Learning How to be Happy

(wishtree.info)

A colleague of mine shared this cartoon with me today...

I really like it because creating happiness is not something I was taught how to do.

Please do not misunderstand, this is not a critique of my upbringing per se. 

No, I believe what I was taught about happiness was exactly in line with the white, middle class western world of my time growing up in the last quarter of the 20th century.

The only problem is, in the last 10 or so years, it has become painfully clear to me that what I was taught about happiness was incomplete at best, but more often than not, just plain wrong.

I've had some time to reflect on this too since my 3 year-old daughter has become infatuated with The Trolls movie (2016).

Now, if you don't have a child under the age of 10, you may not have had to watch and re-watch this film complete with Justin Timberlake movie soundtrack- lucky you!

However, I will say the one take-away about this animated movie is a theme that I've been tinkering with for some time now: what is happiness?

Of course for those of you who have seen the movie, it is Princess Poppy who offers her own answer to this question:

Happiness isn’t something you put inside you. It’s already there. Sometimes you just need someone to help you find it.

Growing up in the late 1970's through the 1980's I absolutely took in all the standard messages about happiness being equated with consumption. 

This meant that happiness manifested only when you had the peak experience of a very particular person, place or thing in your life that would finally make you complete (for five minutes or less).

However, what may have been somewhat unique to my experience at that time (though I think it is actually much more common now) was an apparently contradictory edge to that algorithm of consumption=happiness that included a set of rigid morals.

In other words, there was no questioning that the way to attain happiness (because it was something extraordinary to be attained, certainly not something given freely to everyone and definitely not pre-existing) was through people, places and things, but they could only be certain people and certain places and certain things that were within our moral guidelines.

For example, my family would travel, but the trips would always be culturally enriching or we would sleep in a tent.  We would have things, but the things would not be anything remotely connected to a superficial fad or a best-seller which somehow created the illusion that our stuff was better, we were better.

I'll reiterate here what I said above: what I was taught about happiness was incomplete at best, but more often than not, just plain wrong.

So imagine my wonder and amazement when I began to be introduced to these ideas:

Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves...Mindfulness is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.

Mindfulness is the basis of happiness.

-Thich Nanh Hanh 1976.

To which I exclaimed: "Wait...What?!"

It would not be an understatement to say that my first encounter with mindfulness created a complete paradigm shift for me in regards to that question: what is happiness?

Whereas I had grown up to believe that happiness was an elite emotion reserved for just a select few (and even for them, happiness was exclusive to only those very peak experiences), along comes mindfulness that tells me happiness is completely egalitarian- literally available to everyone.

Everyone. 

Talk about democracy in action...

Mindfulness also said happiness is available now.  As in, right now.  This-very-moment.

Again, for me, fireworks- another huge paradigm shift.

I realized the myth I had believed for so long that happiness was scarce was just not true. 

Mindfulness said that happiness is not reserved for only the VIP, and happiness is not an endangered specie in the context of painful complicated lives, but rather happiness is in fact abundant.

To which I proclaimed again: "Wait...What?!"

It has been many years now since I began to unpack my early learning about happiness, and I feel so grateful for what I have learned about happiness as to transform my day-to-day, moment-to-moment, experiences in such profound ways.

This past week was one of those weeks where I found myself in deep gratitude for mindfulness and mindfulness practices as my mother was back in the hospital on a Friday and my mother-in-law was in the very same hospital the following Monday.

If I had held onto the cultural myths about happiness of my childhood, times like these would have left me feeling depleted and helpless. 

Which is not to say these types of moments are not stressful, painful and just damn hard- believe me, they are.  Yet I also think, with mindfulness, happiness is present too.

One of my favorite Western Buddhist author and teacher is Sylvia Boorstein who wrote a book called: Happiness is an Inside Job.  And I can say, growing up I honestly would not have had a clue what that title meant.

Now, I can say that I do, and I am so grateful for that.

