being. May all beings be able to expand their circle of safety. May all beings expand their capacity for happiness and peace. Whatever way people have found freedom from attachments and suffering, let's celebrate and appreciate that, and aspire that it grows and expands. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. May our positive regard contribute to that possibility. Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (62) For Friends

Hello and welcome^[3]. I am continuing with these talks on appreciative joy, where this week's emphasis is samadhi^[2:1]—meaning to really give ourselves over fully to this capacity we have for appreciative joy. Instead of giving themselves over to it, people might have some resistance because they think things might be challenging, that people will take advantage of them or misunderstand it. The wonderful thing about doing this in meditation is that it is a safe place where nothing has to be done or said. You don't have to put yourself in a situation that you might later regret. Here, you don't have any reservations. You don't hold yourself back. You put aside mental preoccupations, mental resistance, and conclusions about the world or yourself that limit you or keep you caught. This makes room for an unconditional positive regard and for your heart's capacity for well-wishing to flow through you in a full and complete way.

As a practice of appreciative joy, be careful that we don't set it up so it is only about being successful at doing it. A very important part that makes this a realistic practice is that, of course, we will come up against places where it is hard and where we do hold back. Rather than being discouraged by discovering that, the idea is to be encouraged: "Oh, this is where I get to practice. This is where I get to stretch, question, open up, or understand what is happening with me." This is built into the practice of appreciative joy because the idea is to start where it is most easy and then progressively and slowly do it where it is more difficult. There are these categories: a benefactor (where it is easy), a friend, a neutral person, an enemy, and then the final category is all beings. We can go through these categories and choose people for whom it is not so difficult to satisfy each one. If we go through it again and again, we start stretching into where it is a little bit more difficult. We see what is happening for us and explore if we can let something go, quiet down, and open up.

As we do that, we allow the joy and pleasure of this open, kind regard to nourish and fill us. We allow this dual benefiting: we wish benefits for our friend and appreciate what is going well for them, feeling their joy. In doing that, we start feeling joy and happiness ourselves. The very wish for their happiness to continue is also a good thing. So, there is this triple joy. There is even a quadruple joy that can exist, which I think is really important for Buddhist practitioners. That is a certain kind of pleasure, delight, and satisfaction in knowing we are up against where it is difficult for us—where we are kept in check, where we are resisting, or where we are holding back our love—and seeing that, "Okay, here I get to look at it. Here I get to find it and understand it."

One of the reasons why that can bring a certain degree of joy is that we have some intuition that there is another side to it that we can move towards. This is a good direction to go. Rather than being discouraged by the resistance or holding we have, we realize it is okay. We can be with that, see what is going on, see if we can get to the other side, and not limit ourselves through this.

Part of the teachings of the Buddha about these Brahma Viharas^[1:1], including appreciative joy, is that it is possible to bring them into a state and way of being where they are unlimited. To say it in a slightly more precise way—because unlimited just seems kind of too vast—it is a state where we put no limitations on ourselves. There is no holding back and no resistance. We discover what that is like, and then from that reference point of love, what we do in our regular life becomes wiser. It doesn't mean we have to put ourselves in danger or compromise our well-being for a difficult friend.

In terms of using this practice to begin stretching into that space, it could be that you have a very good friend, but they have one thing that troubles you. Almost every time you set up a schedule to meet, they come late. The question is, do you hold that against them in your meditation? Do you limit yourself in your meditation because of that? One of the growing edges of this practice is noticing if you hold yourself back with your resentment, criticism, or complaining. When you do that, you are limiting yourself and holding something in check inside. Why harm yourself, in a sense, based on someone else? It is bad enough that they are late; why make it harder for yourself? It doesn't mean that you are condoning it or necessarily accepting it, but you are not allowing yourself to be limited by it. This is growth.

With appreciative joy—meaning feeling joy in the joy and success of others—you might go through your day-to-day and look for places where you can feel, participate in, or share people's joy and success, however small. Also, start noticing where you hold back from appreciating it or saying, "Thank you," "That was really nice," "I enjoyed watching that," or "I really appreciate how well that was done." See if there are ways you can express your appreciation for what is going well for them and appreciate their joy and happiness in a way that is not too intense for them, but just enough to share it. Notice where you hold back and where you don't want to do that. See what you learn about yourself, question it, and see if there are ways of developing and growing through that.

Take time for appreciative joy. Be very careful with the insistence of a busy life, a busy mind, things you have to do, things you are supposed to think, or ways in which you occupy yourself with being entertained or having things happen. These things hold you back and prevent you from really cultivating these qualities of heart. In the long term, these qualities of heart are what will support you the most in your life. Thank you very much, and I look forward to coming back here and continuing this.