Brahma Viharas - Mudita (Appreciative Joy)

46:12

46:12

Brahma Viharas - Mudita (Appreciative Joy)

by Lloyd Burton

Rated

4.7

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

1.2k

This is a talk given by Lloyd to the Insight Community of Denver, Colorado on one of the Brahma Viharas - Metta (loving kindness).

Meet your Teacher

Denver, CO, USA

Meet your Teacher

Denver, CO, USA

Transcript

The teaching of the Brahma-vahara in Buddha-dharma is kind of tricky in that inevitably in the West we take in new knowledge, You know, We can really make sense of this by comparing it to something we already know. And so inevitably teachings of the Brahma-vahara and the phrases and what not that go along with the cultivation of each of them kind of come across like affirmations or prayers or basically a statement of wanting things to be different than they are, Right? Which seems to be fairly at odds with the other of the Buddha's main meditation practices. We've talked altogether about 40 different practices. Four of them tend to be regarded as kind of the foundational ones of Theravada Buddhism, You know. And if you go to like a 10-month retreat or something like that in Brahma or elsewhere in Asia they'll usually start out with a prolonged period of time doing only the practice called anapana, That's mindfulness of the breathing and of the body. So you just stay focused on the breathing for days and days, Sometimes weeks on end, And then just watch whatever else comes up as you're focusing on that breathing and then you go back to breathing. Mind gets very still. And then you do insight meditation practice and there are several different insight practices, But the one that gets the most air time here in the West for the most part is the practice called arising and passing. And that's what we mostly teach here, Which is that rather than, You know, Like there's one, The charnel grounds meditation the Buddha teaches, You know, And that's where you go and meditate on bodies that are being chopped up after they've been burned on the funeral pyre, Right? That's not a real popular one. But the idea, You know, Is to cultivate insight into impermanence, Right? So these very specific meditations who, For the purpose of stimulating or arousing very specific kinds of insights, As distinguished from simply the practice of arising and passing. And that's not focusing on one particular object or setting. It's simply being with bare experience. So whatever it is that is going on is to seek to be with it in a non-reactive way. Among other things, It actually does cultivate equanimity over time, But essentially, Just like I was saying at the beginning of the sitting, You know, So you note bodily sensations or you note the breathing or you note where the mind's gone in terms of thoughts about the past or the future, You know, Whether there are powerful emotions arising or whatever. But it's really just kind of like sitting on the bank of a river and just watching experience flow on. And over time, Learning to simply regard all these things as passing insubstantial, Ever-changing phenomena, You know. So there's a certain kind of calmness and equanimity that comes with doing that. So there's that real kind of non-judgmental awareness, Non-reactive awareness that's cultivated in doing that form of insight meditation. And then if the mind keeps getting drawn to certain memories or certain plans or certain emotions, Then you begin to just use that as the object of meditation and then gradually begins to yield insights into what's going on. That is really quite distinct from the practice of the cultivation of compassion and of selfless joy and of equanimity and of the open heart, You know, The metta, Because those are purposes of meditations for the cultivation of those qualities of mind. So the inevitable tendency is to think, Well, First I train the mind to be with things as they are, But then all of a sudden I'm monkeying around with this other stuff, You know. And how do those two fit together? Doesn't one sort of contradict the other? The misunderstanding oftentimes comes when you hear the teaching, For instance, Of the cultivation of the Brahma-vahara of compassion. May I live with ease, Safe from all inner and outer harm. May I be free of suffering and the roots of suffering. May I acknowledge and accept any suffering I find in myself or others with courage and with caring and with kindness. When you're using those may I phrases, It sounds like may things really stop sucking, You know. May I no longer be in such an aversive state of mind. May things be different than they are, You know. When Joseph Goldstein teaches metta, He was saying, One of the ways you know when you might not quite have the hang of it yet, When you're sitting in the metta to another person, When you find yourself using phrases, May you cease your annoying habits. That's not quite it. I guess that's actually coming from a place of aversion, Right? So the far enemy of compassion is cruelty, Is the deliberate desire to harm others. Or in some cases, Self-harm, You know, Through