Post #57: Joyfulness

25 August 2023

“A crucifixion serene to the point of cheerfulness…”

— Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

Now that I’ve said more than enough about supra-mundane hells, what about the more everyday kind of inferno, the usual sufferings of life taken to fever pitch sometimes? They say that the Buddhist Path is meant to be walked joyfully (Majjhima Nikaya 19.26); but how can one’s precarious cheerfulness be maintained even in view of life’s ordinary miseries, to say nothing of the truly hideous panorama of extraordinary ones?

Well, to speak plainly, I don’t think it can on the ordinary human mode—the default setting as it were, wherein our sense of delight depends on things working out for us. When the background physiological intelligence governing our mind-body detects something going right, it automatically rewards us with pleasant sensations, which we enjoy, get attached to, and chase after, whether we are fully aware of it or not. A lovely ride, perhaps, when it all runs smoothly for a stretch, but not nearly so enjoyable when we hit the inevitable bumps in the road, and then some, if we are unskillful or unlucky, or we just run out of time and life.

In other words, the default mode hitches our joyfulness to a world over which we have but limited power, sometimes barely any, or even none at all. Things simply cannot go so smoothly for long, especially as vitality wanes with the decades—hence the Buddhist emphasis on aging, sickness, and death. And not enough with that, but even under the best circumstances, when things are on the whole going remarkably well, pleasant sensations are far from assured. They depend too much on the vagaries of the mind, the body, other people, and countless other factors besides; at any time the unpropitious or outright agony-inducing constellations can get switched on from one moment to the next. (“Hell is other people,” concluded M. Sartre—a human truth of much general validity that plenty of other philosophers had already proclaimed long before him. Nor am I the first one to add that to make the general more particularly valid one need only add, “Hell is Jean-Paul Sartre.”)

To be reliable, joy must come from somewhere else: not from the usual relishing of pleasant things towards which our default habit patterns predispose us, but from something radically different, both in the looser and the more literal sense of the word—namely letting go at the very root, that is to say, becoming equanimous with one’s sensations whatever they may turn out to be, pleasant or unpleasant, heavenly or hellish. By instinct we expect happiness to come from the identification of the self with such pleasing sensations as we can catch in the fleeting moment; in fact it can only come from the opposite, when we learn to detach at last from that identification which keeps us trapped, by the Buddhist diagnosis, in a never-ending maelstrom of craving and clinging. Given the cogency of the argument, one might think it should suffice to grasp it properly in order to break the habit. But far from it; understanding the problem is the least part of it. The much greater challenge lies in reprogramming our habit patterns line by line—defragmenting the whole synaptic hard-drive built up over a lifetime or more, if we may assume that the mental infrastructure comes at least in part from a long line of genetic inheritance.

What may sound like the most obvious question to ask, namely whether someone’s meditation practice is making him feel better (see also my next post on the benefits of meditation) is therefore a lot trickier than it seems. Of course no meditator is like to practice in hopes of making himself feel worse than before—a scenario good only for satire, if that. However, “feeling better” in the meditative sense cannot be taken in its usual meaning. There will, certainly, still be a (wholesome) desire to make the texture of experience more tolerable, even joyful if possible, but this goal is not aimed at directly, but approached in a roundabout way: not by shrinking from the unpleasant in the usual manner, but by confronting it head-on, under the magnifying class, so to speak—which can give the impression of undue “dwelling on the negative.” For it is true that such a meditative practice will resolutely put the focus, inwardly and ultimately, on the misery of our own sensations (even the pleasant ones, it turns out upon closer inspection), so long as we disregard their transience and identify with them the way we usually do. Outwardly, the Noble Truths remind us relentlessly of the universality of the unsatisfactory in the world of sentient experience.

