Joy meditation

Ken: All right. Now let’s turn to the joy meditation. We’re meeting in two weeks, which is May 1st, I believe, and that’ll be our last class. Now, again, if any of you have any better wordings or ideas, this is my first draft of these. I’m very open to input.

When you feel joy, things go well in your life, and you feel fulfilled. So that’s how I arrived at the first line: May I enjoy the fulfillment of my aims. We could probably have made it a little more abstract and said: May I enjoy the fullness of being. But I wanted to make it quite concrete in the same way as in compassion: May I be free of suffering, harm and disturbance. May I enjoy the fulfillment of my aims. I could have used another word like intention, but that seemed to bog things down. It doesn’t have the same poetic ring. But if you have any suggestions about how to refine that, I’m quite open to it.

As I mentioned in connection with this, joy has a connection with knowing how things work. So that’s the second line: May I know how everything works. That is, really understand, because when you connect with things, when you really connect with things, you know how they work. This is not an intellectual figuring out. It’s an immediate kind of knowledge, and that’s what’s being talked about here. There’s some people who just know how people work and everything goes swimmingly for them. And there are other people who know how computers work and everything just goes swimmingly for them. But not everybody who knows how people work, knows how computers work.

May I experience the world celebrating my efforts. Joy is about celebration. The classical way of approaching joy in Buddhism is celebrating the success of others, celebrating the good works of others. What happens in you when people celebrate your success?

Student: Good.

Ken: Yeah. What else happens besides you feel good, feel joy?

Student: Humility.

Ken: Yes. You can feel some humility too. But there’s something else that happens. Pardon?

Student: Embarassment.

Ken: Well, yes, I know, but now you’re running into conditioning, fear and embarrassment and things like that. Let’s just leave the conditioning out. There’s something else that happens.

Student: You celebrate theirs.

Ken: Well, there’s a reciprocal thing, yes. You feel empowered, don’t you? Yeah. You feel energized, right? Wow. Yes. Keep doing and go further. So, May I experience the world celebrating my efforts; that’s a way of coming into a sense of power. Okay? That’s why the attaboy and the attagirl is a really good thing to do sometimes. May I enjoy things just as they are. That’s kind of relief, isn’t it? They don’t have to be different. That’s real joy.

When you say to yourself, “May I enjoy the fulfillment of my aims,” what comes up for you? Any sense of disappointment? Yeah. All those places where we just didn’t know how or didn’t understand, or weren’t successful, and things like that. And so it just puts us in touch with all those aims. Alternatively, ‘”May I enjoy the fulfillment of my aims,” you can think, “Oh yeah, that would feel good.” May I know how everything works. What happens when you say that?

Student: It just puts me on edge.

Ken: Why’s that?

Student: Because there’s too many things that, I don’t how they work.

Ken: Ah, you think you have to become a super PhD?

Student: Well, or at least figure out a lot more than I’ve figured out so far.

Ken: What if you just knew? See? How would that be?

Student: That’d be great.

Ken: That’s what you’re aspiring to here. That’s what you’re wishing.

Student: Okay.

Ken: And it feels different, doesn’t it?

Student: Yes.

Ken: Because what I said earlier is, this knowing how things works isn’t a conceptual understanding. If you think of it as a conceptual understanding, “Oh God, I got to go back to school now for the next 20 years.” Not fun. Not for most of us anyway. But if you think, “Oh, I just know how this works. Oh.” And there’s a freedom and lightness in that. Okay?

Student: Yes.

Ken: May I experience—Yes.

Student: Could we go back one to: May I enjoy success. I don’t like that word success.

Ken: Oh, I took the word success out.

Student: Oh, you did?

Ken: Yeah. Now it’s: May I enjoy the fulfillment of my aims. What don’t you like about success?

Student: Well, it’s focusing on the results, and whether or not you’re successful isn’t the point somehow. In my way of thinking, it’s that you’re—

Ken: Yeah.

Student: You can’t be invested in the results.

Ken: Yeah. I’m not quite happy with this line, even with the fulfillment of my aims because what I’m really trying to get at here is the … Let’s change it. May I enjoy the activity of life itself. Deborah, can you send a new one to Franca, please? We got this up on the website. Now I’m going to have to change it. And Franca’s in India. Pardon?

Student: The activity of life itself?

Ken: Yes.

Student: That’s a big word, the activity.

Ken: Yeah. Got another one?

Student: No.

