Many of us dont look at peoplesitting motionless on cushions with their legs crossed meditating and associate that scene with joy and happiness. Weve been conditioned by daily exposure to advertising to associate joy with a fizzy soft drink, a delicious looking alcoholic beverage in a glass with a long stem, a slim model wearing glamorous clothes, a tropical beach gently caressed by clear blue water bordered by a shady grove of palm trees, a brand new sports car with the top down cruising along Californias route 1 toward San Francisco and a penthouse apartment that looks out over New Yorks Central Park at sunset. These are the paths to joy and happiness we crave, not being bored watching the breath come in and out.

I remember bringing an optimistic but grim attitude to my first week long meditation retreat over thirty years ago. I knew Id be expected to sit very still for up to an hour at a time, then alternate that with very slow walking meditation from early in the morning until late at night. I was ready for meditation boot camp. I knew my body would ache, my knees and back would be sore and my mind would want to run away. But I hoped that if I could survive the first few days, then maybe Id get some joy out of it. Sort of like the enjoyment I might get when I stop hitting my head against the wall.

I did hit a different sort of wall at my second meditation retreat about a year later. I had been pushing myself very, very hard to excel at meditation. After about five days I was exhausted and in agony. There was a painful knot in my shoulder I just couldnt make go away no matter how hard I tried to relax. I finally gave up and let the knot win. Defeated, I returned to the basics of the meditation practice and started all over again. And a few minutes later, it changed and let go. And in that moment I suddenly realized the goal of meditation practice. And then I tasted an exquisite kind of joy that has deeply changed me.

Many people build their lives around serial experiences of pleasure. We look forward to attending the next game, the next concert, the next date, the next trip. These are the moments we prepare for hoping that well experience exuberant joy as our team wins, the stimulation of the concert washes through us and transports us, bodies touch releasing intense flows of intoxicating hormones, and exotic food delights our taste buds. All these experiences have to be arranged so the intense stimulation comes from the outside of our bodies to generate feelings of joy and pleasure inside our bodies.

The joy and pleasure I experience at a meditation retreat can be a little different. As I am sitting quietly watching my breath or walking slowly feeling the soles of my feet, I notice things that spontaneously bring me joy and pleasure. I notice a feeling of warmth as sunlight touches my skin; a cool breeze that strokes my arm; the bright color of a flower on a table in a vase delights my eye; the sound of gurgling water in a stream or the wind softly rustling leaves in a stand of trees soothes my ear. Simple foods can be ecstatically pleasurable as I taste them with undivided attention even oatmeal! Ordinary, daily experiences become extraordinarily enjoyable. The only difference from normal life is the level of peace in my mind and of continuous attention to each moment.

Spending a few days quieting the mind and body and developing greater moment to moment attention cultivates a quality of consciousness that is commonly referred to as mindfulness. It is a very familiar kind of consciousness for most of us that arises when we have self-awareness or self-knowing. I feel my fingertips and I know that what I am doing in that moment is experiencing sensation in my fingers. This is a different experience from tapping my fingers on the table absent mindedly while being distracted thinking about dinner plans or organizing a to-do list. We go in and out of this self-knowing experience. At a meditation retreat, the goal is to develop a continuous experience of this self-knowing which can bring big shifts in our experience. The mind becomes much clearer, more present, and more responsive to what is happening in each moment.

When we are attentive to the interface between our minds and bodies and the world and let go of trying to control, add to or remove from that interaction but just sit still and watch it, gaps appear between our desires, aversions and distractions. In those gaps, there are unanticipated and unexpected moments of peace that have a sense of joy and heart opening that spontaneously arise. Suddenly there is the experience of joy and peace without being cultivated, planned or plotted out.

Knowing that the joy and peace I seek isnt someplace else to be sought out and collected but right here under my nose and available in any moment has been deeply liberating. It has progressively freed me from thinking there are some external or internal conditions that need to be satisfied for me to be happy. There can even be joy in the grip of great pain and discomfort.

The conditioning of our minds stands in the way of this liberating experience of joy. The belief that satisfying desire, avoiding discomfort and distracting the mind from the present will bring enduring joy is a delusional error perpetuated by our culture to enslave us and future generations. The path to liberation is already right here, right now and instantly available.

We just need to change our minds and begin knowing it.

Read the original here:

The Joy of Meditation - Albany Times Union (blog)