Tara Brach - Joy

Episode Date: September 1, 2010

2010-09-01 - Joy - Joy is an innate capacity, one of the primary expressions of an awakened heart and mind. Yet because of our conditioned patterns of thought and emotion, this capacity for openness, happiness and full aliveness can be obscured. This talk guides us in how to nurture joy through a commited presence that unfolds into "loving what is." Please donate at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

During the month of August, we had a number of events. One was a women's weekend retreat. Another was a men's day long that my husband, Jonathan Faust, led. And at one point during the day long, just to share with you, he had the men on the floor doing a body scan, a mindful body scan, and he invited them to lift their legs up and have something under their legs as they did so. Well, an elderly woman was looking through the glass doors at the group. And our manager, Steve happened to be out there, and so she asked him, hey, is that, is that a Lamas class? I loved it. I loved it. Just to let you know that when Steve has managed a lot of our retreats, and this is maybe the first men's retreat he had managed, and he let the men know that this time no one had asked him as manager what to wear, about directions, or if they might bring flowers or a vase. Different kind of retreat. So we've been doing a series that are described in the Buddhist scriptures as the Brahma Viharas. That really translates to the divine abodes.

And they are the places of awakening, the expressions of awakening that occur naturally, that really express our heart and awareness. And the first which we explored is loving kindness. and loving kindness arises naturally when we're present and opening to the beauty and the goodness of this life. There's a natural response of loving kindness. In that particular class we explored what gets in the way from us really opening to this expression of the heart

and what cultivates it. And then last week we explored compassion and just as seeing the goodness and beauty naturally wakes up loving kindness when we see suffering. Our hearts get tender with compassion.

So we explored that last week. This week we're exploring the third Brahma Vahara, which is joy, or sometimes described as sympathetic joy. The Pali word is mudita. And joy arises

when we open to both the sorrows and the beauty, sometimes described. as the 10,000 joys and sorrows by the Taoist, the phrase it's used a lot. And the understanding with joy is when we have a presence that opens to the wholeness, to the truth that this life is incredibly beautiful and precious, that there's inherent goodness in beings,

and that there's the conditioning towards fear and violence and suffering. And when we open to the whole experience, there is an openness that is joy. Joy is not hitched just to things working out. It's that openness. So there's two key qualities when we really explore the essence of joy. And one is this expansiveness. There's just an openness to the mind and heart. And the other is incredibly embodied.

There's an aliveness. We don't experience joy if we're just kind of floating in this endless openness, but not awake right here in these bodies. Okay? So clearly, joy, while it can have a mental component, we do not experience the fullness of joy when we're living in our thoughts. Okay? We have to be awake in our whole embodied being.

Classically, the understanding is that joy is, as we, experience joy, we experience joy in the joy of others. So hence it's called sympathetic joy also. So we'll reflect on how joy gets blocked and cultivated tonight. And I, whenever I speak of joy, I like to bring in a very brief quote from Andre Gide, very well known. And he writes, know that joy is rarer, more difficult and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation. First, just to unpack a little, what do we mean by moral obligation? And I don't take it in the traditional sense of a should, but rather that we have a deep commitment to joy.

because we intuit it as our natural capacity. We intuit it that it's an innate part of our being and therefore to really be all that we are, there's a commitment to opening to it. What do we mean by rare? Well, when I talk to people about their lives, and sometimes I'll ask the question, well, are you happy?

Do you feel joy? When do you, and there's a kind of, it's almost sometimes embarrassing and sometimes sad for a person. And I think this is very true for most of us that it is rather rare. For many of us there's very little genuine joy. There's a kind of happiness or joy that's hitched to things going a certain way. So we get little, you know, spikes of it. But in terms of a joy that is really not linked to externals being a certain, certain way. You know, the phrase happy for no reason, you know, that kind of joy. Rare.

I mean, I just invite you to reflect for a moment and just maybe close your eyes and sense today, this, today, this Wednesday in the middle of this week, what it's been like, or maybe these last few days. And since, have there been times of joy for you? Or those qualities I mentioned, that, openness and that aliveness, not hitched to certain conditions so much. And if so, just to notice that and just take a moment to sense what joy is like for you. And if as you reflect, you sense, well, no, that's not the prevailing weather system, then just to, with some interest, just to notice that. And you can continue to reflect as we go through the, the event. but just to say a little, to speak a little to, we have this innate capacity for joy, but how come so little?

