Welcome to day 18 of Mindfulness with the Moon.
We are in our full moon phase and we will be exploring the third Brahma Vihara today
called Empathetic Joy.
The word in Pali is Mudita.
When you sit down today,
Say hello to yourself as if you were greeting a dear friend.
Hello my love,
Welcome.
Come sit with me for a while.
Let's take some deep breaths as we welcome ourselves here today.
When I was in college,
I took an introduction to Maharaja Buddhism at the University of
Denver and I thought to myself,
Oh my gosh,
This first noble truth,
Life is suffering
sounds so intense,
It sounds really grim,
Like there's not a lot to look forward to.
And this is actually a common misconception around spiritual practice and Buddhism.
Because the Buddha actually said,
I would not be teaching about genuine happiness unless
it were possible.
And I thought,
Okay,
Well then maybe I could get into it,
Because I like being happy.
I mean,
Being happy feels really good to me and I want to spend time there.
And so other people,
However,
Might say,
Joy is not for me.
No,
I'm not joyful,
But joy in this context has to do with being in contact with what
naturally arises in our heart.
It can be an explicit practice to work with joy and to help us get through what happens
to us in our lives.
So we train joy and suffering because they're both here,
They're both present,
They're actually
not separate.
Okay,
So let's break down this concept of happiness for a little while.
There's two different kinds of happiness described in Buddhist psychology.
One is called pamoja,
And this is the Pali word for conditioned happiness.
So for example,
There are different senses that we experience that give us pleasure.
And we often have a negativity bias that's no longer useful in this practice.
But we can often say to ourselves in a healthy way to enjoy and help decondition this bias
by noticing this type of happiness,
Even though it's fleeting.
For example,
Have you ever been to Mexico or Costa Rica and tasted a fresh mango or
a fresh papaya?
You know that fresh fruit and you taste it and all your taste buds light up completely?
Or you know when you go and you exercise and you move your body and then you are finished
and you take a warm shower and your whole body just gets to relax?
Or you know when you receive a payment right before rent is due?
These are experiences of pamoja.
So the second type of happiness that is talked about in Buddhist psychology is called sukha.
And sukha is happiness without a cause.
This is unconditional happiness,
Happiness for no reason at all.
Happiness to be alive and joy that comes from the harmony of being right here,
Listening
to the bird,
The simple awareness of being in the moment can remind us of the contentment
that's right here.
Henry Nouwen is a Catholic mystic and writer,
And he writes,
Joy does not simply happen
to us.
We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every single day.
So let's do a practice for a little while before we drop into our meditation.
I'd love for you to tune into yourself and see if it'd be okay for you to close your
eyes and just drop inside.
Let's just check some things out.
I'd like for you to sense in and offer yourself this phrase of loving kindness,
This phrase
of metta,
May I be happy,
May I feel happy.
Notice what that's like.
Noticing whether there's a sense of grasping at the happiness or a sense of,
Oh yeah,
That's
possible,
That happiness.
Or maybe there's a sense of,
I don't deserve happiness,
Or perhaps there's sadness at how
little happiness you actually feel you have access to.
Or there's even this sense of self-kindness like,
Oh yeah,
That would be nice,
I wish
that for myself.
So this is one aspect of learning how to cultivate happiness and intentionally walk towards it.
So checking in with ourselves is one of the first ways that we learn to cultivate this
happiness.
It's stepping towards it and recognizing that intention there to feel happiness.
We actually get to choose what we put our attention on.
So Tara Brach talks about some of the things that get in our way,
Quote unquote,
To being
happy.
So you might ask yourself right now,
What is between me and happiness?
Usually we tend to think of a couple of different things,
And one is called the if only mind.
If only I just felt better right now.
If only I wasn't sick.
If only things would have worked out in this particular way.
If only I had this type of relationship.
If only I had this type of financial security.
So that's one thing that might get in the way of our happiness.