self-castigation, You know. So it's pretty clear how separate those are, The near enemy being pity, You know, Seeing another suffering and saying, Whoa, Really glad it's you and not me, You know. Because it's kind of like compassion except it has the effect of distancing one from the other instead of being with the other. So the more skillful way, I think, To relate to a teaching like that, The cultivation of compassion. You know, We were talking about the cultivation of courage before about how it's not the absence of fear, But rather the bringing forth of courage and equanimity to reside in the presence of fear. So we're simply expanding the space in the mind within which all these phenomena arise. So when you're practicing compassion, For instance, The practice of compassion oftentimes arises in response to the recognition of the experience of the difficult, Recognizing the experience of hostility in oneself, You know, Of ill will, Aversion, Of anger, Rage, Resentment, Of despair, You know, Of powerful negative emotions directed either toward oneself or toward another. And so in this other way of understanding the cultivation of compassion, I say, Oh, Here in the field of the mind, There is the arising of aversion, There is the arising of hostility, There is the arising of rage or resentment or despair, There is the arising of the wish for harm or suffering to another. And recognizing that to be the case, You know, The Buddha talked about when that kind of aversion, When that desire to do harm to another out of anger or rage or resentment arises, That it's rather like picking up hot coals and throwing them at your adversary. He said, You may or may not hit your target, But you will surely burn your fingers. To engage in that state of mind is harmful. It's harmful to yourself. It may or may not wind up being harmful to another, But it certainly harms you. And it creates very unwholesome karma going down the road. So simply in the field of the mind, Seeing the arising of this unwholesome state, Right, But not having its soul fill the mind's eye, That there's nothing else there. It's expanding the space within which the difficult, The hostile, The wish for harm to others is arising. And when it's recognized to be arising, What you do is you bring to greet it, You bring to meet it, You bring to be with it compassion. The wholesome intention or wish that compassionate state of mind and the intention for compassionate action arises to be with the difficult, To be with the aversion. And when you do that, When you cultivate that, Okay, So you can cultivate it whether there's the difficult arising or not. It's easier to cultivate when it's not there, But it also is skillful to cultivate it when you see the arising of the difficult after you recognize that to be occurring in insight meditation. And then simply through the exercise of intention of the will and bringing a more compassionate state of mind into being, What it begins to do is to kind of balance the power of the aversion or the anger or whatnot with this countervailing beneficial intention. And what can sometimes happen as a result is kind of like a power transfer. It's like there can begin to occur a sort of a recognition of the hostile state of mind for what it is. And then with that recognition begins a certain disempowerment of the strength of that afflictive emotion. And it begins instead to soften the heart and to be felt as compassion. I think a more frequent practice than I sometimes like to admit to myself or to others is when I find self-recrimination arising in the mind and to recognize it for what it is and then just to reflect, Is there any beneficial effect whatsoever from the arising of this self-recrimination? No. It's simply self-inflicted pain and nothing more. It's not skillful, It's not useful. And then it's like almost like kind of hitting yourself with the thumb with the hammer. Oh, I've heard. Hmm, I think I'll do it again. And then it's like how many times do you have to hit your thumb with a hammer before you realize there's no upside to this? It just hurts. And so you stop doing it. And so recognizing that the mind is engaged in self-recrimination, That it's a source of self-inflicted pain, First there's the recognition and then there is this sense of compassion that begins to arise for this reactive, Deeply ingrained habit of mind. Just seems to come up of its own accord. But you recognize it for what it is and then you, Your heart opens to yourself a little bit and say, Oh, There it is again. And sometimes just the recognition of it, Just as if you saw a friend getting hurt and you want to go help them, You know, Then the self-harm just tends to fall away. So that's the sort of the mechanism of it, You know. With metta, With love, You know, The opposite is eight, And the sort of the near enemy is transactional affection, I've heard it sometimes called, Which is to say you feel a warm regard for another but you actually expect something in return. Whether it's an intimate relationship or something else, You know, It's just not quite the open, Flowing heart you want it