How come so little in our culture, or maybe in the world, I don't know. And we might say that in the most basic way, we don't relax enough. That rather than loving what is, we're very conditional about what is. Life, how it is, we often have an argument with it. We're wanting it different. We're kind of on our way to something else. I like saying that we want the next moment to be a little bit different than this moment. Or we're trying to hold on to something. We see joy more in young children, you know, that they're less habituated around obligatory doings, fear-based doings,

defending something, fixing something. So there's more space to just, relax and inhabit joy. More spontaneity, more playfulness. Those are kind of some of the signs of joy. Picasso said that in the first half of his life, he tried to paint in a mature way. And in the second, he was learning to paint like a child, you know.

So when we investigate joy, we find it's in the Buddhist languaging, the shadow of joy is described as both the near enemy and the what's called the full enemy or the full shadow. And the near enemy of joy is attachment, that we're attached to getting certain pleasures, having certain experiences. And so there's a kind of chasing after something.

And the understanding is that in any moment, you're chasing after something, or trying to hold on to something, you're contracted away from the fullness of joy. So how do we see that? I mean, I remember one friend who has been in, you know, kind of explored many new relationships, and she was in one of those a few years ago.

She was really excited, but each step of the way she was always aware of what's next, what's going to be necessary for her to feel confident, this is the one. So there was never just a pure savoring how this is. it's always in the context of her roadmap about what might make this a stable long-term relationship. That happens a lot with infatuation. It sets up a kind of an excitement that masquerades his joy. An honest seven-year-old admitted calmly to her parents that Billy Brown had kissed her after class. How did that happen?

Gasped her mother. Well, it wasn't easy, admitted the young lady, but three girls helped me catch him. So chasing after, and we try and hold her. on and we know it we have a sweet moment with a loved one and then some part of us is computing or angsting about how rare that is and how we don't set aside enough time and we need to experience us more there's a good taste that we have we might be at a having dinner with some friends and there's something is tasting good and our minds are actually computing is it kind of gauche to go back for another heaping you know heaping portion are even with meditating you can have an experience things start

kind of settling and there's a kind of a touch of that quietness and space and then there's a computation of oh what made that happen i want to do that again or hold on to that one and then it's so much more clear with addiction i mean we know it that there's a deep anguish when we have to have when we have to have something that's that's the deep suffering so a cartoon i like is of a dog who's all contented and sleeping and relaxed and there's a picture of a bone over him and it and that this caption is zen dog dreaming of medium-sized bone you know so you get the idea so that's the near enemy is this kind of grasping after um pleasures and i think William Blake says it so beautifully i'll just remind you he who binds to himself a joy does the winged life destroy

But he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity's sunrise. So it's not that we don't want to enjoy pleasure. It's that there's an open hands to let it come and let it go. Now the full enemy or shadow, and again, enemy just means the joy is obscured. Is actually aversion to pleasure, pushing away the pleasantness. And I've found that people really do have a... kind of toleration limit to how alive they'll let themselves feel. There's something scary and dangerous and out of control about letting this, I mean, we are the earth and we are the heavens and

we are the volcanoes and we are this intensity of heat and coolness and matter doing its thing. We are pulling back a lot from letting this universe of aliveness live through us. So there's a kind of a, it's dangerous to relax and to enjoy and to feel it in some ways. And so it's kind of like keeping the windows closed and not letting in the fresh air because we expect a storm. And I've seen in particular when people have been traumatized in their early years, especially in unexpected ways, the kind of trauma where maybe a mother that can sometimes be showing up in a motherly way but at other times becomes a really frightening and abusive person. When there's that kind of inconsistency, there is a fear that if I let myself relax and enjoy the life that's here,

right around the corner, there's going to be punishment. Does that make sense? This thing about if I let it be good, if I let myself enjoy, if I let myself open to possibility, and this is a key peace I'm going to come back to. We are afraid. We have a story of how things are and we're afraid to stay open to the amazing possibility that's inherent in living of really loving without holding back. The possibility of really feeling the full creativity that's possible come through us. The possibility of true intimacy. We, we, we, we, don't let ourselves really open to that. There's a fear that if we open again, will be either disappointed or more violently crushed in some way. This mistrust of enjoyment of really savoring is very

