Can I find in myself a no-matter-what commitment? Under the worst-case scenario, can I still tap into the well of uncaused, unreasonable happiness? Can I still relate to my fellow humans, and to all of life, with care and love? Can I still, to the fullest extent possible, remain present as a force for good in every moment?”
- Terry Patten, A New Republic of the Heart
No. Matter. What. Sounds like a tall order, right?
Q: Can you think of a commitment like this in your life?
Q: What could "the well of uncaused, unreasonable happiness" be?
We might be puzzled to hear something like "the well of uncaused, unreasonable happiness". The mind may go blank at "uncaused" or "unreasonable", then decide to ignore those strange words go with "happiness".
First Noble Truth
But in Buddhism, a happiness without cause is very important. The Four Noble truths begin with "There is suffering" and then offer a path for putting an end to it.
The gap between the reality and the basic human approach to life is dukkha [suffering], an experience of basic anxiety or frustration.
- Norman Fischer, What Is Suffering?
Q: What does the First Noble truth bring up for you?
Cuong Lu, a Vietnamese monk who trained with Thich Nhat Hanh, came to a fresh way of expressing the First Noble Truth. "There is happiness", he says. It makes sense; if there is a path to the end of suffering, happiness must exist. Lu writes:
Happiness is available when you know who you are and you no longer have the illusion of a separate self, when you recognize the penetrating interconnection between yourself and all of life.
- Cuong Lu, The Buddha in Jail
The Buddha in Jail is about Lu's time as a Buddhist prison chaplain helping angry, lost men discover happiness while in incarcerated. Clearly this is a very different kind of happiness than what gets sold on billboards and mobile ads!
Q: How does "the penetrating interconnection" make you feel?"
Just Like Me
Here's a practice that can help move us toward a deeper sense of "the penetrating connection". Bring to mind a person you disagree with, someone you know or have only heard about. No need to go extreme (e.g., Hitler), just a person whose views you find hard to understand. Reflect on that person using the statements below. Take a few minutes with each one, moving back and forth between yourself and that person, sensing into what you have in common.
- Just like me, this person is looking for happiness in their life.
- Just like me, this person is trying to avoid suffering in their life.
- Just like me, this person has known sadness, loneliness and despair.”
- Just like me, this person is seeking to fill their needs.”
- Just like me, this person is learning about life.”
Q: What was this like? Was there any shift in your feeling of a "penetrating interconnection"?"
Who We Are
Lu is suggesting we're unhappy because we don't know who we are. Because we don't know who we are, we struggle to find happiness and when we do, it so easily slips away.
Q: Who or what are you?
Last week we talked about the voice in our head that speaks, and the silence that hears it. The voice that thinks and talks, the rational mind, sees it something like this:
...they are essentially saying, "Show me the rules of the game I have to play and I'll play it," not realizing that it's the very fact that they think there are rules to happiness that is preventing them from being happy.
- Mark Manson, From Transaction to Trust
Taking Heart
Who we believe we are has a huge influence our ability to be of benefit to ourselves and to others. The degree to which we insist on our separateness predicts how much we suffer and handicaps our capacity to help others.
A no-matter-what commitment resolves all dilemmas. Even if our predicament is hopeless, incapable of being turned around, we are still capable of loving one another, capable of enjoyment, capable of doing whatever we can to make life better, and capable of surrendering to the unknown.
- Terry Patten, A New Republic of the Heart
Poem: Self
Once I freed myself of my duties to tasks and people and went down to the
cleansing sea...
The air was like wine to my spirit,
The sky bathed my eyes with infinity,
The sun followed me, casting golden snares on the tide,
And the ocean—masses of molten surfaces, faintly
gray-blue—sang to my heart...
Then I found myself, all here in the body and brain, and all there on the shore:
Content to be myself: free, and strong, and enlarged:
Then I knew the depths of myself were the depths of space.
And all living beings were of those depths (my brothers and sisters)
And that by going inward and away from duties, cities, street-cars and greetings,
I was dipping behind all surfaces, piercing cities and people,
And entering in and possessing them, more than a brother,
The surge of all life in them and in me...
So I swore I would be myself (there by the ocean)
And I swore I would cease to neglect myself, but would take myself as my mate,
Solemn marriage and deep: midnights of thought to be:
Long mornings of sacred communion, and twilights of talk,
Myself and I, long parted, clasping and married till death.
James Oppenheim, Poets.org