to be. Joseph Colton tells a story when he first started practicing in India and went into town to market and bought some fruit. He's feeling expansive and open hearted. His metta practice is going well. This little beggar kid comes up and asks him for a piece of fruit and he gives it to him. The kid just snatches it and runs off. And he realizes that he wanted to be thanked. That there was, Yes, It was a gesture of generosity. It was obviously not doing so great, Give him a little free food, But that he wanted some kind of acknowledgement and he wanted a little something in return that wasn't forthcoming. And so he realized that there's a difference between completely open hearted giving and what that particular gesture consisted of. First equanimity, You know, The opposite being that sort of agitation and whatnot. And the near one being deliberate indifference, You know, Just a cold disregard for what's happening. Joy. Our enemy is envy. And then at this point it's helpful to be able to discern what the different forms of joy were that the Buddha talked about. Essentially there are four of them. One of them is actually, There's another term for it. The Pali term is piti, P-i-t-i, Translated into the English as rapture, A rapturous feeling. You know, A powerful feeling of, It has actually a physical component to it. If you're doing the practice, The meditation practice of the jhanas, You know, The meditative absorptions when the mind goes into very deep states of samadhi or very deep states of contemplation. When the mind is, When all the hindrances have at least temporarily dispelled and the mind gets very calm and all the mental energy that was going into either being absorbed in the hindrances or trying to fight them off is suddenly not being employed in that way. There's this kind of liberation of energy that can happen. And it can actually be physically felt in the body. It almost feels like a sort of a flowing of energy up through the body from the root chakra up through the, And you know, It has physical sensation available to it. So that's piti, That's rapt, And it doesn't always have a physical manifestation, But it's just that sense of elation, Just a huge kind of release, You know, That the mind is no longer engaged in all these other kinds of activities and you can just enjoy being in the body. So that's piti. It sometimes also arises with intense sense gratification of various kinds. You know, Kind of going through the sort of the tantric yoga roots of it. There's another form of joy that we talked about called pamoja, And that's joy dependent upon external circumstances. The image he would use to describe that is as if a breeze is blowing over a pond and pausing agitation in the water. So something happens that makes you feel really happy. Old friend you haven't seen for a long time comes to town and you're really overjoyed by seeing this person again. You sort of have a birthday coming up and somebody gives you a present and it turns out to be something you really wanted but you'd never told anyone. They discerned what it was that would make you happy and they gave it to you and you never touched, Right? So that's the kind of joy that just arises circumstantially for one reason or another. There is the joy of, Another form of joy called sukha, S-U-K-H-A, And that's usually translated as selfless joy. And that's joy that arises not because of a particular liberation of physical energy, Not because of external circumstances, But simply the joy of letting go, Just letting go, Of whatever it was that you were clinging to for whatever reason, Suddenly you just let it go. And then there can be a sort of a liberation of joy that happens as a result of that. Our guest icon on the altar tonight is sometimes referred to as the Laughing Buddha. And that's not really, That's really a pretty significant misnomer, Even though you see them in Asian curio shops, But not all the time. Instead, What this is is a depiction of a figure from sort of folk tales of Chinese Buddhism and also in Japanese Buddhism. And the name of this figure in Chinese Buddha Dharma lore is Putai. And Putai is a representative of the coming to China of the form of Buddhist meditation practice that followed the first wave of the Dharma coming to China, Which was mostly scholastic in nature and simply became another school of philosophy and became one of many schools of philosophy that was debated in the imperial courts and the universities at the time. It was quite cerebral and very doctrinal. It was looking at the agamas as they related to the Taoist texts and the Confucian texts and whatnot. And just as was the case in Tibet, There were several successive waves of the introduction of the Dharma to China. And this was one of the mendicant monks who was of the view that things had gotten way out of hand and way over scholasticized and that all that really needed to happen was to relax into the natural mind, The faith mind, The mind that knows all without having to study things. And so this ardent young student is walking along a path from the university where he's