All beings want to be happy. Everyone, everything. If you’ve ever seen a picture of a tiger sitting in the sun, you know what I mean. Every fish, every bug, every person just wants to be happy.
It’s a core tenant of Buddhism, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to test experientially. Do you want to be happy? Why yes you do.
Noticing this for oneself is not a big stretch. Universalizing it to all beings is a step but it doesn’t take an extreme amount of selflessness to make the leap. You just need to look at a picture of a tiger sitting in the sun for a little while and it comes to you. And if it does, so does the rabbit, and the trout. From there it’s another small leap to a bug and probably a paramecium. Not too controversial.
The profound hypothesis of Buddhism on this topic is that while we want to be happy, we are ignorant of the way to actually be happy. We chase pleasure, relaxation, feeling good in ways that end up causing suffering and pain. That thesis is not so easily observed.
The Buddhist Teaching on Pleasure and Suffering
The mechanics of pleasure and suffering in Buddhism go like this: When chasing pleasure, two things result:
- We have a pleasurable outcome or
- We have an unpleasant outcome.
If we have a pleasurable outcome, we attribute it to our personal amazing qualities. We congratulate ourselves on being so amazing. We enjoy the pleasure for 10 to 20 seconds. Then we start thinking about how we can keep feeling this way, or how it could be better. A lifetime of trying for 15 seconds of enjoyment. Then back at it for more. How do I get more pleasure?
or
If we have an unpleasant outcome, we externalize the pain. The failure is because of circumstances, bad luck, bad karma, that other asshole, etc. We push away the discomfort. Even if we can take responsibility for our role in the pain, we turn it into a story that we use to solidify our version of the events.
and then we begin the search for pleasure again.
The first noble truth of buddhism is “life is suffering” or “life is pain” but a less dramatic version of this is “life is unsatisfying”.
As my first meditation teacher would say, that is “pain is the water from which we make our soup”
Working with Pleasure: Two Practices
But let's zoom in on the first situation - our situation, our efforts, our good fortune results in a pleasurable outcome. What do we do with that?
The first step is to not take too much credit for it.
My meditation teacher apparently married two students by wrapping a long scarf around both of their necks, pulling it tight so their heads were mashed together, and then saying “Pain is not a punishment. Pleasure is not a reward. Kindness. Kindness. Kindness.”
Pleasure is not a reward from God, the universe, or anything. Pain is not a punishment because of x or y or you masturbated.
These things happen because of uncountable causes and conditions. We don’t know why we are on a zoom call in our nice houses with good wifi while other humans are trying to survive the winter in war zones. We don’t know why that is.
Step 2: Aspire to Share Your Happiness
The second step is to aspire to share it.
How do you share a moment of pleasure with other beings? That’s going to be the contemplation for our practice session this morning, so I won’t go into it too much here. But it starts with just imagining doing so.
Use your imagination to contemplate the possibility that you could share your good feelings with everyone. Or at least your close friends and family. Or at the very least, yourself.
Guided Meditation: Sharing Happiness with All Beings
Ok, let's try it…
[grounding experience in body]
[remembering a feeling of happiness]
[soaking in it. Savoring it. Where do you feel it?]
[choose a close friend to share it with. Imagine you could give it to them and they could take it in]
[now imagine all your close friends and all their close friends feeling that good]
[some of their close friends you don’t know. So imagine all of them feeling happiness. It’s spreading out. But you will realize that although it’s spreading out, it’s not lessening. Even though you are sharing it with all these people, you can still feel it just as much as before.]
[now it’s spreading to all the people and beings you don’t know. The happiness has leaked out of just your friends’ strangers to all the strangers in the world. All the beings you don’t know.]
[You still can feel it just as much even though it’s shared with 8 billion people and all the animals you’ve never met. ]
[now, the hardest step. Optional. But imagine it now spreads to people you don’t like. Could be mild aversion or distaste or people you actively hate. Imagine for a moment that they feel some happiness.]
[ok grounding in the body again. Drop visualization. A few deep breaths.]
[dedicate the merit]
[discussion]