A Phenomenology of Joy

When I’m not busy being a crotchety academic, marathon runner, meditation poster-boy, autumn-leaf photographer, one of the things I like to do is teach meditation. I’ve done it in a somewhat official form for about six years. I mostly work with college kids who are intersted, but I’ve taught retirees, housemates, last year our college athletes (many at least) had to sit through 15 or so minutes of me and my meditation bell, and this year I get to work with some Environmental Studies graduate students.

One of my favorites, and the one that I find most students enjoying the most, is the metta-bhavana, cultivation of loving-kindness. This year the “Campus Sangha” that I facilitate has been doing that meditation for about 6 weeks now, with really wonderful results. We’ve built a strong community of regulars and a fairly good group of rotating once-in-a-whilers and just-oncers. On some nights we have 10, others nearly 20 and I know almost all of the regulars names.

Afterward we always congregate in the kitchen; it’s at the home of Linda and Larry. Larry was a student of mine when I taught at the U. 3 years ago and has since been a good friend; he’s a man who has lived a dozen lives in this one and now spends his retirement busier that me on my best days. We drink tea, we eat cookies, or dates or treats that Linda has decided to bake.

All very mundane perhaps, but this is all after a long session of metta-bhavana.

Reading Buddhaghosa’s commentary on this practice in his Vissudhimagga in recent weeks -I’m using it for a conference paper to be given next Monday- has added great depth to the practice for me. This week I pondered that Buddhaghosa spends just 3 pages (in the English translation, that is) introducing the meditation and getting you through the basics. He then spends 9 pages discussing overcoming resentment toward the “difficult person” (or enemy) in your meditation.

In abridged and glossed form, here are his suggestions (try each one and move to the next if it doesn’t work):

1. go back to earlier persons (we first call to mind ourselves, a benefactor, a friend and a neutral person)
2. think of the positive aspects of our enemy (there must be something good about him/her)
3. develop compassion (knowing his/her negative actions bring him/her unhappiness)
4. be reasonable (your enemy may have hurt your body, but don’t let them hurt your mind through growing angry)
5. take responsibility (your own anger will come back to you)
6. consider the heroic deeds of others (Buddha’s past lives are mentioned, Jesus or your “Great Person” of choice works as well)
7. call to mind the elements (are you angry with this person’s hand, his/her hair, eyes, feet, what part? His her mind, mere body, karmic formations? And so on)
8. give him/her a gift.

I especially like the last one. When all else fails, give a gift!

After tonight’s meditation, a couple hugs from an old professor, many smiles and delicious snacks, I thought this is it – Joy.

I’m not sure if it was the joy of community, circles of old friends all coming back together (including news that one particular old friend and student will be back in town quite soon) and new friendships blossoming. Or if it was the joy of having given back a bit through the service of leading the meditation. Or of the meditation itself: actively cultivating positive emotional states for about 30 minutes. Perhaps the joy of integrating academics (head-stuff) into experience in a way that so obviously benefits both myself and others…

Or perhaps a bit of it all.

Either way, it was great. I still sit kind of “coasting” down from the experience. Soon the dull ache in my jaw or the paperwork I need to deal with will get the best of me…

But until then: joy.