studying. He's been at this for years and feels like he's even further from his goal of enlightenment than he was when he started in the sense of meaning versus on the faith mind. There is this phrase that says, The faster one goes, The less progress one makes. To even be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray. And so this student was engaged in this painful effort of just studying harder and harder and harder, Feeling that that was somehow going to get him where he needed to go and feeling like he was falling further and further behind and in kind of a state of despair. And he runs into Putai on the road and you can see that he's this pretty realized being. And he just opens up his heart and talks about how discouraged he is and what more must I do to attain my goal. And Putai is carrying his bundle over his shoulder on a stick and all he does is look at him and let it go. And the thing falls to the ground, Falls in the dust and the guy gets it finally. And they just kind of stare at each other, Big smiles and whatnot. And then the student says, Well, What do I do now? Because he realizes there's no point in going back to university. And Putai just picks up his bundle and heads on down the road. So that's, It's about the joy of letting go. It's just, It's that teaching. So in Japanese Buddhist lore is called Hotei or also more formally referred to as Mayatreya, The Bodhisattva of happiness or the future Buddha. So I wanted to bring him up here tonight to kind of dispel some of the misinformation about this notion of a laughing Buddha. And of course what happened in China later on with Putai was kind of like what happened with Santa Claus. You can see the earliest pains of Santa Claus. He was this, I think he was from Turkey or somewhere, He was this very early Christian saint. But he was known for kind heart generosity. So the later depictions you see of Putai who somehow got morphed into the laughing Buddha is very corpulent. He's carrying these big coins and stuff. And he's essentially become the sort of Bodhisattva excess, Which is pretty much the opposite of the original teaching about him. But at any rate, What it is is he's a depiction of the fact that joy really has a role to play in Buddha Dharma. The Theravada nun Ayakama, Who is a teacher of the practice of the Jhanas, The cultivation of joy, Said, Well, You know, Without joy ultimately meditation has no chance. It's sort of one of the fuels that periodically you just need to remember this is not about no pain, No gain. So we have, So that's sukha, Just this spontaneous arising of joy. And then mudita, Which is the name of the fourth Brahma-bhahara, Usually translates to altruistic joy, Or sympathetic joy, Or something of that nature. And basically that is the joy that wants to be shared. So it's, If you're feeling this sense of sukha, Just of selfless joy in your own heart, You want others to feel it too. And so it's that wish for happiness for all beings. Or if you see a friend or another who is really happy, Really fulfilled or whatnot, Then that touches your own heart and it makes you feel happy. So it's this sort of connective joy. It's wishing that others, If you're feeling this joy in your own heart, It's wishing that others may feel it too. Or being gladdened by the joy that one sees in another person. So faranami is envy, Which is to say, You see somebody else being happy and it pisses you off. You compare yourself negatively to that person. Okay, Well here I am, And doing this Dharma practice all this time, And here's this person that's giving their butt off, You know, They're doing laughing yoga, Or they're doing something else that's making them really happy and I'm not. What a bummer, You know. It's a tendency to negatively judge yourself relative to another who appears to be happier or better off than you are. Nere enemy is, I guess usually referred to as something like duplicity or feigned affection. This pretending that you're happy for another when you're not, Actually not, Or sort of making nice, Expressing things you don't really feel when it comes to the relationship to happiness to another. Many years ago when I was undergoing this sort of teacher training, I heard from one of our trainers who had, He'd sent this email out to everybody, He just wanted to express his joy at having, He and his family having gone down and having an audience with the Dalai Lama and how it just, You know, Inspired him and he felt this transmission of freedom and openness and joy and I read it and said, Huh, How nice for you. I did not happen to be in that place myself at all, You know, So it's like I wasn't necessarily envious but I was, You know, There was still that kind of comparison thing going on. There are ways to be able to distinguish from when you're experiencing this open-hearted selfless joy that is joy of sort of feeling free, You know, From desire, Free from grasping, Free from, Free from afflictive emotions, You know. And Sharon Salisbury, When she talks about joy and talks about what she says, There are these characteristics of it that help you recognize