Ken: Okay. But do you—

Student: You’re trying to feel the experience.

Ken: No, what I’m trying to get at here is, when you’re engaged in the doing of the task, and the doing of the task is meaningful to you in and of itself—regardless of the result—then you feel joy. That’s what I’m trying to get at here.

Student: Can you use the word engagement?

Ken: How would you put it in a sentence?

Student: When I enjoy the engagement of life itself.

Ken: No, it’s not quite … We have to be very careful because—one of the things I think I’ve talked about before— is that English is a strange language because it has two roots. It has the teutonic Northern Europe root and the Latin root coming with 1066 in the Battle of Hastings. And the power of English is in its Anglo-Saxon roots not in the Latin roots. And so engagement is just too French for me. [Laughter] I’m going to get in all kinds of trouble on that one.

Student: And how about: May I act in accordance with my intentions?

Ken: Oh, I mean, that’s very good, but you’re getting to something quite different there.

Student: Okay.

Ken: Yeah. Okay. So: May I enjoy the activity of life itself. And that’s everything, like brushing your teeth. I think that’s better.

Student: It’s less …

Ken: It’s less goal-oriented.

Student: Yes.

Ken: Yeah, I knew this line wasn’t right. So if you can shoot me another one, I’ll see if I can get it up on the website, so that people who are listening won’t get it wrong. But anyway, May I enjoy the activity of life itself. Okay?

May I know how everything works. We went through that one. Okay. Thank you. And I very much appreciate this input, because this is how we get to a good result. May I experience the world celebrating my efforts. We may want to do something with efforts.

Student: Again, I think it’s the goals coming in there.

Ken: What about: May I experience the world celebrating what I do? No?

Student: Efforts is better.

Ken: All right. Pardon?

Student: Too French. [Laughter]

Ken: Yes. I’m going to pay for that comment, I can tell. And May I enjoy things just as they are. What happens in you when you say that?

Student: [Audible exhalation]

Ken: Okay. So this is your practice for the next couple of weeks, and then the usual extension. But put the principle amount of time on cultivating this for yourself so you get the feeling. I think that’s it then, isn’t it? Except we have a couple of announcements which we don’t have to record. Any questions? Everybody clear about their practice and so forth? Okay. So this concludes our fifth class.

Student experiences with joy meditation

Ken: Okay. This is our sixth and last class on the four immeasurables. So actually, I only have one thing to do, which is to go over the whole topic of transformation of emotions from reactive emotions into expressions of natural awareness. A couple of other things in connection with that.

But first, I’d like to get your questions, insights, challenges from your work with joy, the verse, the mind is connected with joy. You all look so joyful. Don’t all speak at once, of course.

Student: Two things. The word enjoy has become devalued in my personal usage to mean something much like a backhanded compliment. I can find myself saying, “Well, I enjoyed it.” So I had some translating to do there, and I’m not sure that I’ve completely finished finding out what exactly joy, what that verb means in terms of joy itself. And I’d like you to say something about that.

And I’ll put the other one out there, too. I found it useful recently to—when I’m on the cushion—try to find the truth of whatever it is I’m working on, in terms of the immediate experience I’m having. And even if it has to do with say, death, then I ask myself, “Can I die right now? How can I experience death right now here on this cushion, experiencing what I’m experiencing?”

And I was able to do that with the first line, May I enjoy the activity of life itself, and the second, May I know how everything works. But when it got to the third, May I experience the world celebrating my efforts, I found myself lost in trying to find out what this world is, this thing the world is. So that’s it.

Ken: That’s it. [Laughter] Okay. At our last class, I forgot to mention the chapter in here to read. So I guess you didn’t read it, did you?

Student: Chapter eight. Yeah.

Ken: Passion in life?

Student: Yeah.

Ken: What did you understand from that?

Student: Oh God, it feels like a test.

Ken: There will be tests. [Laugher]

Student: What percentage of our realization will each test?

Ken: 30%.

Student: 30%? I don’t know. I don’t know what I made of it.

How to cook your life

Ken: He’s written two other books, but this one I think it’s his best. And perhaps because in many respects it’s the most difficult. The other ones, he’s good, but rather more limited. At least that’s how it appeared to me when I was reading them. Sorry, I’m in the wrong chapter here. Chapter seven: “Having a passion for life.” [How to Cook Your Life by Uchiyama]:

First off what he says about Theravadan Buddhism, I’m sure the Theravadans would have a few things to say about that. The passion for life, it’s actually quite a subtle thing that he’s referring to. I find what he writes at the end of it very relevant, particularly in today’s world. Page 59, last two paragraphs:

When your passion embraces the wholeness of life you naturally look around to see what is cool and needs to be taken care of.