As I go forward, and continue to explore and redefine happiness, I am interested in trying out other letting go practices such as generosity and renunciation that may prompt feelings of joy and in turn create greater happiness.  I am intrigued with the counterintuitive idea that letting go may yield greater happiness than consumption.

Here's to more seeking!

May it be so.

Kindred Spirits: Mary Oliver

…My back to hickory, I sit

Hours in the damp wood, listening.

It never ebbs.

Its music is the shelf for other sounds:

Birds, wind in the leaves, some tumbled stones.

After awhile

I forget things, as I have forgotten time.

Death, love, ambition-the things that drive

Like pumps in the big rivers.

                                    My heart

Is quieted, at rest. I scarcely feel it.

Little rivers, running everywhere,

Have blunted the knife. Cool, cool,

They wash above the bones.

-Creeks by Mary Oliver

Spring has finally sprung here in New England, and I am once again back outside allowing the sounds of nature to ground me in the here and now.

Like this 81 year-old American Pulitzer Prize winning poet, being enveloped by the natural world is sometimes the only way I can forget things, quiet and rest my heart, and blunt the knife.

Infinite gratitude for this kindred spirit.

Radical Acceptance & God's Will

Lately I've been wondering if the phrases "god's will" and "radical acceptance" might not be a play in mutuality for me.

And if so, it's possible that the approach I've taken to grasp one, might help the other.

Perhaps it's best to start with some definitions though.

Let me start by saying, I've always felt badly for folks who have interpreted "god's will" as a one-way street of destiny, meritocracy, or punishment/reward.

This sympathy began many years ago when my first stepfather was alive and living with HIV and then AIDS.

It was the early 90's then, and it was not uncommon for me to hear from people who still held homophobic views that the reason my stepfather had contracted HIV was because he had "sinned against God" (definitely a capital "G"), and this fatal disease was his "punishment" for "choosing the gay lifestyle."

As a teenager at the time, I had no theology of my own to speak of, but it did not stop me from feeling deep sadness for these individuals who held such a deterministic, hateful and vindictive view of a power greater than themselves. 

I would think to myself: "How on earth do you sleep at night? You must be terrified all the time."

Now that I'm older and have spent many years crafting and listening for my own theology, I still feel great sadness for individuals who believe that when something awful happens, it is because of some personal failure.

What's interesting too, is now, over twenty years later, I hear some of those same people calling this same worldview "karma" instead of "God" (with a capital "G"), though I believe it is just an elephant of a different color.

I do not share this worldview.

When I use the phrase "god's will" I am referring to the laws of the universe.  And by "universe," I mean that quite literally.

The universe that is made up of an estimated 100 billion galaxies, of which only one is called the Milky Way (where we live) that may contain up 100 billion of it's own individual solar systems including ours.

(This is where you stand back and say: "Whoa...")

Here's the funny thing though, and I say this as humbly as I possibly can, the universe also (miraculously) includes you and me, which means the laws of the universe are not deterministic, they are transactional.  God's will is transactional.

Which leads me to radical acceptance.

To me, radical acceptance is a profound and purposeful alignment with reality. 

Whereas god's will might be a noun, radical acceptance may be more of a verb.  It also may be the most sane response to god's will, or to the laws of the universe.

Contemplative practices like prayer and meditation are methods for practicing and perfecting this type of harmonious, and dynamic, encounter with bare reality or god.

Of this topic, much has been said and written for millennia.

Just for an example, the 14th century Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich wrote in her book Revelations of Divine Love:

Prayer is a new, gracious, lasting will of the soul united and fast-bound to the will of God.

And to fast forward to a much more modern text, How to Be an Adult in Faith and Spirituality (2011), the author David Richo ends the book with this question at the start of the Epilogue:

What question was the universe yearning to have answered when it created me?

Though not a Buddhist myself, on this topic of radical acceptance and god's will, I have always been drawn to the Buddhist idea of "faith."