much built into, it's part of the puritanical streak in many religions. There's some sense that there's something about loving life that's going to get us in trouble. One of my favorite little illustrations is of a novice who's introduced to her new cell at a monastery, and she's told, this is a silent practice, and there's no speaking. But every five years, every five years, you get an interview with the Mother Superior, and you can say three words. And so five years passed, and at the interview, Mother Superior asked, how are you doing, my child? And the novice answers, bed too hard. Well, keep practicing and praying, answers Mother Superior. Five more years pass and when they meet again Mother Superior asked how she's doing and the novice's response is

food is bad. Mother Superior responds, keep practicing and praying at our next interviews. Okay, it's been 15 years since her arrival. Mother Superior asked how she's doing and the novice response, I quit now. And Mother Superior looks at her and says, well, I'm not surprised. You've been doing nothing but complaining since you got here. So there is a truth, though, that I think is important to look at, which is when we've had wounding or unexpected losses or punishment, in other words, moving through for most of us this way this life can be, it's unsafe to open to our full aliveness. There's a fear that something's going to go wrong, so we're in some way defending or

tensing against what can happen. We're not available. we get addicted to the sense and the story that something's wrong because it's a way it's an armor like at least if we know we'll be able to do something we control things better if we assume something's going to go wrong and joy requires us to put down that story and just simply open really challenging that's why it's so difficult and that's why it's so rare i want to name one of the primary blocks that we have to joy and it fits into this category of something's wrong which is judgment that to the extent that we're judging ourselves or others and locked into the sense that something's wrong here our hearts are not available to the aliveness that's here and and joe go back i think says it best when she she writes our failure to no joy is a direct reflection of our inability to forgive. Our failure to know joy is a direct reflection of our inability to forgive. Now to say,

joy, this openness does not pretend that there's not suffering. It doesn't pretend everybody's acting just fine. I'm forgiving. I'm forgiving. It's not a false kind of glossing over. It's not pretending that we feel good. Joy is the same. space that includes the imperfections and it includes the sorrows and includes the beauties. Joy is a space that doesn't demand that it be different. And it's a space that opens to possibility. I often get the question when I'm speaking about joy and I get it when I speak about acceptance and forgiveness too that if we're opening in this way and we're loving what is and I on purpose had us do a meditation with that kind of theme.

What would motivate anyone to be proactive in this world and fight for social justice or try to heal the planet in the ways it most needs or to work against discrimination? What would motivate us to be proactive in changing if the idea is, okay, there's no demand for anything to be different? And that question comes a lot. just what I'd like to say is that if you can rest in that space of openness that's fully allowing

life to be as it is, it's very natural then to respond in a creative, proactive way, actually respond with a deep intelligence and compassion. In fact, if you think of the people you know that are spontaneous and joyful and have a sense of that buoyancy and happiness, are they passive? Are they disengaged? I remember the movie and the book. I actually read the book first, City of Joy. How many of you remember that or read that? The movie, the book, City of Joy.

City of Joy is a slum in Calcutta. It took place and many lepers, the poorest of the poor. And what is absolutely stunning is the capacity of these people to celebrate life, to feel connected and to have this incredible generosity of reaching out to help each other. There's a tremendous kind of proactivity and there's joy. I can speak personally that the people I know that have the blessing of having inhabited this innate capacity are entirely proactive. Are there helping, healing, creative?

It does not make us passive. it actually frees us up. So it has to do with loving what is. That's kind of the starting point. And we're going to come back to that in a moment. But just remind you about Zorba, who talks about loving life a lot. And he goes, am I not a man?

And is a man not stupid? I'm a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe. Sure, some of you remember. It's a great line because he's basically saying, I'm loving it. I'm just, it's, you know, unpleasant, it's pleasant, it's filled with aliveness. But there's some commitment when we commit ourselves to this Brahma Vahara, this

awakening of the heart, some commitment, and it's a courageous one, to open to how it is, more deeply, perhaps, than we ever have before, to play our edge. So let's, let's explore that a bit together, we do that. And maybe just first ask you to just check in again. And I like you to check in as I'm speaking so it's not just a kind of bunch of ideas. And this is just a brief reflection. But first let it be a pause. And you might sense a little bit of your life right now. And just ask yourself that simple question, what is between me and experiencing more joy? Is it a restlessness that thinks things should be different, wants things different? Is it a sense that something's wrong that you really need to change with you or others or the world?

Is it a story of a limited future that in some ways ruling out the amazing possibilities that are the infinite possibility that can unfold in this life. You might even sense just in this moment what's between me and really feeling that unconditioned happiness, joy, happy for no reason, right this moment? Maybe nothing's there.