How to Cook Your Life, Uchiyama Roshi, p. 59

He’s referring to the duck who sits on it’s eggs and turns them over when it’s too hot.

What often prevents us from seeing and taking care of our life in its widest dimensions and covers our passion for life is fanaticism—political, philosophical, as well as the following of a blind devotion to some new discovery or knowledge about one aspect of a subject.

p. 59

So this I think is a very important point. And the proceeding part of this chapter, he’s actually talking about different forms of fanaticism. And if you look at page 58, in the paragraph where he’s quoting from the Tenzo Kyōkun, second last one:

Do not be absent-minded in your activities, nor so absorbed in one aspect of a matter that you fail to see its other aspects … Future students must be able to see that side from this side as well as this side from that side.

p. 58

Now, this is what I find again and again in working with people. They only see this side from that side.

Student: They only see this side from that side, not this side?

Ken: Well, what I mean is they only look at things in one way.

Student: From their side.

Ken: Usually. Unless they’re codependent and then they see things from the other person’s side. In either way it’s imbalanced. Or they get into one thing and forget everything else. And there’s a great deal in our society, and in our ways of functioning, which basically reinforce both of those tendencies. One is the impression that one needs to specialize, particularly in one’s career, and has to get really good at one thing.

You look at the practice of medicine, you have doctors who are specialists in one area, and they really don’t know much about how the rest of the system functions. So when you get ailments across systems, it can be very, very difficult to get good treatment because, the endocrinologist says one thing, and then the gynecologist says another. And they each have very different, and arguably equally valid, points of view. But there isn’t necessarily an understanding of the whole system, or an appreciation, or a way of relating, to the whole system.

There’s some movement away from that that’s begun, but it’s still very much an aspect of medicine, but it also is an aspect of almost every other area of life. You get people who specialize in this, and people who specialize in that, people who specialize in this, and not that much training in looking at things as a whole.

And then people sometimes become very, very adept at seeing how to make situations work for themselves, but then don’t actually consider how other people may be experiencing that, or may be viewing it. And this is at the bottom of so many of the culture clashes we experience within this country and between this country and other countries, really very, very challenging ones.

Now, the way through all of that, I mean, very simply, it’s just not to make any assumptions. That sounds very simple. Don’t make any assumptions. It is simple in one way, but it’s also not particularly easy, because we’re often not aware of assumptions that we make. And one of the things that I think is really important here … And you’re asking about this third line: May I experience the world celebrating my efforts. And you say, “What world are we talking about?”

Then he goes on, describes how people normally live their life playing with various toys, beginning with, as he says:

The first toy people clamor for when they’re born is their mother’s breast. Then, it is on to teddy bears and electric trains, and as we get older, bicycles, watches, cameras, and finally, jewelry, clothes and the opposite sex.

p. 93

And then tea ceremonies and visiting temples—he’s just talking about Japanese culture here. And I love this one because it’s a question I love throwing out in groups of Buddhist teachers, or my version of it.

Essentially, what is the difference between rich widows crowding around some famous priest or guru and teenage girls clamoring after some rockstar? Where do you differentiate between getting drunk on alcohol or becoming fanatic over some “born again” religious experience?

p. 110

And then a little further, “A life which relies,” this is in the second last paragraph:

A life which relies on toys for its value means nothing more than one is being led around by those toys, thus losing sight of living with true purpose or intensity. To live the buddhadharma is to live without the necessity of having to be constantly entertained by toys.

p. 94

Celebrating my efforts

Ken: So if you return to this line, and as I said, we may have to change the line, but, May I experience the world celebrating my efforts. That’s like an instant feedback, isn’t it? And when you do what is appropriate for a situation, what do you experience?

Student: Well, I do know joy in that situation. Yes.

Ken: That’s what this refers to. Because when you do the right thing in a situation, doesn’t the situation celebrate in a certain way? Maybe celebrate isn’t quite the right word, but do you know what I mean?

Student: Yes.

Ken: Yes. Okay. What would it be like if everything you did was like that? Pardon?

Student: All’s right with the world.

Ken: All’s right with the world. What would that be like, Joe?

