Talk: Joy

Welcome, lovely to see you all here this morning. I moved to this side of the shrine room because I thought you might want to look out there, so if I catch you just gazing off into the distance, I won't be offended. It's an absolutely beautiful day here this morning. Sky is blue and the valley is really clear and sharp this morning, so have to remember to enjoy it while we can. I'm Satya Robyn and I will be speaking to you this morning about enjoying things. And we'll finish half 11 at the latest, and I'll talk for a bit and then there'll be a chance for questions. And I chose this topic partly because I thought it might get people to come, because who doesn't need more joy in their lives? And partly because my friend Mary suggested it. And Mary is one of my colleagues in the local Extinction Rebellion group, and she was feeling— I think she was just feeling a lack of joy in her life, and she was feeling a bit despairing about the state of the planet and all kinds of things that were that were not conducive to joy. And so I'm doing this talk for Mary. She's not here, she may never hear it, but thank you, Mary, for the inspiration. And in preparing for this talk, I— whenever I prepare for talks, I feel that I should go back to the Buddha's words that were written down in the sutras and do lots of studying and get lots of kind of clever facts together. And so I have some notes on the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. And then when I thought this morning about what I wanted to speak to you about, I thought, do the Seven Factors of Enlightenment fill me with joy? And I, I realized that they didn't. So I may mention them later on, but instead I will start with a poem because poetry often does fill me with joy. And I can't remember where I found this one. It's translated from the Hebrew by Rachel Tzviabach, and it's by somebody called Tuvia Rubner. It's called Wonder. If after everything that has happened you can still hear the blackbird, the tufted lark at dawn, The Bulbul and the Honeybird. Don't be surprised that happiness is watching the clouds being winged carried away, is drinking morning coffee, being able to execute all the body's needs, is walking along the paths without a cane and seeing the burning colors of sunset. A human being can bear almost everything, and no one knows when and where happiness will overcome him. Poetry often makes me cry. If you know me, you'll know that lots of things make me cry, as Fi was saying on Wednesday. And I think what moves me about it is the simplicity of the joys that come to the poet, that they're very ordinary things— blackbird singing, the clouds being moved across the sky— and that included in the poem is everything that has happened, which which we all have. We all have that in our lives, the things that are difficult. So I'll move from the poem to some, some, some, a story about cleaning. Again, if you know me, you'll know that cleaning is probably number 2 on my, the bottom of my list of favourite things. I'm not sure what the bottom is, but it's pretty down there. Um, and you have to know that for the context for the story. How many years ago? Maybe 15 years ago, I was living in a little cottage in the countryside, a little thatched cottage with my ex-partner. And our relationship was in its sort of final death throes. He was suffering a lot and I was suffering a lot. And there was a tiny little upstairs in this cottage, a kind of a deep thatch, and the stairs came up and there was a teensy little space with a window just before we went into our bedroom. And this teensy little space I'd made into my office, and there was a— I had to buy a special table from IKEA that was extra narrow to fit it in, and I had some, some storage. It was very minimalist because there was no space in there at all, and the window just looked out onto the garden, and I can't remember, I must have had some extra time one day, I must have had a whole day free and we'd been living there for a few years, I decided that I was going to clean my little area. So rather than the usual clean where you just kind of, you know, leave everything where it is and do a bit, I decided that I would go back to the bones of the space and I took everything out of the space. And I cleaned the window and I hoovered, and then I cleaned everything that had been in the space and then brought it all back in bit by bit. And whilst I was cleaning, I felt joy. And even now, as I remember it, I'm quite astounded at the intensity of the joy that I felt. And even now I don't quite understand why that joy arrived. I guess that it was something about— there was something sacred about the cleaning. I was offering reverence to this space that had served me. This was the place where I did my writing, so there was a kind of an offering, offering something to the to the process of writing, which is really important to me. It was a reverence to the objects in that space, kind of enjoying the simple table and the little things that I had there. There was something about my power that I was— I was doing this thing that wasn't something I usually