In her article entitled: "Faith: Its Role and Meaning in a Buddhist Wisdom Tradition" posted on the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies website, Western author and Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg wrote this about faith:

The word we normally translate as faith from the Pali language, the language of the original Buddhist texts, is saddha, which literally means 'to place the heart upon.' Saddha means to give our hearts over to, or place our hearts upon something.

When I think about the aspiration I have to align with reality in such a way that it feels effortless and compassionate, the phrase "to place the heart upon" suggests the tenderness and the intentionality that goes along with this level of radical acceptance.

On a very personal note, for some time now I have been periodically using the phrases "your will" or "what is your will" in my sitting meditation as an anchor to the practice.  And the other day, as I sat, these words came to my mind: "I'm here...It could not have been any other way."

I can't tell you exactly why, but I experienced those words as extraordinarily true- bring tears-to-my-eyes true. It felt like a release and a relief.

At times I've thought of contemplative practices like radical acceptance as the method and the mystical experience of divine union with god or god's will as the meaning, and perhaps this is how these two concepts co-exist interdependently for me.

Going forward, my hope is to continue to seek a truth that brings peace and healing to myself as  an individual, and in turn, to the world as a whole.

Perhaps you may have the same aspiration too.

May it be so.

Mornings with Merton: Part II

In 2014 I posted a blog called "Mornings with Merton," which ended with the words:

I guess I have to keep on reading. Page by page. Meditation by meditation. As always, I am a work in progress.

Well, two years and change later, I am definitely still a work in progress.

I also continue to come back to Thomas Merton (1915-1968) in the mornings before I meditate.

For those who are not familiar with him, Merton was a Catholic monk who lived in Kentucky at the Cistercian Abbe of Gethsemani, and he authored multiple books about Christian mysticism and the contemplative life.

I myself do not identify as a Christian, but I still find much value and meaning in Merton's writings that to me exemplify the divine relationship, the contemplative relationship, with god.

Currently I am piecing my way through No Man Is an Island--two years ago it was Seeds of Contemplation--which was first published in 1955.

I've decided not to read this book in any sort of order (e.g. the chapters chronologically).

Yet I find, like in Seeds of Contemplation, that I encounter exactly what I need.

Take this past weekend for example.

On Friday I had just posted a blog entitled "A More Humane Spirituality of Both-And." It was about the need to attend to a universal awareness and a particular or more day-to-day awareness.

Then, the very next day, I read this meditation about what Merton calls "Recollection:"

Recollection makes me present to myself by bringing together two aspects, or activities, of my being as if they were two lenses in a telescope.  One lens is the basic substance of my spiritual being: the inward soul, the deep will, the spiritual intelligence.  The other is my outward soul, the practical intelligence, the will engaged in the activities of life...

Recollection, then, makes me present to whatever is significantly real at each moment of my existence.  The depths of my soul should always be recollected in God.  When they are so, they do not necessarily prevent me from engaging in practical, outward activity...Recollection as such is compatible with physical and mental activity, and with any ordinate kind of work...

True recollection is known by its effects: peace, interior silence, tranquility of the heart...

Recollection is more than a mere turning inward upon ourselves, and it does not necessarily mean the denial or exclusion of exterior things. Sometimes we are more recollected, quieter, simple and pure, when we see through exterior things and see God in them than when we turn away from them to shut them out of our minds. Recollection does not deny sensible things, it sets them in order...

For recollection brings the soul into contact with God, and His invisible presence is a light which at once gives peace to the eye that sees by it, and makes it see all things in peace.

I re-read these passages several times over the course of the weekend as they resonated so deeply- it felt as if it had been written for me.

Then, after I finished my period of formal sitting meditation, I would make an effort to try to carry the essence of Merton's message into the rest of my day as I confronted certain challenges in my various roles as a caretaker.

I particularly held these words close to my heart-mind: Recollection does not deny sensible things, it sets them in order, because it seems to me, Merton's view of the spiritual life is like-minded in my desire for a where-the-rubber-meets-the-road-type of faith.

So, here's to more mornings with Merton.

Perhaps you might find his insight and wisdom to be helpful too.