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To train the mind to access stimulus-free joy, we need to understand how joy arises independent of sensual stimulation and then cultivate those skills. They are three: easing, inclining, and uplifting.
1. Easing into Joy The first skill we need in support of joy on demand is resting the mind to put it into a state of ease. When the mind is at ease, joy becomes more accessible, so part of the practice is learning to access that joy in ease, and then in turn, using the joy to reinforce the ease. I call this easing into joy: being joyful at rest, no ego stroking or sensual pleasure required. Cultivating this form of inner joy begins to free us from overreliance on sense and ego stimulation for pleasure. This means joy becomes increasingly available anyplace, anytime.
Inclining the Mind Toward Joy Next, we learn to notice joy and give it our full attention. We learn where to look in order to see and appreciate joy that is already available to us, in moments that we hadn’t noticed before. There is joy to be found in a calming breath and in the pleasures of ordinary activities.
Uplifting the Mind Here, we learn to uplift the mind with wholesome joy, especially joy arising from goodness, generosity, loving-kindness, and compassion.
By contrast, joy that comes from within—from a peaceful mind as a result of taking a few breaths, joy from being kind toward others (which involves other people but does not depend on them), joy from our own generosity, joy from doing the right thing—all this joy is ours to have, independent of circumstances.
happiness is “a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind . . . not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being.”
Joy, in contrast, is a pleasurable feeling. It is an emotion. It is in the moment, while happiness is more of a net effect, over time, of mental health and fitness and personal flourishing. Joy is a building block of happiness. A happy life is made up of many moments of joy. While happiness doesn’t mean every moment is pure joy, there is no such thing as a joyless path to happiness.
joy leads to ha...
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Success does not lead
to happiness; instead, happiness leads to success.
The first, most basic and possibly most important benefit of mind training is the ability to calm the mind on demand.
The second basic benefit of mind training is clarity of mind.
The obvious effect of this clarity is increased self-awareness.
The third basic benefit of mind training is emotional resilience, especially in response to emotional pain.
In practice, creative types already know instinctively that an alert and relaxed mind is highly conducive to creativity, and they know how to activate that state of mind. That is why they know to go for walks, play games, or take a warm shower if they get stuck while solving a problem.
studies have shown that a joyful mind is also highly conducive to creativity.
One of the biggest surprise discoveries of my life is that self-confidence can be trained by putting my butt onto a meditation cushion.
When I was younger, I was cocky. I mistook my cockiness for confidence, but they turned out to be vastly different creatures. The biggest difference is that cockiness, unlike confidence, is necessarily fueled by conceit.
Another big difference is fragility. Cockiness is very fragile. When some external conditions feed my conceit, cockiness flies to dizzying heights, and then when I experience some failure, the cockiness immediately breaks in midair and crashes to the ground with pain directly proportional to the altitude of the previous height. Confidence, however, is highly sustainable because it is independent of success or failure.
Cockiness is also inauthentic. When I feel cocky, there is always a facade I have to put up to show the world how wonderful I supposedly am, while deep inside, I suffer agonizing insecurity anticipating the next crash. Confidence, in contrast, has its basis on seeing things as the...
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With meditation, you gain some mastery of mind, and once you have that, you can gain expertise in any subject. That assurance that you can learn anything creates confidence.
The second source of confidence is confidence arising from equanimity. This comes in part from the ability to calm the mind on demand.
With sufficient practice, it becomes a skill: you can calm the mind on demand some meaningful percentage of the time, no matter how bad things get.
There are many millions of people who are born into circumstances in which they do not even have access to books, much less to education or clean water. If you are reading this book, it is likely that you are blessed with at least the same luck I was.
One of my fellow interns asked him what had contributed most to his own success.
Another 2013 study shows that a mere fifteen minutes of mindfulness meditation can measurably improve your decision making by reducing your vulnerability to something called the sunk-cost bias, which contributes to bad decisions (like going to a movie you don’t actually want to see because you bought a nonrefundable ticket).3
A groundbreaking 2013 study by my dear friend and pioneer in contemplative neuroscience Richard “Richie” Davidson showed that when experienced meditators spent eight hours in intensive mindfulness practice, their gene expression started to change.4
Specifically, there was a reduction in the expression of pro-inflammatory genes, which correlates with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation. Jaw-dropping stuff.
In that sense, meditation obeys an aphorism called Bushnell’s Law, named after Nolan Bushnell, founder of the video games company Atari. Bushnell’s Law states, “All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master.”
relaxation. The physiological reason is that breaths taken mindfully tend to be slow and deep, and taking slow, deep breaths stimulates the vagus nerve, which in turn activates the parasympathetic nervous system. That lowers stress, reduces your heart rate and blood pressure, and basically calms you down.
To feel regretful, you need to be in the past, and to worry, you need to be in the future. Hence, when you are fully in the present, you are temporarily free from regret and worry.
According to Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, a habit is a loop that consists of three parts: a cue, a routine, and a reward.7 The cue is something that activates the habit—it leads to the routine. The routine is the behavior itself—it leads to the reward. The reward is the perceived benefit that comes from doing the behavior, and it reinforces the habit so that the next occurrence of the same cue is more likely to automatically activate the routine. Thus a loop forms.
In the case of doing one mindful breath, the routine is to bring attention to the next breath (and, when possible, a gentle and intense attention). The reward is the sense of calmness that comes from the routine. All you need is the cue. Once you find the right cue, you will be able to form a habit loop and you will have at least a few breaths per day of meditation you can benefit from, which I promise you is far better than zero.
Every time I need to wait, I take one or more mindful breaths.
This is a wonderful practice with many benefits. First, I never waste any time anymore, because every moment I wait is a moment I get to spend productively, practicing mindfulness meditation. Second, if the waiting causes me any agitation, I get to use the breath to calm down. And perhaps best of all, once you do this practice often enough that it becomes a habit, you will never be bored anymore because boredom itself becomes a cue. At the first sign of boredom, the mind goes like, “Yay! I get to meditate.” And then the mind just spontaneously engages in meditation. No more boredom.
The joy of perceived agency is discovering that what you initially thought was totally beyond your control is something you can make some choices about.
life. The first highly sustainable source of joy is the joy of momentary relief from affliction.
In other words, relief and joy can increase in power to counter stronger and stronger afflictions for longer and longer durations. We
The second highly sustainable source of joy is the joy of ease.
If resting is still too hard for you, here is the third method: being. Being means shifting from doing to being. It means not doing anything in particular, just sitting and experiencing the present moment. You can think of it as non-doing, or sitting without agenda, or simply just sitting. The key ingredient of this practice is being in the present moment. As long as your attention is in the present, you are doing it right.
“There is nowhere to go and nothing to do for this one moment, except to rest.”
The secret to effective meditating is the skillful management of effort.
Simply put, skillfully managing energy in meditation boils down to balancing three mental factors: mental relaxation, mental energy, and equanimous watching.
do not settle the mind—the mind settles itself. All we do is create the conditions conducive for the mind to settle.
One of the ultimate goals of mind training is to completely understand four things: the nature of suffering, the causes of suffering, the nature of freedom from suffering, and causes of freedom from suffering.
One particularly important text, The Discourse on Proximate Causes (the Upanisa Sutta),
“Doing the right thing” contributes incrementally to a clear conscience, and from a clear conscience arises a joy that is very easy to miss called the joy of blamelessness.
practice attending to the joy of pleasant experiences throughout the day.
Regularly noting things you are grateful for in a gratitude journal can significantly increase happiness.
Gratefulness helps us see that everything is precious, and the more you can see how precious things are, the less you will take them for granted.