did. There was a cleansing, there was something that was just kind of letting go of things and throwing things away. There was an aesthetic kind of pleasure to it. And I can say all of those things, but really I was blessed. I was just graced with joy that day. It just landed on me. Like a butterfly kind of landing on your hand. And this is the difficulty in talking about joy for me, is that like a lot of the things that are really important to me in my life and that I have received from others and that I want to pass on, words kind of fail. We reach a point where where not only are there no instructions, but there's no way to talk about the lack of instructions. But we are here, and I am talking to you about Joy, so I've got to say something. And I guess that for me, if we want more joy in our lives, there is something about putting ourselves in the right conditions for that to happen. And we often talk about the right conditions in Buddhism. I often use garden metaphors. And when we're gardening— and she's doing our veg patch outside at the moment— and You can do certain things that make it more likely that you'll get vegetables. You can plant the seeds in a little greenhouse, and then a really windy day happens and blows it onto the ground and all of the seeds go everywhere. You can plant seeds directly into the ground and then so many weeds come up— this is, these are all true stories— so many weeds come up that, that we can't quite tell what's weed and what's plants and whether there's any vegetables at all. So we can do certain things, and then the world does what the world does. So one of the things that we can think about when we're preparing the ground for joy to grow in our lives is what sorts of things might we put in place to make it more likely. And you can think about your own life, your own daily routine. How many spaces are there in your day? How often do you just allow yourself to pause with a cup of tea or just look at the sky for a little while? How connected are you with nature? Do you come to Buddhist practice? That's a very good thing to do if you want to have more joy in your life. Tick for everyone in this room. Do you make an effort in your relationships with your friends and your family? Do you write in a journal? Do you get therapy when you need therapy? So there are all sorts of things that we can put in place. Do you join a samba band? All sorts of things you can put in place that might increase the likelihood of joy kind of cropping up. And for me, those conditions kind of change over time. There are different points in my life where there are things that are good for me to do or not good for me to do. Just speaking personally, I've got lots of parts in me that are very, um, they're very good at striving. I've got some parts that are really good at getting stuff done. And holding me to high standards and making sure that I do certain things. So one of the things that I need to watch out for when I'm looking at my schedule is doing too many of those things or beating myself up too much when I don't achieve them. So for me, there's something about more flexibility in my schedule as being more healthy. For other people, you might be the opposite and you might need to just kind of go to the left a bit teachings are often, you know, you need to work out whether to go to the right a bit or to the left a bit. And as an example, I've had a kind of a long rocky relationship with, with exercise and my physicality, probably mostly a legacy from my old PE teachers. I'm sure it wasn't their fault, but so Forcing myself to do too much exercise in the morning just becomes really counterproductive because then I start rebelling and I don't enjoy it. So what I'm doing at the moment is, is I'm experimenting with doing stretching in the morning, which isn't yoga, just stretching. So I can do 10 minutes of stretching and feel like I've got no rebellious parts come up at all. And it still means that at least I kind of get my body moving a bit.. And I can do that in a way that's sustainable, because a lot of the time we think, oh, if I did these things, then I'll be happier. And then we kind of force ourselves to do them, and there's a limit to how long we can sustain them. And then there's also a kind of a kickback. So when I speak about creating conditions, I, I have the proviso that we go as gently as we can with all of that. That we just ease ourselves into new ways of doing things. And that as we do that, we really respect the parts of us that don't want us to do those things. Because if it was easy, we'd all be happy all the time, wouldn't we? If life was as easy as that, if you could just go away and do these things and then be happy all the time, then Yeah, nobody would ever come to talks like this. So there's something about acknowledging that our systems are like ecologies, and that if we make a change in one place, it means that there's going to be a reaction in another place. That if we, um, if we put something into our life that feels a bit difficult, then there'll be a kind of a reaction as a phrase. I can't think of it. Something back.

