Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within

by Chade-Meng Tan

Joy from wholesome sources is most conducive to collectedness of mind.

There are three sources of wholesome joy in daily activities that we can tap. One source is the type of behavior that uplifts the spirits, such as behavior involving generosity, loving-kindness, and compassion.

Ethical behavior is another day-to-day source of wholesome joy. “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.

the joy of blamelessness clears the mind of some significant percentage of shame, guilt, worry, and regret, thereby affording the mind the ease that is highly conducive for meditation.

Every time you make an ethical decision or engage in any ethical behavior, I encourage you to take a moment to think to yourself, “I have done an ethical thing. My conscience is clear. I am happy.”

Another source of wholesome joy is attending to pleasant experiences in your normal, everyday activities. The practice is simple: when you do something that involves a pleasant experience, take at least one moment to attend fully to the joy that pleasantness invokes.

In general, when seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching something pleasant, bring full attention to the joy for at least one moment, and when interacting with a beloved person, bring full attention to the joy of being with that person for at least one moment.

a nice daily practice he calls the “doubler,” which is to recall one positive experience of the day in detail, because the brain can’t tell the difference between visualization and actual experience, so by doing this, you double the experience.

possibly, the most powerful way to overcome habituation is with a strong awareness of mortality. Someday, I will die. Every single person I love will die, some of them before I do.

Periodically, perhaps once a day, perhaps more frequently, bring awareness to the body to see if there is any experience of pain.

Periodically, perhaps once a day, perhaps more frequently, bring awareness to the mind to see if there is any experience of mental or emotional pain.

Whenever all or part of a sensory experience suddenly disappears, note that.

Apply intense attention to the end of every out breath, clearly seeing the moment it ends. At the end of an out breath, if you like, you may silently note to yourself, “Gone.”

it brings balance to our perception of sensory and mental events. Every sensory and mental event has three parts: arising, presence, and ceasing. Most of us are aware of arising and presence, but we are seldom aware of ceasing. In other words, our experience of sensory and mental events is unbalanced—we often see the coming but seldom the going. By noticing gone, you restore perceptual balance, thus moving toward seeing things as they really are.

By frequently seeing gone, the mind comes to understand the nature of impermanence. The mind realizes that, “Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.” When the mind intimately understands the nature of impermanence, it begins to see the gratification of sense pleasures as an unsatisfactory way of creating lasting happiness. So it stops clinging so desperately to sense pleasure, and the less desperately it clings to sense pleasure, the less it suffers from being the slave of sense pleasure, the more freedom it enjoys, and the more joyful it becomes.

Third, and perhaps most important, is the ability to see that self is a process, not an object.

When the mind is calm, sharp, and trained to clearly see gone, it may be able to see the moments when the sense of self has faded away, before the sense of self is re-created by the mind. It can then perceive the self as a continuously running process, not a solid object.

Some days you don’t even know why you feel down. Even if you manage to bring up joy, there will be days when it fades away quickly and you’re too tired to bring it back. So it is easier to bring up joy on some days and harder on others. In any case, even if the difficulty persists for days, please do not think that your training is failing. It is simply a reflection of imperfect mind in the day-to-day variance in an imperfect world.

sometimes terrible things happen. Emotional pain naturally occurs then, even for experienced meditators who can access joy on demand in less extreme circumstances. The pain can last for months. Under such circumstances, it is important to continue formal and informal meditation practice, not despite it being hard, but precisely because it is hard.

All other things being equal, to increase your happiness, all you have to do is randomly wish for somebody else to be happy.

randomly identify two people who walk past you or who are standing or sitting around you. Secretly wish for them to be happy. Just think to yourself, “I wish for this person to be happy, and I wish for that person to be happy.” That is the entire practice. Don’t do anything; don’t say anything; just think. This is entirely a thinking exercise. If you prefer, you can do this at any time of the day for any amount of time. You can also do it at any other place. If there is nobody present, you can bring someone to mind for the purpose of this exercise.

What is the difference between loving-kindness and compassion? Simply stated, loving-kindness is the wish for self or others to be happy, and compassion is the wish for self or others to be free from suffering.

Healthy sadness is sadness without despair. Sadness without despair comes from the confidence that you have the inner resources to deal with difficulties.

If your wish for somebody to be happy becomes sufficiently strong, then you naturally also want that person to be free from suffering, so in that way, loving-kindness leads to compassion. Hence, the lazy way to cultivate compassion is simply to master loving-kindness. Just do a lot of loving-kindness practice, which is easy and joyful to do, and eventually, your loving-kindness will be so strong that every human being you see, your first instinct is to wish for that person to be happy.

From that point, to move from loving-kindness to compassion, all you need is a little nudge to become keenly aware of suffering. The mind suffused with sufficiently strong loving-kindness, when keenly aware of suffering, always becomes compassionate.

compassion is not sustainable unless it is based on inner joy and equanimity. At a high level of skill, compassion can create its own inner joy and equanimity, setting off the mental equivalent of self-sustaining nuclear fusion. However, it takes a lot of practice to reach that level.

