3 Faces of Happiness

Jerry Ashmore, senior teacher at Empty Circle Zen group shared this opening quote in his dharma talk this morning. As an aside, if you are looking for a wonderful Zen sitting with teachings, this group meets on Zoom twice per week: Tuesday evening and Saturday morning. I have really been grateful for this addition to my practice.

Following Jerry’s talk, my search for “happiness quotes” showed 734,000,000 hits.

This is a very important reminder. More meaningful in my personal experience this week that most.

I sent a text message to my poetry writing group. “I am going to go for a bike ride instead of writing this morning. I need some grounding.” I shared some of the details (not pretty) about what was going on, and assured them I would log on in time for the update of an important project one of the women is currently working on. Her project is huge, and we all qualify as midwives….

Lots of people find balance by exercising. Many find their center when they can get out in nature. For me, biking is a blessed bonus of both….

Logging on after my ride, I was surprised to see one of the women in the group on line that had sent word earlier saying that she would not be there.

“Deb, tell us how you are, and how things are with your _____ _____.” (She named the stressful situation. One of the other women in the group told me later that she had filled this woman in since she had not been expected to attend and, therefore, had not been included in my earlier text message.)

As I began sharing, the woman who had asked me to share interrupted, “Deb, just the short version. We know you are grieving.”

Now, admittedly, I have had some triggers with this group before.

Whereever I go, there I am.

“There is no short version,” I responded, and muted my mic.

Humans can’t touch unconditional love sufficiently to extend it fully to all all of the time.

Jerry said this morning, “That is where getting to non-hate is the wisdom practice.”

I did more than get to non-hate. I have been so focused on something else that I offered a pretense to presence. As I forgave myself, I was able to not take her action as a personal attack.

I was also able to do more than get to non-hate with the situation I had been challenged with for the past several weeks. The word that falls from my lips about the others involved most easily is: unskillful.

Empathy does not show up for me in my top five in the Clifton Strengths Assessment. People who are really strong in empathy “feel what others are feeling as though their feelings are your own. Intuitively, you are able to see the world through the others’ eyes and share their perspectives.”

I have come closer to a heart of compassion through decades of mindfulness (Vipassana) practice.

To be mindful means to be aware. It’s the energy that knows what is happening in the present moment. Lifting our arms and knowing that we’re lifting our arms—that’s mindfulness, mindfulness of our action.

When we breathe in and we know we’re breathing in, that’s mindfulness.

When we make a step and we know that the steps are taking place, we are mindful of the steps. Mindfulness is always mindfulness of something.

It’s the energy that helps us be aware of what is happening right now and right here—in our body, in our feelings, in our perceptions, and around us. ~ 5 Practices for Nurturing Happineess

Her comment was unskillful, but my response was unskillful as well. The unskilled volley left us all raw. Hell, I was already raw. For all I know, so was she…

That is the trick, isn’t it?

Not even a person Clifton says is endowed with empathy truly sees the world through another person’s eyes. The stressful situation has been stressful precisely because we don’t see the situation the same way.

Jerry asked us to ponder some questions about happiness:

What is happiness? What does happiness mean for me? Is happiness just pleasure? Is it joy? Can I be happy without a sense of well-being? Is that possible? Can I be happy without a sense of purpose in life?

We cannot truly speak about happiness in the Buddhist way without a nod to suffering.

Being able to enjoy happiness doesn’t require that we have zero suffering. In fact, the art of happiness is also the art of suffering well. When we learn to acknowledge, embrace, and understand our suffering, we suffer much less. Not only that, but we’re also able to go further and transform our suffering into understanding, compassion, and joy for ourselves and for others.

One of the most difficult things for us to accept is that there is no realm where there’s only happiness and there’s no suffering.

I am not sure what the 3 faces of happiness are.

Perhaps to forgive again, and again, and again….