I realize that yesterday's post raised a rather thorny question: is it truly possible to remain joyful all the time? Is that really a choice we can make?
First of all, I make a distinction between happiness and joy. Happiness is a transient state, dependent on conditions. Joy, on the other hand, is an expansive state and more a tendency of mind that can be cultivated. Happiness is winning the race; joy is taking pleasure in the running of it.
The hard question arises: "Is it possible or even desirable to be joyful in the face of, for instance, the death of a parent, partner, or child?" or "Is it possible or even desirable when terminally ill or in pain?" What these questions assume is that there is a value to suffering, that to fail to suffer under these circumstances would somehow be disloyal or dysfunctional. How is it possible to feel joy in the presence of a cancer diagnosis or a child's death? How is it right?
There is no giddiness to joy. It is not the feeling of kicking up our heels or running in the tall grass. Joy is much more gentle than happiness but is more lasting. The opposite of joy is not unhappiness; I believe the opposite of joy is bitterness, the feeling that life has treated us unfairly. It's not that there isn't unfairness or injustice in the world, of course, but this feeling of bitterness is completely incapable of doing anything other than exacerbate our suffering around events that have already occurred. One wise person said, "Problems are just situations we decide never should have happened."
What, then, is the nature of joy, and how can it be cultivated? This goes to the core of the teachings. In opposition to the ingrained tendency to go straight to "flight, fight, or freeze", the classic triad of responses to states of high alert when confronted with stressors, Tara Brach proposes the paradigm of "tend, befriend, and expand." She says, "The habit is to think this life is a problem to be solved. The possibility is to live this mystery and to love without holding back." The outcome of practicing a different way of responding to the stress of everyday life is joy. It is an openness to all things and all beings "without holding back". We tend to think either that some person or thing must earn our love or that there is a limited amount of love to go around and if we begin to distribute it willy-nilly it will run out just when we need it for someone near and dear to us. Both are fallacies and have no basis in fact; quite the opposite is true. The more we can open our hearts to the whole world and all beings in it, the more space there is in which to love and the more love we have to give. This has been demonstrated by enlightened beings for centuries. When we think of those we most admire and would like to emulate, it is invariably those persons who have found a way to unstintingly love those around them. The mistake we make is in thinking that Ghandi or Mother Theresa or the Buddha or Jesus or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela were or are exceptional human beings and that we cannot aspire to such benevolence. On the contrary, they were all quite ordinary human beings who transcended the ordinary way we deal with our lives. (Of course, this is my opinion; I do not intend any disrespect to those who believe that one or more of these persons was divine). Even in suffering and the face of death they remained joyful and open-hearted.
To return to Tara Brach's paradigm: she advocates what I have come to call "The Holy Pause". When we feel ourselves responding to stress with the desire to flee, can we pause to see if we can abide in the feelings that arise and stay in the situation without leaving it either physically or emotionally, what she called "tending". When we feel ourselves responding to stress with the desire to fight with words or fists or blaming, can we pause to see if we can befriend these feelings and impulses and possibly even the person or thing that arouses them? When we feel ourselves in these situations curling up into a little ball and retreating (freezing) like an animal playing dead, can we pause to see if we can expand, open our hearts to the fullest extent of which we are capable?
The road to joy is not in reaching some enlightened state in which we are always able to do these things all the time. The road to joy is practicing them over and over until our habitual responses are retrained to sometimes be the more peaceful, openhearted ones. Over time these can even become more frequent than the less skillful, habitual outcomes. This is true joy and can be present no matter what the outer circumstances bring to our awareness. This is where I choose to live.
First of all, I make a distinction between happiness and joy. Happiness is a transient state, dependent on conditions. Joy, on the other hand, is an expansive state and more a tendency of mind that can be cultivated. Happiness is winning the race; joy is taking pleasure in the running of it.
The hard question arises: "Is it possible or even desirable to be joyful in the face of, for instance, the death of a parent, partner, or child?" or "Is it possible or even desirable when terminally ill or in pain?" What these questions assume is that there is a value to suffering, that to fail to suffer under these circumstances would somehow be disloyal or dysfunctional. How is it possible to feel joy in the presence of a cancer diagnosis or a child's death? How is it right?
There is no giddiness to joy. It is not the feeling of kicking up our heels or running in the tall grass. Joy is much more gentle than happiness but is more lasting. The opposite of joy is not unhappiness; I believe the opposite of joy is bitterness, the feeling that life has treated us unfairly. It's not that there isn't unfairness or injustice in the world, of course, but this feeling of bitterness is completely incapable of doing anything other than exacerbate our suffering around events that have already occurred. One wise person said, "Problems are just situations we decide never should have happened."
What, then, is the nature of joy, and how can it be cultivated? This goes to the core of the teachings. In opposition to the ingrained tendency to go straight to "flight, fight, or freeze", the classic triad of responses to states of high alert when confronted with stressors, Tara Brach proposes the paradigm of "tend, befriend, and expand." She says, "The habit is to think this life is a problem to be solved. The possibility is to live this mystery and to love without holding back." The outcome of practicing a different way of responding to the stress of everyday life is joy. It is an openness to all things and all beings "without holding back". We tend to think either that some person or thing must earn our love or that there is a limited amount of love to go around and if we begin to distribute it willy-nilly it will run out just when we need it for someone near and dear to us. Both are fallacies and have no basis in fact; quite the opposite is true. The more we can open our hearts to the whole world and all beings in it, the more space there is in which to love and the more love we have to give. This has been demonstrated by enlightened beings for centuries. When we think of those we most admire and would like to emulate, it is invariably those persons who have found a way to unstintingly love those around them. The mistake we make is in thinking that Ghandi or Mother Theresa or the Buddha or Jesus or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela were or are exceptional human beings and that we cannot aspire to such benevolence. On the contrary, they were all quite ordinary human beings who transcended the ordinary way we deal with our lives. (Of course, this is my opinion; I do not intend any disrespect to those who believe that one or more of these persons was divine). Even in suffering and the face of death they remained joyful and open-hearted.
To return to Tara Brach's paradigm: she advocates what I have come to call "The Holy Pause". When we feel ourselves responding to stress with the desire to flee, can we pause to see if we can abide in the feelings that arise and stay in the situation without leaving it either physically or emotionally, what she called "tending". When we feel ourselves responding to stress with the desire to fight with words or fists or blaming, can we pause to see if we can befriend these feelings and impulses and possibly even the person or thing that arouses them? When we feel ourselves in these situations curling up into a little ball and retreating (freezing) like an animal playing dead, can we pause to see if we can expand, open our hearts to the fullest extent of which we are capable?
The road to joy is not in reaching some enlightened state in which we are always able to do these things all the time. The road to joy is practicing them over and over until our habitual responses are retrained to sometimes be the more peaceful, openhearted ones. Over time these can even become more frequent than the less skillful, habitual outcomes. This is true joy and can be present no matter what the outer circumstances bring to our awareness. This is where I choose to live.
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