The other thing that might get in the way is this idea that,
Quote unquote,
Something's
wrong or I'm broken,
Where there's a block to happiness called a negativity bias.
And it's this evolutionary tendency to fixate on trouble,
To seeing that there's a problem.
It's a habit of assuming that something's wrong or that you're broken.
And so we might feel this come through as worry or obsession or anxiety or depression
or trying to always figure things out.
And so how do we start to awaken ourselves to happiness?
One thing we can do is practice being mindful,
Noticing what's happening right here.
The other thing we can do is start to intentionally shift our attention.
What we put our attention on is what we make real.
Where attention goes,
Energy flows is a common phrase.
So we actually get to choose.
And what all of these things have in common is that when we direct our attention in a
way that gladdens the mind,
Everything starts to reconnect us to a larger sense of being,
To becoming more whole.
Eckhart Tolle says,
If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you,
It will be enough.
Let's meditate.
You'll hear three bells to start and three bells to close.
Take a few slow,
Deep breaths,
Inviting yourself right here.
This is an opportunity for you not to take my word for this,
For this whole joy,
Happiness
thing.
You just get to start to notice the moments when you're happy and try it on.
See how it works.
So we're going to start by tuning into our bodies.
Find a comfortable posture where you feel aware and relaxed.
Let yourself feel grounded and supported by the earth.
We're going to start with a brief body scan.
As you move your awareness through the body,
Inviting each area to simply soften,
Allow
your face to soften,
Your forehead,
Your eyes,
Your jaw,
Down through your neck and
your shoulders and your arms,
Continuing down your torso,
Softening your chest and your
belly,
Through the pelvic region,
Hips,
Continuing down your legs,
Your thighs,
Your knees,
Your
lower legs,
Through your ankles,
Feet and toes,
Allowing your whole body to be at ease,
Perhaps you'd like to deepen your breath here,
Bringing a calming energy to your body with
each inhalation,
Inviting further relaxation as you let go on the out-breath.
Now,
It might interest you to bring something to mind that brings you joy,
That makes you
feel content,
Perhaps that's being outside in nature,
In a forest or by a lake or in
the desert,
In the water,
Maybe it's dancing or being with someone you love dearly or holding
a pet who means so much to you.
Recalling a time when you've experienced well-being,
Without trying to make anything
happen,
Just relaxing and letting yourself be present with the memory that arises.
Notice how it feels in your body as you recall this experience.
How does it feel in your mind?
How does it feel in your heart?
See if in this moment you can allow for yourself to rest in well-being.
Take a long deep breath and bring to mind another blessing in your life.
Call up an image,
A being or a life situation that feels like a gift,
A blessing.
And as you feel this blessing come to you,
See if in your heart you can figure out,
Find
a way to say thank you.
Can we learn how to say thank you for all of it?
And we can start by saying thank you right now to what's arising.
And we say thank you to the fact that we are alive,
That we are human beings in this
solar system,
Surrounded by these magnificent life forces that are fundamentally joyful.
Just the fact that we can feel the blood flowing through our bodies and that we can
see color and hear sounds and smell fragrances and taste and actually make sense of the world.
May we say thank you.
May we greet our lives with this sense of gratitude.
It's difficult to know what to do with so much happiness,
Writes Naomi Shihab Nye.
With sadness,
There's something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
And when the world falls in around you,
You have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold
in your hands like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house singing and disappears when it wants to.
Everything has a life of its own.
It too could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake and ripe peaches and love even
the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and the scratched records.
Since there's no place large enough to contain so much happiness,
You shrug,
You raise your
hands and it flows out of you into everything you touch.
You're not responsible.
You take no credit.
As the night sky takes no credit for the moon,
But continues to hold it and share it.
And in that way,
Be known.
As we come to the end of this meditation,
Let yourself slowly open to your surroundings,
Taking in all the goodness inside and all the goodness around you with appreciation
and empathetic joy.
See you tomorrow.