Maybe there is that openness and aliveness, that non-grasping, that undefended presence. Or maybe there's something painful in your body or a heart and that's what feels like that's what's in the way just to notice. And again you can continue to pay attention in this way but we'll take the rest of our time exploring really

how do we re-enter the stream? How do we allow for the arising of joy in our life? and we begin in the most basic way, and this is really the practice of Apasana, of insight, meditation, of mindfulness, this is the core of it, is that joy becomes possible when we have a committed presence with what's right here. And I've been using the language of loving what is, but there's a training that loving what is really, it doesn't start there. When there's a lot of aversion, we don't love what is. Loving what is starts with being willing to be present with what is.

You can be present and say, I don't like this at all, but the presence, that offering of your attention is the beginning of opening your heart to the life that's actually here. And we talk about rain, recognizing and allowing. It's the beginning of rain. That's beginning to love what is. there's a lot of research about happiness and joy these days. And what the research shows is that we can cultivate it. Every single one of us can cultivate it. It's possible. But it does take

training because we often lock into a biochemistry and a kind of happiness set point that's based on this kind of cycling of thoughts and feelings that are very, very habituated. So it takes training to decondition the mind from the habitual process that keeps us in a kind of biochemistry of stress, fear, anger, whatever our primary weather systems are. But one of the exciting things about, you know, the research we've seen is that anyone that anyone that spends the time doing this presence, this beginning of loving what is, this presence with what is, actually shifts where the energy. energy is in the brain. You can see the lighting up of the left prefrontal cortex that's associated

with positive emotions. It's an inherent capacity. For some people, it's harder to decondition and get there than others. And it takes a tremendous amount of compassionate, deliberate presence. But it's possible. It's possible. So this was the Buddha's invitation. We talk a lot about suffering, but it's really a path of how do we be with the suffering so that we can awaken this inherent potential in us to feel happiness. So we begin with the seed of loving what is, which is this presence where we're saying yes to how it is. And I speak sometimes of this one student

because it was so memorable who went through a retreat practicing presence with what is, and it was a complete roller coaster of being with real deep, sense of fear, a kind of clutching fear and anxiety, and then being with restlessness and being with boredom, and then being with, oh, peacefulness. And it was just a roller coaster. And at the end, she said, I think I get it. She says, I guess the joy comes from getting real, from getting real. So we get real, and what we're getting real with is unpleasantness, and we're getting real with pleasantness. And we're also getting real with this possibility that's living. It's kind of imminent

in each moment. And if we take them one by one, a lot of our practices getting real with are bringing presents to what we pull away from. That's just how it is. Some people describe it that we're really learning to befriend fear. So that's where the courage comes. And we do it gradually. And we find our training zones. You know, we find the places that, where this is the place I pull away and get tight and get into a trance and get lost in thoughts. Okay, I'm going to spend more time here. One of those training zones for me I'd like to share with you tonight has been around the unpleasantness of making mistakes. And we all know, we don't like it when we make mistakes, most of us.

I mean, I haven't met people that like it when they make mistakes. We don't like being wrong. It brings up a real shame when we're wrong. And if we're really wrong, it's like really shameful. So if we use poor judgment, if we lash out in some way, if we act really obviously from a real selfish place, if we're aggressive, you know, we, some part of us, you know, we don't like that. and what we often do, especially when it's in an interpersonal setting, is we try to justify ourselves,

if not to the other person, we're to ourselves. We really don't want to feel wrong. I have a little saying. I say a lot that the world is divided into those who think they're right. And that's the whole saying, you know. So we don't like it. So a while ago I made this one of my training zones, that when I made a mistake, I was going to try to reduce the lag time and open to the uncomfortableness of being wrong. Okay? That was my thing.