it when it's happening, You know. One of them is a sense of connection with other beings, That you feel like your heart is kind of plugged in to where others are and if there is a feeling of warmth or generosity in your own heart, There is this genuine desire or hope that others with whom you are in connection may feel it as well. There are also, And this may be what they were trying to get at with Oitoy in the later, You know, Iterations, A feeling of sort of inner abundance, You know. Sometimes I think spiritually for a lot of us there can be this feeling of inner poverty or any inner hunger, You know, Like something's missing, That there's something that's not, You don't feel quite whole, You feel like there's something out there you ought to be seeking that somehow or another will make you feel whole or complete or whatever, As the swing-ish in those times when you just feel whole, You just feel kind of complete, Like yeah, I think maybe the Buddha was right, Maybe I do have everything I need on board in order to be able to move along this path and in order to be happy. Another thing I like about what she's had to say in this realm is being able to see happiness both our own and others is an important feature. It's not the suffering that's redemptive in Buddhism, It's the openness to being with whatever arises, The joy as well as the sadness. So one way I've heard the Bama Vahara's explained is that it's not like there's something that wasn't there before that you have to go out and find or seek and cultivate and whatnot. It's more that these qualities of mind, It's what the Dalai Lama called her spiritual birthright, You know, That these aspects of mind are really already there and that they are essentially there waiting to come forth and that many times all that's really needed is to recognize what the obscurations are. So that for instance, If you recognize that there is hostility or a certain desire to harm others that's arising in the mind and you recognize it for what it is, Then this sense of compassion can begin to arise. The simple recognition of the state of mind that's arisen sometimes is enough as kind of like a cloud moving across the moon and then when you recognize what it is, Then that obscuration just moves away and the compassion spontaneously arises. You know, If you recognize that the mind is really disturbed or upset about something and you recognize that for what it is, Maybe you recognize the object and just in the recognition of it, It begins to subside or dissipate a little bit, The cloud moves away from the moon and equanimity is already there. It's just kind of waiting to be seen. Same is true with joy, Same is true with metta. These things that are really already part of us, It's just that they're not always accessible to us. They're not always right there to be drawn forth. And there is a, Let me see, This relationship between the difficult and the joyous, It takes many forms. There's one passage that I like in particular and it's from the Sufi master, Piravill Yat Khan. So it's from a different tradition but it really gets very much at the same thing. He said, Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you are not up to the magnitude of pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, Each one of us is part of her heart and therefore endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in the totality of that pain and you were called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity. The Buddha in one of his poems, Or very brief poetic teachings on this subject, And maybe this would be a good time to go ahead and do that practice. And then after that we'll do our music and go our separate ways. Let's go back to our sitting posture, Just for a moment if we can. And before we do that, Because this is going to be the closing of the Dharma talk part of it, I'd like to entertain any questions or reflections that anyone has about the practice of joy, About the cultivation of the joy. May I open to the joy that is within me and be happy? Yes please. I have a question. It's not about being jealous or envious of someone's Dharma accomplishments. It's about being jealous of someone else's attention, That they're getting attention or they're doing things that I don't like, I disagree with. And I catch myself, I don't want to do that, But there's nothing that comes in in this place automatically. Sure. Okay. So can you provide an example? Oh, Sure. It's a woman who has, How would you say, Usurped. That's a good one. That's a judgment. What I feel would be my inner relationship with my son and my daughter-in-law and my granddaughter, My place. I see. So when I'm in a physical presence, I feel that. I don't want to say anything, I don't throw anything either, But I don't feel comfortable with it. Of course not. Whenever there is that, And thank you for sharing that, Whenever there is that particular potency arises, When it's envy or resentment or something of that nature, It's usually because at some level we feel some kind of sense either of threat or of loss, And maybe a grieving of the loss