It is the perfect time of year to be reading The Book of Joy about the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, written by Douglas Abrams.
The topic sentence that heads this blog post comes from The Book of Joy, where the Buddhist method of Lojong teachings is mentioned. (Lojong is a mind training practice based on a set of aphorisms that are designed as an antidote to undesired mental habits that cause suffering.)
The text clarifies that when we focus only on ourselves, we are destined to be unhappy: “Contemplate that, as long as you are too focused on your self-importance and too caught up in how you are good or bad, you will experience suffering. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want does not result in happiness. Included in this text is the admonition: “Always maintain a joyful mind.”
This ties in with the yogic teaching on the five kleshas being the main obstacles on our path to Samadhi, which translates as meditative absorption, freedom and joy.
The five kleshas are:
Avidya, or seeing things incorrectly. (Looking for happiness in all the wrong places)
Asmita, or ego. (Focusing too much on ourselves)
Raga, or attachment (Focusing on getting what we want)
Dvesha, or aversion (Trying to avoid what we don’t want)
Abhinivesha, or fear, specifically fear of death (Fear of change of any sort, but specifically the ultimate change of dying.)
So, what is a joyful mind?
Buddhists believe that joy is our natural state, but the ability to experience joy can be cultivated as a skill. So much depends on where we put our attention: on our own suffering or that of others, on our own perceived separation or on our indivisible connection.
Everybody wants to be happy, but the challenge is that a lot of people don’t know how. I was surprised to read in this book a statistic about a psychological study done in 1978 that found that lottery winners were not significantly happier than those who had been paralyzed in an accident! The study was perhaps the first that put forth the idea that we all have a default state of happiness; that after the initial reaction wears off, we return to a “set point”.
Further psychological studies suggest that certain immutable factors such as our genes and our temperament make up this idea of a set point which constitutes about 50% of our happiness. The other half is determined by a combination of our circumstances, over which we may have limited control, and our attitudes and our actions, over which we have a great deal of control.
Three practices that have the greatest influence on increasing our happiness are:
Our ability to reframe our situation more positively. (Learn to see the lesson or blessing in every situation.)
Our ability to experience gratitude. (Cultivate a gratitude practice.)
Our choice to be kind and generous. (Always be mindful of the needs of others.)
These three practices create the attitudes and actions help us cultivate a more joyful life.
There is a wonderful Buddhist parable about suffering and the end of suffering. This story is known as the Parable of the Mustard Seed.
A young mother’s only son dies. She is heartbroken and stricken with grief. She carries his body from neighbor to neighbor asking each one if they have any medicine or can do anything to revive him, but no one can. One neighbor suggests that she take her son to Buddha and ask him to bring her son back to life. The Buddha agrees to revive her son, but he tells the woman that she needs to gather mustard seeds from households that have never been touched by death. From these special mustard seeds he will create a medicine that will revive her son. All of her neighbors are willing to give her mustard seeds, but they all told her that none of them have been untouched by death.
Through this process the woman becomes enlightened. She is able to step out of her own grief and experience the grief of others. She becomes less focused on herself and finds friends and community.
As you gather around the Thanksgiving table this year, be grateful for the many blessings in your life, for the food you have to eat, for all of those who contributed to that food being on your table, for your family and friends and finally, may you not be too self-absorbed, may you always be mindful of the needs of others.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” - Melody Beattie