And so, you know, the most fertile grounds for that kind of a project are always the people you're living with. And so I did it in my, you know, I got married to Jonathan just, I think it's just four years ago. So I built this into our relationship, but also, you know,

my mom just moved on to our property. And any situation, situations with our board, where we have all sorts of sticky situations. And I, you know, I've made a number of poor computations in terms of how I've tried to guide things on our board. Anyway, so lots of mistakes to pay attention to. But one of the main areas, as I mentioned, was in my marriage. Like, when I'd get controlling or judgmental,

and when I'd say things, that were in some way embedded in it was a judgment and it was obvious that I was as being it was in some way mean-spirited I'm making you all sound past tense I know it's not all past tense

okay and so whenever I'd do something that felt hurtful as soon as I become aware of it I'd notice the tendency to justify it like I wouldn't have done that if he hadn't da-da-da-da but I just stop pause

and the commitment was to put down the defense and to put down the justification and just feel the uncomfortability of, okay, imperfect being. Like there's some notion I have that I should be more together than I am. Like I always have that notion. And so then when the imperfect stuff comes up, which it does most every day, there's some place in me that doesn't want to have to feel that.

So that was the commitment. And it's been an amazing process. It's kind of like, okay, stop and feel that uncomfortableness of being an imperfect human. And keep saying yes to the uncomfortableness. And sometimes in order to be with it, it takes being really, really kind. Like, yes, yes, okay, it's okay, imperfect. You know, feeling of being wrong, yes, yes. But what I found is that when I really just right stay on the spot, in that saying, yes, there's the space that opens up where the sense of who I am is no longer this imperfect bad being, it's more I'm resting again in presence, in awareness.

It's like that space suit self that is conditioned to behave in certain ways, that's happening. But that doesn't define me. and as soon as there's some loosening of the identity, and this is the key thing here with Lovingwood is, you know, soon as you're no longer hitched to the bad self or hitched to the victimized self, and there's a space of presence, joy is possible. Joy becomes possible.

It's like there's joy in realizing you're not that bad person, and it doesn't deny the conditioning. It just becomes okay. And what happens for me is I get a glimmer of that amazing teaching that our freedom is being without anxiety about non-perfection. If you can just for a moment try that on, what would it be like if you are without anxiety about non-perfection? Just to try that on.

What happens for me is it's almost like a bubble of joy. It's like you sense this possibility of living in a very profoundly more free way. in a more selfless way. It's like you're not identified with the imperfect self. So there's a selflessness, which is when we begin to investigate the essence of joy. Joy arises when we're not solidified and centralized in a sense of me. I need this.

I need this different. This isn't okay. In any moment, okay, we're right getting to the heart of it here. So just this is the, the peace if you can just pay attention to. In any moment that we really love what is, the sense of a solid self dissolves. It's almost like the sun that there's not a solid center. The rays are just going out. And it's like joy is like that. There's not a solid center. The solid center,

the contraction happens when there's a sense of having to have things different. When we love what is, there's a dissolving of the self-sense and an opening to joy. So this is one element of how we cultivate joy, which is to say yes to what is, which turns into loving what is. Another is to say yes to the aliveness, to say yes to the beauty and to the goodness that's always here. And I'd like to quote Nietzsche. He says, for happiness, how little suffices for happiness. How little suffices for happiness. The least thing precisely. The gentlest thing. The lightest thing. A lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye glance. Little maketh up the best happiness. Be still. So the other domain of waking up this joy is in the simple, because pleasures are simple. The stuff that really

gives pleasure very simple. And what happens and the reason that's so is that in those simple pleasures, in the moment that there's something simple that we go, oh yeah, we become this quiet space of appreciating. And the delight is not as much the thingness as the space that opens up. when we really are resting in that space we're just aware of our beingness joy comes when we're aware of beingness and we're not solidified in a self if there's a self going oh isn't this good isn't this fun

I'm so glad this is happening to me that can be pleasant but that's not joy it's when we're walking and we stop and there is that rustle in the tree and the way the light is catching the leaf are we're hearing the stream? Are we looking at our child and seeing the gleam in their eye? And there's that space of presence that's allowing us to notice. That's where the joy comes from. It's the space. So we cultivate by creating the space that can be with what's difficult and what's beautiful.

We also cultivate by opening the possibility. And this is something that I didn't use to tune into or understand so well. Just to quote C.S. Lewis, he says, joy intuits what is about to be. Joy intuits what has always been. So joy intuits not just the thing in this moment, but this, again, the imminent, the potential. It's like in quantum physics, everything's possibility,

and it only becomes a probability when we pay attention in a certain way, joy intuits this infinite possibility, this very changing, creative, alive universe. I felt like I got a very deep lesson in that from this Qigung retreat that I attended this summer. And a lot of the teaching was about letting go of a story about your health or your body or your life and just opening to the unfolding energy that's here and not just opening to it, having the intention to really let the aliveness be all that it can be.

