Mindfulness of Emotions: Joy as a State of Being
“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet”
Thich Nhat Hanh “Peace in Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Every Day”
How often, when a teacher invites us to set an intention at the beginning of a yoga class, do we choose joy as our destination for the practice, or we make a commitment to observe its omnipresence in our lives? Usually, there are “urgent” matters that we deem more important than noticing joy in and around us at each moment.
There is a wide spectrum of emotions associated with joy, and their expressions may vary: from quiet contentment and delight, through tears of joy, to exhilaration, and all the way up to a spontaneous burst of out-loud laughter. Joy seeps through our pleasure when we share precious moments with loved ones. It’s palpable when we are moved by human kindness. It beams out of us when we are fulfilled with what we do. It’s present in the serenity of observing beauty and becoming one with Nature. It radiates when we are in a state of wonder if a new dimension of knowledge opens up in front of our eyes. It pulsates in the inner peace during meditation or any other spiritual practice. Yet, joy itself is not an emotion, but a state of being. If we are looking to find the right circumstances which will create it, joy will stay elusive. Joy is unconditional and not depending on any particular situation; it cannot be created, sought after, or attained, since it is always innately present, if we choose to notice its gentle bloom within. Joy is like the blue flame in the fire - it’s quiet, tamed, steady, and sustaining.
Our personality type is often regarded as a main factor in determining if we are naturally joyful or we see the glass always half empty. Our personalities are a bundle of traits and patterns of behavior, which are both inherited and also accumulated through our experiences. Although the process of acquiring them is mostly subconscious, once we become aware, we gain control over our habitual tendencies. In the yoga tradition those patters of behavior are called Vasanas. “The word vasana literally means ‘smell.’ Depending on the type of garbage is in the bin today, that is the kind of smell that emanate from it. Depending on the type of smell you emit, you attract certain kind of life situations to yourself,” writes the visionary and philanthropist Sadhguru in “Inner Engineering: a Yogi’s Guide to Joy.”
Therefore, being joyful is our responsibility - our response ability to be in charge of what we feed the container of the Self with. Yes, we all want to be happy! And the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental American right, written in the Declaration of Independence. However, in the process of pursuing something that we search for from outside of us - prosperous career, money, big house, or the right person who will make us happy - we lose sight of what is already within. We can begin the self-inquiring process by noticing how we answer the most basic daily question, “How are you?” So often, at least here in the Silicon Valley, the answer is “Good! Busy!”, as if those two are somehow synonymous. The need to have a job and provide for oneself and our loved ones is understandable. Yet, busy is a state of doing, good is a state of being. While we are busy in that pursuit, we ignore our deep awareness that joy is our original nature. Just look how pure joy is contagious when it gleams in small children’s eyes! They don’t search for it. It’s simply a part of them, bundled together with an abundance of curiosity and wonder that we all are born with, interwoven with simple, indiscriminating, and unconditional love.
Since everything is impermanent, looking for THE thing to please ourselves with is never the answer to finding a lasting joy. Short-lived pleasures do not bring us to a sustainable happy state. Joy dwells on the intangible, and it encompasses happiness without prerequisites.
From Self-Observation to Self-Acceptance
The ancient teachings of Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga are a great navigational tool for self-observation, and from there leading us on the path of self-acceptance. At the end of that path sits Joy.
The Yamas (how we relate to others) and the Niyamas (how we relate to ourselves) work as universal and personal moral compasses, guiding us to live in harmony. Through Asana we observe how we relate to our bodies, and together with Pranayama, the breath, the vital force within, becomes our focus. With Pratyahara we delve deep into the senses. Dharana (concentration) is an exploration of our relationships with our minds, and through practice, we go beyond the mind, able to surrender to Dyana (meditation). The realization of the profound oneness within and with the universe around is when we arrive at Samadhi (bliss).
Through this mindfulness approach we become aware of our social conditioning, and see better our habitual patterns of thinking, acting, and reacting. When the principles of the eight-fold path become an integral part of our daily inner routine, they slowly grow to an outer practice as well. And after a while, we might notice that our glass has become half full, instead of mostly empty.
The Eight Pillars of Joy
In “The Book of Joy,” two of the greatest spiritual masters and humanitarians of our time, Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, discern eight pillars of joy. Four are qualities of the mind: perspective, humility, humor, and acceptance. The other four are qualities of the heart: forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity.
