So good morning.
This is now the fourth talk on the seven factors of awakening.
So this fourth factor of awakening is joy.
And so there are two kinds of joy that arise in practice.
One is the joy that gets released in the body as we begin opening and relaxing and softening and being present.
So we can actually feel this joy which feels like deep satisfaction,
Like a calm abiding is how I experience it.
Then the other quality of joy has to do with a kind of contentment and happiness that comes with the fact that we're meeting together and we're showing up and that we're really here for experience.
And the second type of joy is important because oftentimes we don't we don't feel joy in life.
We don't feel joy in our body.
There's pain in the body often and suffering in ourselves and the world around us but to show up just for that and really be present for it and experience it clearly there's a rightness to that.
The word joy doesn't really apply to situations that are difficult or where there's great suffering.
Right.
So I think the word that works for me that expresses the feeling of it a simple way of remembering is the word yes yes I'm here for this.
It feels right to be here.
There's a very clean feeling of letting it come whatever it is letting it course through us.
It can happen if we don't close down or get into reaction or get into contracted experiences in the body.
It's more like we're just opening opening to the suffering and like respecting it wisely.
And in that opening that allowing there's a feeling of rightness there can be a satisfaction to opening even to things that are difficult.
So first the first factor is to be here here.
This mindfulness practice is learning to really embody the present moment really inhabit the present moment with awareness and to learn to relax and settle into here.
You know I find it significant for me personally that our lived experience is only here for this moment.
Like that's it right now that if I'm lost in the past or in the future I've lost touch with the only thing that really exists in a certain way and that's the lived experience in this moment and to learn to trust that and not miss the opportunity to just be alive right now with you not miss the opportunity to experience ourselves as conscious beings in the present moment here and then to have curiosity and interest.
That's the second factor.
What is here to see it more clearly to recognize it more clearly and as we recognize what's happening more clearly we start to make distinctions.
Where do I want to put my attention where do I want to put my energy.
It's like being at a crossroad.
Do I incline my mind towards what's helpful beneficial to me or do I climb my mind in its habitual way.
There's a choice when we start to see well what's here.
Oh there's pain.
OK so do I notice the pain be with the pain and open or do I close down and say I'm done with this meditation.
I'm going to get up now and or readjust my body.
So the word that I associate with the joy factor of awakening is is the word yes.
It's really saying yes to whatever the experience is.
This is about being with it.
You know it's possible to have yes with pain.
You know pain itself is a drag but there's also the way we meet it.
Yes all open to it.
Yes I'll be with this.
Yes I'll be with this difficult person.
Yes I'm going to really be here for the experience of cleaning the kitchen floor cleaning the bathrooms.
Yes now I am here with my breathing and my meditation.
Yes is a meeting and connecting and there's joy and appreciation when we give ourselves more fully to our experience and sometimes joy has to do with being able to give ourselves over completely to the experience in the moment and sometimes it's like the experience of reading a really wonderful book.
You know it's the joy of being absorbed in reading or absorbed in some hobby or craft that we're doing or something that we're working on.
You know that absorption it's the unification the harmony that non distractedness of just being fully present for one thing.
There's something about that the harmony of doing that.
So when we give ourselves over to one thing and this ability to really be kind of collected on one thing and in the case of our meditation our one breath our one experience one present moment just yes just yes to this and it takes time.
You know I certainly didn't experience this kind of meditative joy for a long time in my practice.
It's a process of being here over and over and over again.
I'm seeing more clearly and asking what is this and being able to know to discern this is what I'm paying attention to.
This is what's important right now.
This is the body breathing.
This is awareness and awareness isn't in conflict with what is.
It opens to what is.
Awareness just gives itself fully over.
Awareness is yes yes.
So I hope that the degree to which we are able to put aside our preoccupations our concerns when we sit to meditate we can start to settle into this deeper capacity for well-being that's here.
Start saying yes to our experience so that as we come out of meditation and go into our world we apply our deeper capacity for well-being to those around us so that we have a clearer sense that our meditation practice is actually not just for ourselves but it's for the the welfare and happiness of others by saying yes we allow others to say yes so that in a sense our joy is contagious.
Thank you for your kind attention this morning.