And I found that for myself and for so many people as we compared notes, we had been so afraid of opening to the possibility of loving fully, feeling this full aliveness because there might be some holding on and then some disappointment, that we actually were closed down to possibility. Part of joy, of cultivating joy, is to really being open to what's possible. So again, just to name it, the three domains that we cultivate our presence with, difficulty,

the beauty and goodness, and the possibility. And they each come down to the space and aliveness that's right. here. Now, I want to name two other elements that are really powerful if we want to commit ourselves to really waking up this capacity. And one is that when joy is there, even a glimmer, when there's not a wanting things different, when there's a sense of this is enough. Do you know those moments when it's just enough, just way it is? It could be, I could die now that this is just full. this is it, this is full, that when there's that moment where we're not wanting it different, to pause and consciously acknowledge it.

And this is a practice you can do through this coming week, that when there's moments where you're not wanting things different, you're not resisting anything, there's just some space and aliveness. Just pause and go, okay, this is a glimmer. It might not be full-blown, you know, va-voom, joy, like bursting out in all different directions like the sun. raised, but there's a bit of that openness there. Stop and notice it. Munindaji, a much beloved teacher of many Western teachers, his primary message, live the life fully, really arrive in the moments

and notice how they are and savor them. I got very moved when I heard recently a story about one woman who was part of a Vapasana meditation class in a prison. And she had shot her abusive battering husband. He was a desert storm vet, so obviously he was traumatized too. She got life for shooting him. And so there she was attending this class and taught by some of our teaching colleagues down in Charlottesville. A number of you know Pat Coffey, he and a few others. And, and this was a reflection that she wrote and Pat sent it to me and I'd like to read parts of it too

she says mindfulness works wherever a person lives however a person lives there's stress in every life the trick is to see life around the stress I look out my slit of a window and see the prettiest stars I've ever

seen because I can really see now why was I here for 15 years before I realized that I could detect yellow flowers under the low-pressure sodium lamps in the courtyard. That's easy. I never bothered to slow down and pay attention, to be mindful, to realize that it is still okay. I am still okay, even if all my best laid plans fall through. It is hard here to not make plans for when I go home. It is harder to face the realization that when I go home might not actually ever get here. Those days

make me have to be okay with today. As a Christian, I know I was never promised tomorrow. As a mindful person, I can see that this sky is pretty. This grass is green. If this is the only sidewalk I will ever get to walk on, I'm at a place where I can appreciate that it's not always a bad sidewalk. I have joy in pointing out Orion

and when I leave my meditation group on Wednesday night. The capacity to make peace with our life, to find true happiness, is here for each of us, regardless of our circumstances. Our tendency is always to say, well, yeah, but for me, it's such and such. I've seen people touching joy as they approach death.

I've seen people feeling joy with another person's passing and the sorrow's there too. It's not joy as in a dissociated joy. I've seen joy with birds. I've seen joy with every circumstance. Dana Fald's writes in this live this day. She says, do not let the day slip through your fingers, but live it fully now. This breath, this glimpse of newly risen sun catapulting you into full awareness. time is precious minutes disappearing like water into sand unless you choose to pay attention since you do not know the number of your days treat each as if it is your last be that compassionate with yourself that open and loving to others that determined to give what is yours to give and to let in the energy and wonder of this world experience everything writing relating eating

doing all the necessary little tasks of life, as if for the first time, pushing nothing aside is unimportant. You've received these reminders many times before. This time, take them into your soul, for if you choose to live this way, you will be rich beyond measure, grateful beyond words,

and the day of your death will arrive with no regrets. Live this day. So this is a key element in our commitment to joy is this moment counts. And when I say that I mean this moment, we're not on our way to the end of the talk or to the rest of the night or to the weekend. And yet it's very rare that we arrive like fully arrive, right? This moment, like this one. And now this one. I might have shared sometimes my husband and I have kind of a joking thing where we'll stop and say,

this is it right now. And then one of us will shake her head and say, no, this, this, you know. But can we really be right here? So live this day. Okay, so we've talked about the loving what is that begins with a true presence with what is, with the difficulties, with the aliveness, with the possibility. We've talked about pausing and taking the moments to acknowledge when we really do show up. and when that space that can appreciate the simple things is there.

