We’ve been talking about joy for the last several weeks. And I’m sure some of you have wondered whether this is just papering over the suffering in our lives and in the lives of others.
It’s important to understand the role of impermanence in our lives. Perhaps you’ve noticed in your meditation that the breath is always changing. The in-breath turns into the out-breath. The out-breath turns into the in-breath. This ever-changing process can be mistaken for a solid experience when we call it by a single name - breath - and when we depend on it so completely. But each breath is as different from another as one snowflake is to another.
The classical texts ask us to observe the length of the breath, thereby pointing us to this truth, the impermanence of the breath. "Is this a long breath in?,” the texts ask. "Is this a long breath out? Is this a short breath in? Is this a short breath out?” Some texts go further and ask us to discern, “Is this a warm breath? Is this a cool breath?”
Look to your own experience. How is this breath? This one you are having right now? How is the experience of this breath unique?
Similar to the breath, our experience of joy and suffering is always changing. There is no permanence anywhere. When something good happens, we want it to stay. But alas, it passes on. But when something bad happens, it too passes on. Too quickly in the former case. Way too slowly in the latter.
That is why we’ve been bringing mindfulness to our pleasant experiences - to our moments of joy. To savor them, to feel them in our bodies and bones, to bring curiosity to them, understand their roots. This mindful investigation allows us to recall the experience, feels its reverberations and memory in our bodies, and strengthen our neural connections so that joy becomes a well-traveled pathway in our brains.
So what about suffering? Ah, there’s a whole other conversation.
Or is it?