Backlash. Thank you.

Maybe the other thing that I will mention is the different kinds of happiness, the different kinds of joy. And I think that most of us, when we say the word joy, we think about the same sort of feeling. But there is also something about where we get pleasure from and different kinds of pleasure. So the habits, the conditions that I've mentioned so far feel to me like habits I would maybe give the label wholesome or healthy or something like that. What I haven't talked about so much is chocolate brownies, detective novels, trashy TV, RuPaul, and that's the mild end. And then we kind of, you know, cigarettes and alcohol and overwork and all of that stuff that also brings us pleasure in different ways. I don't think many people would speak about the joy of smoking a cigarette. Maybe they would, but I think that there's something different about the quality of the pleasure that comes from those places. And, um, when I think about that in terms of the way I work as a therapist, which is a system called Internal Family Systems, The idea is that we have parts of us that help us to deal with life, help us to deal with, um, our distress, our vulnerability, our shame, our depression, our anger, by either, um, managing it, which is the, the kind of the striving parts in me that I was talking about before. The bits that sort me out and plan and do things that society approves of. And then we also have a set of parts that are, that, that who specialize in distracting us from that pain and comforting us and getting us away from it as quick as they can when it's threatening to come up and overwhelm us. And these are the parts that step into the driving seat. When we, when we have maybe the third brownie, or we snap at somebody, or we fill our schedule so full that we can't think about the things that we don't want to think about. Those are the parts of us that, that give us that sort of pleasure, which is more of a distracting pleasure. And I'm not anti that. I used to be anti that. I used to be like, yeah, let's just get rid of all that and just focus on the wholesome pleasure of, you know, um, let's just go on yoga retreats and, and, and drink delicious smoothies and be happy forever. Um, I used to think that that was possible. I mean, parts of me used to think that was possible, but what I really appreciate now is that we all have those different ways of handling life and that we all need them. We need these guys. They're not very popular. Because they always cause some kind of problem, either making us a bit more unhealthy or upsetting someone or getting us into some kind of trouble. But for me, it's not realistic to completely cut them out because we're human and we need them. So instead we can include them in our ecosystem and be gentle with them as well. And, and acknowledge that although bits of us might hate them, especially the ones that want us to do more yoga, um, the, they, they have a purpose and they're, they're trying to help us. They're trying to keep the ecosystem balanced. In the only way that they know how. And we all have different ones, and some of them are more harmful than others. So sometimes if we can, we may be swapping, you know, swapping cocaine for caffeine, or, or massive overwork for buying too many plants, or whatever it is. So we can try and swap things in, but, but, but it's pointless to get rid of them. To try and get rid of them. And for me, if I'm, if I'm more kind towards those bits of me, actually it creates a bit more space. It creates a bit more breathing space in my system, which means that something else can come in. And the something else might be blackbird song, It might be the kindness of a partner offering to buy my sandwich. It might be, um, it might be just noticing how tense our bodies are and, and, and in that moment just allowing them to just relax a tiny bit. And I'm smiling because I'm thinking, what is it I'm saying here again? What's, what's the, what's the sort of the take-home of this talk? And I think that, that one of the take-homes is that we're less in control of our joy than we would like to be. I don't know about you, but as soon as I start trying to manipulate the world into making me happy, it backfires. Who spoke this morning about clinging? Where did I hear that? Was that in your talk? It was Zuppaladee. Yeah, so my friend, my friend's, um, Dharma glimpse this morning, she noticed how quickly her mind clung to needing chocolate as the thing that would make her happy. And in that moment— I'm really glad I've got someone here to fill in the holes in my brain. That's your job. In that moment, she missed an opportunity to experience the kindness from her partner. And, and that, that's what Buddhism says. It says that what we try and do all the time is cling on to some things and push others away and avoid others by being in denial. And that the more we do that, the more we try to be happy, the more we're working against the universe, the more we're kind of pushing against something that's, that's already pushing against us and that will start pushing harder. So there is something about how can we acknowledge all of that and see it happening and then just allow a tiny relaxation, just that little shift. Oh, this is happening. Oh, look what I'm doing again. Oh, Here's this bit of me that does this. And in that tiny moment, there's a little gap that opens up and something else can come in. As Pure Land Buddhists, I won't talk for much longer. As Pure Land Buddhists, we, we are what's called other power Buddhists. So the idea is that rather than being able to work really hard and try really hard and reach enlightenment. We kind of acknowledge that we need help. We acknowledge that we are limited beings with limited ecosystems, and that what really helps us is to open ourselves up to help, to help, to the support that's already there that we, we don't notice very often, that's around us all the time. And to help from this personification of compassion and wisdom that we call the Buddha, but we could call other names. And I guess that this is how I feel joy comes into me too. It's not that I work really hard to create it. It's that I relax enough to open my eyes and see Ralph guarding Angie's shoes this morning at the end of the walking meditation, or Philip kind of just receiving something at the end of practice, and me receiving by seeing you're receiving. Those little moments, that's what brings me joy, and I'm— I have very little to do with it. So I'll maybe finish by reading this poem again, if I can get through it without crying too much. Wonder. If after everything that has happened, you can still hear the blackbird, the tufted lark at dawn, the bulbul and the honeybird, don't be surprised that happiness is watching the clouds being wind-carried away is drinking morning coffee, being able to execute all the body's needs, is walking along the paths without a cane and seeing the burning colors of sunset. A human being can bear almost everything, and no one knows when and where happiness will overcome him. Namomi debi. Thank you for your attention. And you might have a question about how any of what I've said relates to your own life, or you might have a Buddhist question, or you might not. The floor is open.

Do you think it's natural when you accept yourself for the parts of yourself that you like so much? Natural sequence. Is that what could lead you to awakening?