The other piece to say is that joy wakes up in us when we express it, when we express the joy, when we celebrate and acknowledge and celebrate the mystery and the beauty and the life we cherish. One of my favorite stories on this one is, Kabir, a shoemaker, as he works, he's always repeating the mantra, Ram, Ram, Ram. Now, Ram is the word for God or sacred or divine. So he does this day in, day out, 20 years. He's just Ram, Ram, Ram, and then 20 years, and Ram appears. And all of a sudden, Kabir's seeing Ram, he's Kabir saying, well, so who are you?

You know, he goes, Ram, I really am wrong. Okay, so why are you here? Why am I here? You've been calling me for years. Now I've come. What do you want? So Kabir says, I don't want anything. And Rahm's just shocked. What? Why have you been repeating my name these 20 years? And Kabir just said, I just love repeating your name. Then, for the years to come, wherever Kabir would go, he'd be followed by Rahm and the sound, Kabir.

Kabir. So again, it's this very deep wisdom of happy friends. no reason. Happy for no reason. Rumi puts it this way, let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. So again, it comes down to presence. I mean, the commitment to joy is a commitment to presence with the life that's here. And an understanding, because there's a fear. We're afraid, well, if I'm present with this, it won't change. I won't get what I want. And then some of us have the fear if I'm very present and open

and I really let my heart just sing in some way. It's selfish. I'm not going to be helping others. I invite you to challenge that story and experiment because I've never seen a person get happier and become more selfish, more self-absorbed, more disengaged. I've never seen it. Now again, there's the happiness that's based on conditions where we're chasing after things,

but this isn't what we're talking about tonight. We're talking about a willingness to open to our full capacity of heart, which includes joy. So being with the life that is, pausing and appreciating when it's happening, when you've arrived some, just name it, acknowledge it, notice it, because in the noticing, you actually become more available to it. and then expressing it. And each of these is really what I consider a pathway to true nature. So I'll close with a poem and then a brief meditation,

and then we'll listen to the flute. This is the poem. It's called So Much Happiness, and it's by Naomi Nye. It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness, there's something to rub against. a wound to tend with lotion and cloth. 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. You're happy either way. Even the fact that you once lived in a piece of treehouse and now live over a quarry of noise and dust cannot make you unhappy.

Everything has a life of its own. It too could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake and right peaches and love even the floor which needs to be swept, the soiled linens and the scratched records. Since there is 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 are 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.

So much happiness. So give yourself the invitation to find a position to sit that's comfortable, that's alert, that's relaxed, letting yourself become still. And you might notice if there, in this moment, if you sense what's between you and that openness, that aliveness, that happiness, notice if you sense something's missing,

something's off, and whatever you encounter, for some it may just be that openness of enough. It's just fine right now. And others might sense of something missing feeling or wrong. The practice is just to bring presence to that, very gently, tenderly, just yes. If what's in the way is that you don't like some pain in your body, just yes. Yes to the discomfort or to the dislike.

No matter what it is, you can offer that allowing present. It doesn't have to be the word yes. It could be as if you're bowing or just saying, I consent, just agreeing to let the life that's here be just as it is. Yes. Notice what happens if you deepen the yes. If you just relax even more and agree to let this life play through you. If you sense the possibility of loving what is, that openness and tenderness, knowing the yes can be a bow of appreciation for this life, as if you mentally could whisper, thank you to this aliveness and this awareness and this possibility of full loving. Thank you. And you can open and enlarge the joy, the happiness by bringing to mind someone else and

offering a blessing to them. Beautiful practice. Just to think of someone you care about having good fortune, either that's already happening the good fortune or something good happening to them, something that brings them happiness, more freedom, more love, more ease. Since where that might be the case or might be around the corner. And just to imagine a person you care about happy. I just see that and feel that. Not a superior happiness or a clinging happiness, but an ease-filled happiness, the kind that floats. You might offer your blessing.

May you live with that happiness. May you be filled with it. May you enjoy the blessings of this life. And then just come to feel your own heart and body and mind right now. And just feel out of love for this life, your wish for your own happiness, because the cultivation of joy comes from that simple intention to let this life, this being, this awareness open to happiness, laxing and feeling openness of heart and mind, receiving the blessings of the sound currents of the flute,

letting it touch your heart and your being. I want you to stand up if you don't mind. a moment so we can bow to you and clap again. Thank you so much. Thank you. What a treat. Okay, so just to say that next week will be the last of this four-week series, I hope you can make it, but if you've missed any and you want to get them, they're all, each of them will be downloaded, you can download them from the web. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com,

our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.