As much joy as you can stand

My arm for a pillow

I really like myself

Under the hazy moon.

Yosa Buson

August is my birth month, I’ll be 71. Although I am now an elder, the child in me is still very much alive.  I squeal when I see a puppy, colored pencils make me swoon and I can’t believe my good fortune when I get to be with the people I love. The teenager is still there too. I dress in jeans and T shirts, minus the crop tops (mostly) (usually), look vainly in the mirror and feel surges of ambition. 71 years on this adventure may be a long time for a human but it’s a short time for humanity. I’m only just starting to make sense of suffering, my own and others, and dig down to the joy underneath that suffering.

I grew up in the 1950’s in Southern California, the land of milk and honey. There was fruit dripping off the trees. Our parents went through the depression and WWII. Their lives had been hard and they wanted to shield us from the suffering they had endured. It wasn’t until much later that I learned about how a butterfly needs the stress of breaking out of her cocoon in order to fly. Sheltering us from suffering was, of course, not possible so there was a sense of failure that accompanied the task. It brought with it the expectation that if our lives were not going swimmingly there was something wrong. The Buddha taught that suffering is just part of the human condition. I now see the many pains I’ve endured as essential to my practice and life. Without suffering there is no compassion. How can you feel with another person if what they are feeling is alien? You have no point of reference unless you’ve also felt pain. Suffering teaches us to love one another, connects us. It is not a sign of failure or aberrant.  Suffering is a natural part of every life.

I’ve also learned that Joy is a natural part of life. Joy is not the same as pleasure. It is not something to wait for and feel powerless to achieve. It doesn’t depend upon conditions. The poor, the rich, the beautiful, the deformed, the sick, the well all have joy available to them. It’s who we are underneath the suffering. Instead of trying to meet joy head on by going toward pleasure, which is fleeting, we have the option to relax into joy. The Buddha’s practices confirm, for anyone willing to walk that sometimes lonely sometimes burning road, that joy is found in the unpeeling of suffering, not the denial of suffering. As suffering dissolves joy emerges in its place-regardless of our present circumstances. It sounds strange, but think about how a sad song can lift you up rather than bring you down. Through music and art we can touch pain directly-- and it feels good.  Acts of open hearted compassion also bring joy. We touch pain directly while holding others as they touch their pain.

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When people hear that Buddhism speaks in great detail about suffering and impermanence and that our practice involves sitting in silence and just being with whatever arises they think Buddhism is dry and dusty. And there are some teachers who reflect a sense of dryness. Yet there are other teachers, such as the Dalai Lama, who radiate the radical glow lying beneath that dry exterior. He is someone who has had his country taken from him and seen his beloved county men and women tortured, killed and forced to flee with almost nothing to build a life a foreign land. Yet the Dalai Lama’s joy radiates unconditionally warming all in his presence. The Chinese powers that be cannot take away the Dalai Lama’s joy, and no one can take away your bedrock joy.

Some people just want to jump to the good stuff without spending time facing the suffering. They build unsustainable castles in the sky and further the pain pleasure cycle. As soon as the going gets rough their equanimity dissolves. They can’t bear to see others suffer because it reminds them of the suffering they’re trying to push away. Looking suffering in the eye, rather than denying or demonizing it is, paradoxically, a winding path to unconditional, sustainable joy. Accepting losses and difficulties as part of every life ties us to one another and slowly reframes those difficulties, layer by layer. It takes time. Underneath the dry husk of suffering lies a bedrock of radiant, incorruptible joy, as much as you can stand. I don’t live each moment in that joy but have been blessed to touch it now and then. Even just a taste of this sweetest wine makes the 71 years of carving away at karma worth every step. I am grateful for each new year of being alive.