The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. On this Mother’s Day we can take joy in reflecting on all the ways we been nurtured and have nurtured others. We explored how mindfulness can enrich our lives with joy.
We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. Oren encourages us to bring mindfulness to the joys in our lives.
We heard from Jeanne Corrigal’s dharma talk: Joy: An Inner Wellspring. Jeanne is the guiding teacher for the Saskatoon Insight Meditation Community. Jeanne’s teaching is gently humorous and down to earth. This talk draws on the many kinds of joy that can enrich our lives. Jeanne also explains how the intentional cultivation of joy can be the gateway that leads to deeper states of calm and concentration.
We hard four haiku’s from Rosemerry Wahtola Trimmer. Rosemerry freely gifts her poetry at her Hundred Falling Veils web-site. Three simple lines express the joys that mindfulness makes accessible in every day live.
We drew from the tenth chapter of Kathleen Dowling Singh’s book, The Grace in Aging: Awaken As You Grow Older. Kathleen reminds us that devoted practice and sustained attention create the conditions for the experiences of contented ease and joy.
Guided Reflection
Last week, we explored how resolve can be a “heart training.” We can take joy in fulfilling our resolve – whatever that might be. In his book, Your Heart Was Made for This, Oren Jay Sofer encourages us to bring mindfulness to the joys in our lives. He writes:
Train yourself to enjoy small moments of beauty and goodness in life: a flock of birds . . sunlight . . through a window . . ordinary time with a loved one. How much joy do we miss in life because we’re moving too quickly? . . . We experience joy in countless ways . . . To be touched by life, we must be willing to let it in – to open and receive . . . This receptivity emerges naturally when we slow down . . .
Our kinship and practice brings me joy. I am grateful that we can share the joys and sorrows of our lives. On this Mother’s Day we can take joy in reflecting on all the ways we been nurtured and have nurtured others.
In her Dharma talk, Joy: An Inner Wellspring, Buddhist meditation teacher, Jeanne Corrigal, quotes the Buddha’s instructions:
Live in joy, in love even amidst hatred. Live in joy, in health even amidst affliction. Live in joy and peace even amidst troubles. Look within, be still free from fear and attachment. Know the sweet joy of the way.
This is telling us that joy can be sustaining, nourishing and strengthening in the midst of our troubles. The sweet joy of the way is about letting go of our sense of separate self. In letting go we can realize our inter-being.
This is such an important teaching. We know our personal suffering. We are reminded of the world’s suffering every day. And yet the world also offers us so many sources of joy. Joys that can sustain, nourish and strengthen us. This week, I experienced joy walking and talking with a friend. We shared our sadness and also what uplifts us. I felt happy hearing about my friend’s happiness. Appreciative joy.
I am reminded of the different sources of joy that Jeanne describes as worldly joy and unworldly joy or spiritual joy. We can feel the joy of the senses – the sunshine on our faces, the birdsong in the early morning hours. And yet we know they are momentary. We can savor our chocolate chip cookie and know it won’t give us lasting happiness.
There are also quiet and subtle joys: the internally generated joys. These are joys we can turn to that are more independent of external conditions. We can bring them to mind and feel grateful, uplifted. We can reflect on the absence of suffering perhaps a nagging ache or worry has subsided. There may be no obstacle hindering your intention to be present or to open your heart. This absence is a quiet and real joy. Jeanne describes our practice a source of this kind of joy:
[there is] a sense of calming that we can feel – it’s pleasant. A sense of . . . resting in concentration – we can enjoy that be nourished by it. . . . We can contemplate our own goodness . . . There is metta [loving kindness] an unworldly, inwardly generated joy. We can turn to [compassion] it’s accessible in any moment as we care for ourselves and others. We can tune into the pleasantness of cultivating equanimity. These can be a nourishing part of our inner wellspring . . .
Here are Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s Four Surprise Joys:
steep, this trail—
one more reason to pause often
and notice how beautiful
the same rich tea—
drinking it from different cups
together
without looking
I find you—
unexpected sun
sunset so pink
the mind undoes another button—
the whole world blushes
What quiet joys do you notice when you pause? What experiences do you share in joy? How is to receive an unexpected joy? When are you able to open your mind to joy? Is there a little internally generated joy right now?
I invite you to sense your body resting on Earth’s body. Notice what surfaces in the field of awareness. Sensation. Emotion. Thought. Presence. Notice the nature of presence: Available. Open. Quiet. Is there an absence of wanting? A fullness of what you are witnessing?
We might cultivate joy in the experience of embodiment. Sometimes we go about our days not remembering the many bodies that enabled us to be here. The bodies that have touched us with care and loving kindness. We go about our days not remembering our own bodies.
I invite you to sense your body. As you move more fully into feeling, you may begin to trust your body’s many expressions. Notice this experience of allowing and where it might lead. What is like to let go of trying and welcome the ever changing experiences of being? There may be a constellation of feeling, sensation and thought emerging. There may be a recognition being more of an ever changing process rather than a separate self.
Can your intention to be present be a simple willingness to orient toward being aware? No need to grasp or struggle. Can you set your sails and be carried? As you become aware of drifting notice the energy of attention reorienting to awareness. Perhaps just a slight adjustment – a whisper brings you back. In time you might notice a sense of ease arising. A sense of contentment.
How is it to abide with ease? How is it to be touched by life? Is there a receptivity emerging in the slowing down? What are you opening to? What quiet joys are you receiving?
Kathleen Dowling Singh writes:
Joy arises out of such deep ease. Joy arises with surrender, with the sane and natural trust that engendered surrender.. . . It is the taste of increasingly bare, increasingly subtle awareness. . . . There is no need to grasp at joy. It is always present, always within the airy easy spaciousness of now.
I invite you to abide here in ease. Feel the quiet joys that may surface.