The Happiness of Meditation

Dhamma Talk + Guided Meditation Session 035: Sep 2nd, 2020, by Sophia Ojha Ensslin and Cristof Ensslin

Banner Photo by Elijah Hail

Please scroll below the video to download handout and read text.

Video Recording of Dhamma Talk (Cristof) and Guided Meditation (Sophia):

Handout

This week we have prepared a multi-page handout for you. It is posted left/below as blog content. Plus, you can download it as PDF by clicking on the following button:

Introduction

Last week, we learned from Bhante Vimalaramsi about adding smiling and relaxing to the active part of the process of meditation. That creates joy and happiness, a state of mind that we can share generously. With a little bit of regular practice, this leads to inner peace wherever we are. 

Today, I want to let Ajahn Brahm chime in. He’s big on smiling, enjoying, and relaxing during meditation. We often hear him say: “Relax. To the max.” 

I stumbled across a text by him titled The Happiness of Meditation, on this website: https://www.budsas.org/ebud/ebmed084.htm (which mentions as its source the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, https://www.bswa.org.au). It’s beautifully written and wonderfully complete. So, I’d like to read it to you now - if y’all don’t mind.

The Happiness of Meditation

One of the things that I’ve always stressed about meditation is the happiness of meditation. It’s meant to be fun. It should be fun. Last night one of the monks told me a story about Ajahn Mun, which I hadn’t heard before. Ajahn Mun was a great Thai Meditation Master. A monk who had spent a long time with him, and knew him very well, said that the Ajahn had a great sense of humor, and laughed a lot, it was a great big laugh, an infectious laugh. I never knew that about Ajahn Mun. But it makes a lot of sense, because that’s what Arahants do, they laugh a lot and they smile a lot. I know this is a bit cheeky but sometimes they are called ‘Ha Ha harahants’. I’m going to get into trouble for that, but I don’t care. It was lovely to hear that story.

Happiness is an important thing in meditation. If you get happiness in meditation early on in your practice, you will always want to meditate. It’s not a case of getting up in the morning and saying, "Oh, I’ve got to do my meditation now. I must get this out of the way so that I can go to breakfast." You know how it is? You do your half an hour every day just like taking medicine. It’s not like that at all. If you really understand what meditation is, you love doing meditation. You just want to do it. Sometimes you have to get your breakfast out of the way to get to your meditation, or you have to get your work out of the way to get to your meditation. It’s just you doing it. You sit on your chair, or your stool, or your cushion, and your mind just leaps towards silence. The Buddha said that when the mind leaps, or jumps, to quietness, to stillness, to non-doing, that’s a great stage on the path of wisdom, on the path to Enlightenment.

Hopefully I’ve conditioned many of you strongly enough for you to realize how beautiful that silence is. So that in moments during your day, when you have nothing to do, your mind leaps towards the opportunity for stillness, instead of trying to fill those gaps up with stupid things, pointless things, which are just mindless distractions. It jumps at the chance; it goes into stillness, steadiness, peace and freedom.

This is the sign of a practitioner, someone who is on the path. This is the sign of someone who has sufficient wisdom so that their mind recognizes what’s in its own interest. So that in the mornings, or the evenings, the mind just leaps towards your meditation cushion. Your meditation is not medicinal, not some sort of punishment, not some sort of penance, it’s something you just want to do. The reason some people don’t go to church if they are Christians, is because it’s boring, they don’t like to go there. They don’t leap up because it’s Sunday and say, "Let’s go to church, let’s go there and listen to a good sermon". It has become boring and cold. That’s why people have dropped away from the churches in the West. People will also drop away from meditation quickly, and stop meditating unless they get fun out of it.

So developing fun in your meditation at home and here, wherever you are, is the way of continuing that practice. Little by little, as you continue the practice in the world, keep it up for the sake of fun, for the sake of peace, for the sake of a place of freedom. You’ve no other choice, you just have to. Some people say, and I understand this very well, because it was the same when I was a lay person, that if you don’t meditate for one day, it’s like not eating. Your heart feels sick, it’s got no strength, and you find yourself getting grumpy, getting angry, because you are not getting that feed of happiness. It doesn’t matter if people tell you that you are addicted to meditation. Great! Be addicted to peace, to happiness. Be addicted to freedom, it’s a nice thing to be addicted to.

Some people say you should not attach to these things, and they quote the simile of the raft. The Buddha said that the raft was just for crossing the river from one shore to the other, but that you should not cling onto that raft. (MN 22.13) You have to let go of the raft once you’ve crossed over to the other shore. But of course you should not throw the raft away in the middle of the river! That’s what a lot of people do. So attach to this raft, attach to your meditation, attach to your precepts, and attach to goodness.

Understand from this simile the importance of those peaceful states, the importance of goodness. and then you will get the pay off. Recall the moral precepts. Recall the goodness, the generosity, the kindness, and the selflessness, that you have done throughout the year. Then you will get the pay off in your meditation. The pay off is that beautiful mind. You understand that this beautiful mind is why we keep precepts, why we are generous, why we give, why we give of ourselves, why we forgive others, and why we forgive ourselves. It’s all part of Dana, all part of giving. It’s why we practice loving kindness and give people the benefit of the doubt. We give our happiness and share our merits with others. Why do we do this? We do that because we see that it actually makes this mind so beautiful. You feel it in daily life; you have something inside of you that you feel very, very proud of. It’s good to feel proud of goodness.

Happiness by Habit

Is there anything to add to this text? I don’t think so. 

We can smile and relax and create our own happiness during meditation. Whenever distractions come up, we use the six R’s which we learned about last week (Recognize, Release, Relax, Re-smile, Return, Repeat). These steps bring us back to relaxing and smiling and creating joy and happiness at all times.

With a meditation habit that we create because we know that we enjoy meditation, we will be habitually happy. That will inevitably spill over into our daily life. Not a bad thing, isn’t it?

How about practicing happiness right now, together.