Curious Happiness
For some time I’ve been having a curious happiness come over me. It comes unbidden, lies quietly in the background. Or, more accurately, in the foreground. As if a shy star coming forward to be seen in its still beauty.
In the last week I’ve been inquiring daily into happiness. When it appears to be gone, where is it? I suppose another way of describing this happiness is love. There are no accurate words. As Pema Chodron said about compassion, it isn’t what you think it is.
In my morning meditation recently, I sat wondering about this. Where does it go? And then, what is surely obvious to many, I “saw” it is everywhere. It is the curtains expressing curtain-ness, the bed expressing bed-ness, Puffer Vasu expressing cat-ness, the sun expressing sun-ness. It doesn’t go anywhere. It is everywhere.
Worry, on the other hand, seems to me to be a constellated energy, like a handful of clay. How easily my attention can go to what seems more solid, more “real” than something as diffuse as all-love/happiness. Nothing wrong with that. Attention is engaged in the dance of life. When my focus is “out there”, I am more likely to be caught up in what appears most dense to my perception. When I rest back into the vastness, happiness-that-permeates-everything comes to the fore.
“Love is the dissolver of everything. It’s the great solvent,” Pamela said in satsang recently.
I continue to wake each morning with fretting. This is a life-long habit, maybe a many-lives-long habit. I note I want to quickly welcome fretting, give it tea, and then have it dissolve, never to rise up again. A kind of tough love, as if I know what is good for it. Really, it is that I don’t want fretting, have trouble seeing the use of it, and am weary to the bone of these mind games that try to organize the future for happiness.
This love, this happiness, that is in everything isn’t a doer. It has no stake in whether or not fretting dissolves, whether or not fretting recognizes its true nature.
For now, I don’t clearly see the source of resistance to this daily morning visitor. As much as possible, I bring tenderness to its nudging me awake into the day. And then I get up, get tea, sit with Puffer Vasu, meditate a little, feed the cats, and trust that this curious happiness knows the way.
In the last week I’ve been inquiring daily into happiness. When it appears to be gone, where is it? I suppose another way of describing this happiness is love. There are no accurate words. As Pema Chodron said about compassion, it isn’t what you think it is.
In my morning meditation recently, I sat wondering about this. Where does it go? And then, what is surely obvious to many, I “saw” it is everywhere. It is the curtains expressing curtain-ness, the bed expressing bed-ness, Puffer Vasu expressing cat-ness, the sun expressing sun-ness. It doesn’t go anywhere. It is everywhere.
Worry, on the other hand, seems to me to be a constellated energy, like a handful of clay. How easily my attention can go to what seems more solid, more “real” than something as diffuse as all-love/happiness. Nothing wrong with that. Attention is engaged in the dance of life. When my focus is “out there”, I am more likely to be caught up in what appears most dense to my perception. When I rest back into the vastness, happiness-that-permeates-everything comes to the fore.
“Love is the dissolver of everything. It’s the great solvent,” Pamela said in satsang recently.
I continue to wake each morning with fretting. This is a life-long habit, maybe a many-lives-long habit. I note I want to quickly welcome fretting, give it tea, and then have it dissolve, never to rise up again. A kind of tough love, as if I know what is good for it. Really, it is that I don’t want fretting, have trouble seeing the use of it, and am weary to the bone of these mind games that try to organize the future for happiness.
This love, this happiness, that is in everything isn’t a doer. It has no stake in whether or not fretting dissolves, whether or not fretting recognizes its true nature.
For now, I don’t clearly see the source of resistance to this daily morning visitor. As much as possible, I bring tenderness to its nudging me awake into the day. And then I get up, get tea, sit with Puffer Vasu, meditate a little, feed the cats, and trust that this curious happiness knows the way.
posted by Forgive the Dream at 8:15 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home