of something that we wish we had but don't. And it sounds like in this case it may be the affection of the kind regard or the positive views of your family, Your children, To somehow or another those that sort of natural resource of well-wishing that we share with each other is somehow flowing to another but not to you. And those are very real feelings, And they are not, I think they need to be fully acknowledged for what they are. And I think that there are different ways to go from there with that, But I think that one sort of important aspect of that right now is if you find yourself feeling envy or you're feeling displaced or whatnot, To seek not to judge yourself harshly for having those feelings. What you're feeling is suffering, What you're feeling is dukkha. And usually the most skillful response to the arising of dukkha like that is self-compassion. So you'd be able to name the feeling of being disregarded or being displaced or something you know that makes you feel lonely, Makes you feel as if you don't have the place you thought you did in your family or whatnot. And so I think just to acknowledge the truth of that is really helpful. It might be possible, Maybe not in that moment, But at some other time, If you could talk maybe one-on-one with some of your family and say, You know, Sometimes when, I know you have a positive regard for her and whatnot, But sometimes this is how I feel when that occurs, Not in an accusatory way, But just to check in and ask, Do you feel like in some way or another you've got less for me because you've got more for her. It's just opening the heart, But to do it in a non-accusatory way I think would be very skillful. Okay. So I really want to make sure we have time to do some of the things I'd hoped we would. So let's settle in, Close our eyes for just a moment, And listen to the words of the Buddha. Give a well-wishing as we get ready to go forth into the holidays. Live in joy and in love, Even among those who hate. Live in joy and in peace, Even among those who are troubled. Live in joy and in health, Those subject to affliction. Look within, Be still. Free from fear and detachment, Know the sweet joy of the way. Very well. So for these last few minutes there will be music. And those who would like to share that, Please stay. For those who are terrified, Happy music. So it's been on my mind for a while that every time the holidays roll around American Buddhists come up a little short. Mainly because we don't have any Buddhist Christmas carols. As you can see what I've tried to do here is to begin to make up for that. Well, A virgin can be frightful. Make it grumpy, Mean and spiteful. Sinch or weep just what you sow. Let her go, Let her go, Let her go. Well, Monkey mind is popping. And it doesn't show signs of smile. And worries can't bring you low. Let her go, Let her go, Let her go. When you get a little peace of mind, It's like a shelter from the storm. When your practice is being kind, Deep in your heart you're warm. Well, There is no end to pain till you see the pain is winning. Since the catchment spring you hold. Let her go, Let her go, Let her go. When you get a little peace of mind, It's like a shelter from the storm. When your practice is being kind, Deep in your heart you're warm. Well, There is no end to pain till you see the pain is bringing. Since the catchment spring you hold. Let her go, Let her go, Let her go. Let her go, Let her go, Let her go. Applause In the old days there used to be an associate minister here named Joan Van Beezler who was also the convener of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. And every year we would have this joint interfaith celebration of light where we would do some pagan rituals and we would do readings from different religious traditions. And of course I had to come up with a song for that too. So it starts off being this old spiritual with a couple of verses from Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mountain and there we go into some other traditions as well. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Hide it under 8 Caribbean, I'm gonna let it shine. Hide it under 8 hasht. No, I'm gonna let it shine. Hide it under 8 Hide it under a bushel, No, I'm gonna let it shine. Hide it under a bushel, No, I'm gonna let it shine. Hide it under a bushel, No, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine. In the dimps bow through the night, I'm gonna let it shine. One bite of oil, Eight nights of light, Gonna let it shine. A lamp of hope and faith burned bright, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine. Be a lamp unto the earth, I'm gonna let it shine. Celebrate the sun's rebirth, I'm gonna let it shine. Light to heal this wounded earth, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine. A lamp unto ourselves will be, I'm gonna let it shine. Light of wisdom rise with me, Let it shine. Light the path that sets us free, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine. Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine. So I hope your solstice is a shiny one and we'll see you next year.