Joe: Well, it would be, what word can I find? It would be—

Ken: Joyful? [Laughter]

Joe: Oh, that one. [Laughter]

Ken: Oh, I just sort of—

Joe: Pulled it out of the air. So, in my searching for this to exist in a particular way on the cushion, when I am not involved in interchange with a …

Ken: You want to do it on the cushion?

Joe: Yes.

Ken: Oh.

Joe: I want to figure out how I can experience the world celebrating my efforts.

Ken: Oh, okay. So when you’re on the cushion, that’s a particular situation, isn’t it?

Joe: Yes.

Ken: What’s the right thing to do in that situation?

Joe: Stay there until it’s time to get up.

Ken: And when you do that, what do you feel? [Laughter]

Joe: Okay.

Ken: No matter how bad it is, if you actually do that, how do you feel?

Joe: I’ve done it.

Ken: You’ve done it. What do you feel?

Joe: Joy. [Laughter]

Ken: But you do, don’t you?

Joe: Yeah, you do. I do. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.

Ken: It’s not the kind of joy you were looking for. But I’m going to suggest the kind of joy you’re looking for may be a toy.

Joe: [Pause] Okay. Yeah. Lemme look for that.

Ken: Okay. And so that’s what I was trying to get at in this line. It may not be the best way to get at. So if you have—anybody has—other suggestions, happy to consider them.

Joe: Well, I am not sure. Just, in my world, obviously it set up this separation I was looking to heal in a way, I guess.

Ken: Yeah. Given today’s world and its penchant for healing, I’d like to avoid that whole vocabulary.

Joe: Oh, yeah. I wasn’t suggesting using that. That’s what I was trying—

Ken: Well, yes. But, well, let me throw this out and see if it fits with your experience. There’s a restoration or a finding of balance in some way.

Joe: Implied in that?

Ken: Well, in that experience.

Joe: Yes.

Ken: Yeah. And I think this is very important, because you can only find balance by considering the whole. You can’t find it just by considering parts. When you go into a very complicated situation, there’s many aspects to it, and you struggle with it. You don’t know what the right thing to do is. And you think of this thing, and that’s why it’s important to see this side from that side and that side, from this side. That’s what that whole section’s referring to, in my mind. So you can actually experience the whole, and then you find a way to be in or with the whole, which is in balance. Then you experience joy. And everybody else does, too. Do you follow?

Joe: Yes. Yes.

Ken: Chuck.

Chuck: At that point, you not only experience joy, but you go back to the first one where it says, you know how everything works, because you’re in balance. I was wondering how that had to do with joy, and now I see.

Ken: Okay, good. Okay. Are you okay with this?

Joe: Yes. One final thing. [Laughter] When I’m doing primary practice, I suppose what I was looking for when I’m trying to just experience everything I’m experiencing, and drop the distinction between inside and outside … never mind.

Ken: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You walked off this cliff. We are going to float to the bottom, except there isn’t any bottom.

Joe: So into that experience, I put—

Ken: No inside or outside. That’s the last thing you said.

Joe: May I experience no inside or outside. May I experience the world celebrating my efforts.

Ken: Right.

Joe: And I am no longer there. Once I say that.

Ken: It’s cool. [Laughter]

Joe: Thank you.

Feeling separate from the world

Ken: Yeah. When you consider it, the way I’ve been trying to approach it, when you consider the world celebrating your efforts, or taking joy in your efforts, what happens to you? [Pause] What happens to you as feeling something separate from the world?

Joe: I’m sorry. As soon as what?

Ken: What happens to the you that feels separate from the world?

Joe: When I imagine the world celebrating my efforts?

Ken: Yeah.

Joe: When I experience the world celebrating—

Ken: What happens to the you that feels separate from the world?

Joe: Well, if I remember correctly, I don’t feel separate from the world.

Ken: Right. The you that feels separate from the world disappears. It’s gone.

Joe: When I experienced the world celebrating my efforts. [Pause] Okay.

Ken: I could be glib and say, well, the only world there is. But I’m sure that probably wouldn’t help you, does it? [Laughs] This is a test.

Joe: When I imagine the world celebrating my efforts, I can, at this point, only imagine it as something totally separate from myself.

Ken: Not that one. [Laughter] That’s the world that doesn’t exist. That’s the world we think exists. That’s the world of illusion.

Joe: Yes. This is my question.