Hmm, yeah, interesting question. So the question is, is there a natural sequence that when you accept the bits of yourself that you don't like and you become calmer, does that lead towards enlightenment? Enlightenment. Yeah, so I guess that the tradition that I studied in doesn't really emphasize enlightenment. Pure Land Buddhism kind of says that, you know, we're probably not going to get there, so don't worry about it too much. But if you say, if you call out to the Buddha, if you call out to Amida, then you know that, that you will be okay. That you know that when you're reborn, you'll be reborn in conditions that are perfect to lead to enlightenment. So there's something about even bypassing those parts of you that might think that you can get there if you do the right things. For me, that's been a very tempting narrative is that if I, if I try hard enough, I will perfect myself, or I will reach some state where I'm this being that just exudes love and kindness. And of course, we do change, and that if we do put ourselves in the right conditions, we do hopefully become more relaxed, kinder, more open. That, of course, that's true, and that that's part of the motivation why we do what we do. But for me, there's a more interesting question, which is, which is, does it make us kinder? Does it make us kinder if we accept the parts of ourselves that we don't like? And the answer to that is definitely yes, because if we can accept the bits of ourselves we don't like, we're much more able to accept those bits of other people. Because the people that— I don't know about you, but the people that really annoy me have qualities that I really hate the idea of owning. Those are the people that we learn the most from because they're really poking at something. So I would personally talk about being able to, being able to come into relationship with those qualities of calm, compassion, creativity, all those qualities that we come into relationship with, those qualities, but we don't tend to stay there. We don't tend to stay there because something's always pulling us out. So it's about a continual noticing when we're out and then relaxing and coming back in. Um, but other people would give you a different answer to that question because lots of Buddhists, that is their goal, is to become enlightened. So I feel that for me it's quite a relief that I don't have to worry about that now. But I also have faith. I trust that things will be okay, even if they're not okay. Does that answer your question? Yeah, thank you.

Good question.

Any other thoughts? Doesn't have to be a question. Anything that people struggle with or wonder about?

This isn't fully formed quite in my mind yet. I was thinking back to what Casper said about the sort of pendulum between kind of secular Buddhism, spiritual, religious Buddhism. I was thinking about that in terms of happiness and joy, that sometimes in my life happiness can be either quite far away and/or require quite a lot of work to achieve it. I was just thinking sometimes it's just about nudging a little bit one way or the other and then waiting and then having that kind of patience. Days, maybe, that it will happen. Maybe not at that time. You kind of nudge— that nudging could be changing those parts a little bit. It doesn't have to be big things, but maybe it requires that waiting and experimenting rather than perhaps in a more Western way that it's more linear process of I need to do this, or if I do XYZ, then it happens.

Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I think that's right, and that's why I quite like nature as a metaphor, because it's so much more— it's 4D, isn't it, or 5D— that a little change there has an effect on that, and then that comes back around there, and we never really know, and we have to have faith and just wait a bit longer sometimes. I'll also read— what you said reminded me of a quote. Very briefly, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment are factors that we can foster, cultivate, in order to become better people and to help us towards enlightenment. And then mindfulness and effort and relaxation and equanimity, and one of them is joy. So that's one of the factors. And I really like this quote by Jayah Rudgard: When I was first introduced to dharma practice, I had this impression that I had to work to overcome the hindrances. Before I could settle into anything that was more enjoyable. Actually, we can practice from the beginning by engaging these brightening qualities of the mind. They feel good to cultivate and really speak to the way the Buddha described his path as one that is beautiful in the beginning, middle, and end. It yields fruit immediately. We don't have to wait for some final epiphany, but can actually start to taste the flavor as of awakening as we walk along. So I think that really speaks to what you were saying, Philip, and, and that's what we do when we walk around the garden, isn't it? Is we don't need people to have done any practice to join us in our garden meditation. You just have to turn up and follow, and, and there it is. There's the dharma. It's, it's, it's here right at the beginning. So yeah, thanks for giving me an excuse to read that quote out too.

About cultivating, like maybe cultivating inside, and it's cultivated all around us. And I had this thing like, do you smile because you're happy? Are you happy because you smile?

Hmm.

And that happy because you smile feels like you cultivate it inside, and then you're happy because you can smile, and you can cultivate that. You can smile because you're happy because sometimes things externally come in and make you happy. Yeah, maybe again, it's like symbiotic process of like internal, external feedback and keep on being cultivated.

Yeah, absolutely. And there are also feedback loops that take us like that as well. Yeah, there's definitely those.

That's the idea here.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and it's both, you know, that our ecology contains both and that I would say that both are necessary because we have to have things that drop sometimes in order to die and be reborn, or to get bad enough that we give them attention, or to point us to something. So I think that really wanting to include the difficulty is necessary, as well as— not that we need to seek it, because there's enough of it as there is, but yeah, that we need both. Yeah, thank you. Any final questions? Okay, so thank you all very much for your attention, being here, and, um, just gonna stop the video.