How we see the world and ourselves in it determines how we feel about our lives. It is much more difficult to change our emotions than to try and shift our approach to the experiences that trigger them. Broadening our perspective gives us the ability to expand the myopic, narrow-minded, and self-centered point of view, and see the events in our lives, especially the challenging ones, in a bigger and more neutral context. Reframing a negative experience means widening our horizon, and in the midst of the tumult finding an opportunity for growth. Joy blossoms not in spite of suffering, but through it. As the Buddhist teachings point out, suffering is unavoidable, but pain is optional.
To understand humility, the second pillar of joy, we might not have to look further than to the root of the word, which comes from the Latin “humus,” meaning earth or soil. Humility is that grounding force, which helps us embrace life with humbleness and grace. Humor and humility are closely related. “Is it any surprise that we have to have a sense of humility to be able to laugh at ourselves and that to laugh at ourselves reminds us of our shared humanity,” observes Douglas Abrams in “The Book of Joy.” Acceptance is strongly integrated with the other three mind pillars of joy. We need a healthy perspective, a powerful dose of humility, and a liberating sense of humor to embrace our life with all its ups and downs. Acceptance is the strength to go on, no matter how steep the road ahead is. All four of the mind pillars are working together “to ease the ride, to go from that bumpy axle (dukkha), with all its suffering, stress, anxiety, and dissatisfaction, to the smooth axle (sukha) with its greater ease, comfort, and happiness (“The Book of Joy”).
The first of the heart pillars of Joy, forgiveness is there to help us shed the past in order to focus and appreciate the present. Gratitude is the ability to shift our perspective toward the abundance in our lives and away from the confining self-absorption that the ego leads us to. Forgiveness and gratitude together defy fear, which depletes joy. Science points out that human brains have evolved with negative bias, in order to sort through what’s dangerous to our survival. However, the most recent research on gratitude, compassion and generosity firmly demonstrate that people who cultivate these traits have more optimism, vitality, greater life satisfaction, and less anxiety and depression symptoms. According to the UC Davis Professor Robert Emmons, considered one of the world’s leading scientific experts on gratitude, people in that category don’t ignore the negative aspects of life, but choose to appreciate what is positive as well.
Compassion literally means “to suffer with.” All the latest research points that compassion is a naturally evolved trait, not only in humans, but in animals as well, and it is essential for our survival. The data shows that our instinct is to help others, not compete with them. Many studies provide evidence that a compassionate lifestyle may improve longevity, mostly because it decreases the levels of stress by triggering our centers of pleasure when we care for other beings. There is growing interest in developing compassion cultivation programs, some deriving from traditional Buddhist practices such as Metta meditation, also known as loving-kindness meditation. The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University combines the traditional approach with the latest scientific research in their Compassion Cultivation Training (also offered at Breathe Together Yoga Studio).
Generosity grows out of compassion. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu points out in “The Book of Joy,” “it is in giving that we receive.” Having a sense of purpose seems to be a powerful force behind human generosity. Scientists and spiritual teachers arrive at the same conclusion: giving to others brings more joy than selfishly focusing on ourselves. It turns out that we are equipped with a brain circuit, dedicated entirely to generosity, according to the neuroscientist Richard Davidson. His Unified Theory of the Happy Brain identifies another three independent brain circuits, which are in control of our well-being. The first one is our ability to maintain positive states, in which love and compassion are main contributors. The second is in charge of our ability to recover from negative states. The third one is responsible for our ability to focus and avoid mind-wandering, in which meditation plays an important role.
The Ripple Effect of Joy
The research, known as “Three Degrees of Influence” by Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist at Harvard University, and James Fowler, a political scientist at UCSD, shows that within a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees of separation. That means when we feel happy, not only our friend, but also our friend’s friend has a higher likelihood of feeling happy as well.
The 2015 World happiness Report emphasizes that the quality of our relationships is the strongest predictor of well-being worldwide. "People who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected," according to Harvard psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development (the research is continuing for 75 years, and President John F. Kennedy was among the original recruits). Another scientific study by Positive Psychology demonstrates “that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.”
In the last decade it has become almost fashionable to explore the connection between feeling happy and living longer. The scientists seem to agree with the spiritual teachings that kindness, generosity, gratitude, and compassion, among other positive factors, are the core - the pillars - of the human well-being. Still, there is a subtlety that we should be mindful of in the pursuit of happiness and longevity. As Desmond Tutu notes, “The goal is not just to create joy for ourselves but, ….to be a reservoir of joy, an oasis of peace, a pool of serenity that can ripple out to all those around you.”