Ken: Well, let’s start right here. And you were listening to the Dalai Lama last weekend. So this is important, because everything he had to say about interdependent origination applies actually to what we’re talking about. It’s why people don’t understand it, because it doesn’t apply in an obvious way to the world we think exists, but doesn’t. Now, we are sitting in a room. You’re sitting in a room. I’m sitting in a room, and there are a number of other people here, right? That’s—

Joe: … [Unclear]

Ken: Too bad, because that’s not what’s happening. [Laughter] That’s how you and I can talk about it. But what do you actually experience?

Joe: Green, dark angles. Smell.

Ken: Emotions, thoughts, ideas, right?

Joe: Yeah.

Ken: How many people are there?

Joe: None.

Ken: Okay. What is the relationship between that world and you?

Joe: This is an even deeper question that I’m struggling with. I don’t know what that relationship is.

Ken: Yes. So let’s go a little further then. Where are you in that world?

Joe: In the world we’ve just described?

Ken: Yes.

Joe: I am nowhere in it.

Ken: Oh, okay. Consider that. What are you experiencing right now?

Joe: Oh, hot flushes. [Laughter]

Ken: And if you relax?

Joe: Well, I have no questions if I relax.

Ken: And what do you experience when you relax?

Joe: Nothing. I mean, not nothing. I find it hard to express verbally. I mean …

Ken: How much joy is there in that world?

Joe: I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what joy is.

Ken: Well, no, don’t step into your intellect, please. That won’t help.

Joe: How much joy?

Ken: How much joy? You experience this world of sense impressions in which you don’t even know where you are in this world. Well, let me put it this way, is there no joy?

Student: No what?

Ken: No joy?

Joe: It is not joyless.

Ken: That’s interesting, isn’t it? Now, what do you experience?

Joe: The paucity of the word joy, the misleadingness of the word joy.

Ken: Why do you say misleading?

Joe: Because I mislead myself.

Ken: Yeah, but go on. Go a bit further than that.

Joe: I have an expectation.

Ken: Ah. And what’s your expectation?

Joe: That there is, I suppose, an ecstatic quality to it.

Ken: Ecstatic or excited?

Joe: Heightened?

Ken: Ecstatic or excited?

Joe: I would stick with ecstatic, but it could be excited.

Ken: Because I think most people’s expectation about joy is that it’s exciting.

Joe: Certainly heightened.

Ken: Heightened in some sense. But the joy we were just referring to, what’s that like? The joy, that is not joyless? [Laughter]

Joe: I don’t know how to separate out something called joy from what it is I am experiencing.

Ken: Well, you don’t necessarily have to separate something out. You could look at it as an aspect of the experience, couldn’t you? As you say, it’s not joyless, so there’s something there.

Joe: Right. Yeah, I suppose to me, joyless describes something that I have more of a feeling for than joy does. So I can say it’s not joyless, but I’m not sure that I can say that it’s full of joy. But I do see what you’re getting at. Yes. Yes. I mean …

Ken: What happens when you relax and let that feeling in?

Joe: It’s so hard to relax when you’re holding a microphone in your hand.

Ken: I’m sure you’ll find a way. That’s right. The walls come down, don’t they?

Joe: I so much want to say “yes, but,” but I do see what you mean. Yes. Yes.

Ken: But there’s a part of us that just doesn’t want to go there, right?

Joe: I suppose. I’m not sure what the there is that I don’t want to go to.

Ken: But you can feel it.

Joe: I can feel that I’m making a mistake trying to categorize this thing called joy, and I’m getting all heady about it.

Ken: Yeah.

Joe: Again, I suppose I want it to be something that it just isn’t.

Ken: I think that’s probably true. If you look at, I didn’t refer you to this in the reading, but if you skip up to chapter 14, he returns to this theme of fanaticism. Page 93, second last paragraph. Oh, let’s start with the second paragraph, actually.

At the same time, I added that I do not live my life to have fun.

How to Cook Your Life, Uchiyama Roshi, p. 93

I think maybe that’s that quality that people connect with joy is, having fun. Does that make any sense to you?

Joe: Certainly the way I experience the word enjoy is.

Ken: Yeah, like to have fun.

Joe: Have fun.

Ken: Yeah.

The way I experience the meaning and value of my life is by throwing all of my passion for living into everything.

p. 93


And then at the end of the paragraph:

It is vital here, when talking about the meaning of life, to clearly distinguish between emotional feelings of pleasure or joy and devoting oneself to that passion for life.

p. 93