All the same, such charges of dwelling excessively on the negative miss the deeper purpose of the exercise, which is not to reinforce our usual dissatisfactions (springing as they do from a misconceived relationship to our own sensations), but to break free from them. Doing so becomes possible only if we are willing to face up close what is really going on, that is, the sobering reality of how unsatisfactory our attached experiences really are at bottom—which requires paying close attention, as continuously as possible, to how much we are agitated by pleasant and unpleasant sensations alike (our addiction to the pleasant turns out, alas, to be even harder to break than our habit of shrinking from the unpleasant).

Along the way, it is true, one might well get the impression sometimes that one’s practice is only intensifying the unpleasant dimension to one’s experience, in effect making one worse off. In fact that is very unlikely to be the case, as the unpleasantness (and one’s constant reaction to it) was there all along, only submerged and therefore not seen for what it is. The aversions that come into view through intense practice are not created by one’s mindfulness; they are merely brought to the surface for treatment, instead of remaining hidden where nothing can be done about them. Nonetheless one can certainly feel at times as if one were regressing, especially during intense periods of practice that dig deep into previously unseen layers of negativity and aversion, often with dramatically unpleasant side-effects. But the relief that comes, sooner or later, when the most wearisome burdens finally drop away after having been carried far too long, does not leave much room for doubt that is was worth carrying on so doggedly. (Faith in the Path may not be a prerequisite for getting started on the journey; but it soon becomes indispensable for sustaining one’s effort during its murkier and more doubtful periods. The Dhamma too knows its Dark Nights of the Soul.)

If it be objected that I am making it all seem far too simple, I would answer that although it may look basic and straightforward, so does a laser if you think of it as emitting a very narrow beam and limited range of wavelengths; the foundation of a building too may not look like much. Yet to conceive and produce such a singular light-beam is a technological marvel, and wonders can be accomplished with it; likewise, upon the seemingly unimpressive foundations of a building, all manner of amazing edifices can be raised. Even if the account I am giving may sound almost banal, its implications are immense even in our world, never mind the supramundane dimensions. As changes are made to this foundation, everything will rearrange itself in a far more organic manner than concrete can, getting slowly reconfigured from the bottom up around a meditative perspective and practice, as I have tried to illustrate in Post #52.

If it be said, on the other hand, that all this sounds far too difficult, I would have to admit that the challenge is indeed a great one. But that is nothing new: the Buddha spoke, from the very outset, of a Teaching that went so much against the prevailing currents of the world that he doubted whether he would be able to find anyone wise and determined enough to practice consistently something so profound, so subtle, and so demanding (Majjhima Nikaya 26:19). Yet who would deny that he did find such students, and plenty of them, not only in his own day but even 2500 years later? What truly worthwhile thing in life does not require a correspondingly great effort?

That’s all very well, a contrarian reader might interject at this point, but hold on a minute. For someone who talks so big about Buddhist cheerfulness, you don’t make a very cheerful impression yourself, despite so many years of effort! You’ve even made the case for Unhappy Buddhists (Post #10)! What gives? Why should anyone listen to you? An excellent opportunity, methinks, to be reminded that nobody is telling you to listen to me if you don’t want to or you don’t find it helpful. As for my state of mind, perhaps I am more joyful than I appear, or at least more so than I would be without the practice. It is also conceivable that I am practicing the wrong way, or even that I am a hopeless case. Who knows? You are free to come to your own conclusions, but I don’t think it should matter much to anyone except myself how far I have or have not advanced and developed on the Path. The question to ask, with me as with anyone else, is not about impressive progress or perfection, but simply whether I am going in the right direction and whether I am moving ahead at a pace commensurate with my limited abilities. If you are dissatisfied with my speed or style, go ahead and inspire us all by demonstrating how it should done. I would be delighted.

Of course a magic pill, if it were readily available, genuine, and reliable, would be a much easier and less troublesome solution to a very real and fundamental human problem that confronts us all. Whatever can be cured with a quick fix, should be, and what cannot should be palliated wherever possible. If feel-good pills could be counted on to work as advertised and without adverse side-effects, they really might solve the problem of life for us. But the question remains whether there can be such wonder-drugs even in principle, and a Buddhist practice will answer it with a resounding, undaunted, and (ideally) joyful “No.”