Altruistic joy can be delicious because other people’s good fortune tends to be quite visible, so if only I’m capable of rejoicing at other people’s good fortune, I can rejoice a lot.

There is a subset of altruistic joy that is easy and uplifting, and that is rejoicing in the inner goodness and altruistic behavior of others. It is easy and uplifting because we are hardwired to be awed and inspired. Bring to mind somebody who you know is very kind and generous, and you feel awed, inspired, and uplifted. Rejoice!

You can rejoice at your own altruistic acts.

If you have taken time and effort to cultivate loving-kindness within yourself, or have made a generous donation to charity, or been kind to someone, or even saved somebody’s life, rejoice!

it provides three important benefits. First, it gives a reward signal to the mind and therefore inclines the mind toward goodness, making altruistic deeds more likely in the future. Second, it uplifts the mind. Third, it counters self-inadequacy and self-loathing.

I don’t own most of the conditions of my success, and therefore, I cannot own most of my success. There is, however, one thing I can and do fully own, which is the intention behind my actions. When I donate money out of an intention of generosity, I own that intention—that was me. When I sit in meditation with the intention of becoming a calmer, happier, kinder human being, I own that intention—that was me.

The ancient texts claim that even animals tend to like you and behave favorably toward you if you are strong in loving-kindness.

in mind training, loving-kindness is highly conducive to meditative concentration. One who is strong in loving-kindness can more easily settle and concentrate the mind.

The far enemy of loving-kindness is ill will, especially strong ill will, as in hatred.

In loving-kindness, the absence of the other person does not lead to pain, agitation, or thirst, because if it does, it is clinging, not loving-kindness. Loving-kindness is always wholesome. The second near enemy is conditional love,

The far enemy of compassion is cruelty.

Compassion has two near enemies. The first is grief born of despair. As Matthieu Ricard says, true compassion is based on the type of healthy sadness that inspires both a loving response and courageous action. In contrast, the type of grief that causes helplessness, despair, and powerlessness is unhealthy. It needs to be transformed into healthy sadness for compassion to properly function. The second near enemy of compassion is pity. To pity somebody necessarily (and often unconsciously) means you are putting yourself above that person, and that (often unconsciously and insidiously) reinforces an unhealthy ego.

The far enemies of altruistic joy are jealousy and envy. Altruistic joy has two near enemies. The first is the type of joy for others that is tinged with identification of “I,” “me,” or “mine.”

The second near enemy of altruistic joy is rejoicing in the unwholesome joy of others (and also of self, for that matter).

The far enemies of equanimity are mental factors that cause agitation in the mind, such as restlessness, anxiety, craving, and hatred. Equanimity has two near enemies. The first is disengagement, when we simply ignore what we do not want to see. The second near enemy of equanimity is apathy. With disengagement, a person ignores and doesn’t see; with apathy, the person sees but doesn’t care.

In a state of kindness or compassion, for example, your vagus nerve gets activated.

If you often have thoughts of kindness, compassion, and altruistic joy, you activate the vagus nerve a lot, and after a while, your vagal tone improves.7 High vagal tone is correlated with a healthy heart, while low vagal tone predicts heart failure and mortality after heart attacks. High vagal tone increases resilience to stress and the likelihood of positive emotional experiences such as joy, interest, serenity, and hope.

The first step in working with emotional pain can be summarized in three words: calm the mind. Whenever I am afflicted with a painful emotion, the very first thing I do is calm the mind. I do this by deploying my attention. I turn my mindfulness on to full power, and then I bring attention to my breath, away from the thoughts that are fueling my pain.

Under normal conditions, it is easy to calm the mind by attending to the breath, but it is harder to do so under stressful conditions, precisely when you need it the most. Fortunately, if you practice it a lot under normal conditions, then in times of need, in the midst of emotional pain, you will be able to activate it instinctively.

This step deals with the feeling of the emotionally painful experience.

There are two parts to this step. The first is to be willing to experience joy in the midst of emotional pain. The second is to be willing to experience the emotional pain itself.

The mind in its peaceful and joyous state is like the moon—the emotions that hinder peace and joy such as sadness and hatred are like dark clouds in the sky obscuring the moon. The dark clouds only obscure the moon, not destroy it, and the mere absence of the dark clouds will reveal the moon. Similarly, the painful emotions merely obscure the default peace and joy of mind, not destroy them, so the mere absence, or parting, of the painful emotions will reveal mental peace and joy. To access peace and joy, we don’t have to do anything except let go of the painful emotions that obscure them.

On difficult days, it is like doing a handstand: just doing it is hard; maintaining it for more than a minute is even harder. On impossible days, it is like trying to see a moon through clouds in a thunderstorm—one simply has no choice but to hunker down and wait for the weather to change.

When we develop the skills to ease the mind into joy, attend to joy as it arises, and uplift the mind, then even in the middle of great difficulty, we may sometimes find moments when we can access peace and joy. Each moment of peace and joy in the midst of emotional pain is like the occasional oasis in a vast desert. The oases let you cross the desert. In the same way, having access to moments of peace and joy lets you navigate emotional difficulties, even when they are vast.