In | Out

5 Discovering the Joy Within

  𑽇   Transcript    𑽇 

Does Being in the Moment have more than Happiness and Peace for Me?

Objective: To enjoy the insight of how alive I am, solid am I, peacefully I radiate and how much freedom is available to me.

Why this is Important

• Mindfully breathing quiets our breath, our body and our mind so we can listen.  It's this intrapersonal relationship that is our true home, our island of refuge.  Our home is a place where we can always go to rest, to heal, to love and to learn about how to love, to seek insight to our questions and to simply care for yourself.  Nurturing this relationship waters our seeds of compassion for yourself.  Then we can love another with our compassion.  It starts with listening.   This mediation is an opportunity to discover the island within us.  Once you find it, it'll always be there for you.  It's your home.

• Today is another opportunity to practice Looking Deeply by mindfully breathing and concentrating for insight.  We will practice Kindly addressing yourself and listening with Gentleness. 

• It's always important to be rooted in one's smile.  Happiness and peace are your home.

How Do We Get There?

• • Discourse on the Full Awareness of Breathing

Steps 1 and 2:   In - Out *1

• • Mindfulness, Concentration and Insight - Looking Deeply *1 

  • Smile

Sangha Sharing

What joy, insights, wonderment, questions and moments would you like to share?

Dharma Talk

Knowing Where to Find Your Joy

It's important to realize that you are responsible for your own happiness and knowing where to find it.  You won't always feel like meditating.  That is normal and is okay.  However, it is important to learn where you need to go to connect with joy.  It is not always the same and not the same for every person at any given time.  For me personally, sometimes is one of the following:

• It took the Earth 4.6 billion years to arrive at this moment and I am here.  I have forgotten how precious this moment is.  

• Just sitting and being present upon my inbreath, a smile can come across my face.  "Oh, that's a wonderful place to find joy.  It was there and I had forgotten it."

• My feelings are impermanent and this one will go.  I want to water the seeds within me to feel peace and contentment.

• Sometimes I recall Thay saying in one of his videos, "Nothing is as important as your peace."  I just fall in line and accept his statement.

There are others and I learn of them by practising Gentle listening to myself.  It is an active relationship.

Also on the FloweringSmiles.com site, I've placed many ways I've recalled my joy.  It's at the bottom and titled, "Hey, Where Did My Joy Go?!"

Emptiness' Beautiful Experience

When a person begins their practice and they include Gentle listening, they become very aware of how lovely happily being in the moment is.  It becomes a motivation to mindfully breathe again.  "I feel so unsettled.  I have to sit and meditate tonight."   Then one progresses and begins to Gently hear past hurts and pains.  The peaceful softness of the moment is then used to soothe those feelings and help to transform them into compassion for yourself; thus, teaching us how to offer compassion to another.  Then we see those hurts in our compassion.  Those hurts are seen as the nutrients the dirt offered the plant so it can beautifully flower.  That's a lovely happiness and peace to experience.  As we let go of more thoughts, ideas, perceptions, beliefs, we get to experience more and more emptiness.  The more your awareness is submersed in Empiness, the more you realize that present moment's happiness, peace, your smile and your joy are your natural way of being.

So in other words, Thay cleverly stresses the importance of one's smile, one's wonderment of life, one's happy contentment and one's peace in the beginning of our practice so when we open our eyes to Emptiness, we discover Emptiness was in our practice the whole time.  While one's awareness is submersed in Emptiness, our experience is completely full of wonderment, happiness, peace and our gratitude blooms into a joyous smile on our face.   He affirms that moment in the very beginning of our practice.  Brilliant!

Mindfulness, Concentration and Insight

A Thích Nhất Hạnh talk

Thich Nhat Hanh: July 4th 2012      Start at 9:07 and finish at 36:15

Collective observations and reflections

We share and listen.

Let's Look Deeply with Using Mindfulness, Concentration and Insight

Concentration means to gently listen, listen unconditionally and/or listen with the fresh eyes of a curious child.  When you're ready to concentrate, move your focus to your body and/or your breathe and/or your mind and gently listen to how the question is answered.

Meditation's Audio

18 mins with bells at 2 minutes

I am aware I am breathing in.  -  I am aware I am breathing out.  

In  -  Out

I calm my body  -  I ease my body and mind

Calm  -  Ease

I kindly smile to everything in my awareness.  - I release all tension

Smile  -  Release

I am in the present moment.  -  This is a wonderful moment

Present moment  -  Wonderful moment

I am home in the present moment.  - I gratefully smile

 When you're ready, wonder around your existence and gently listen to how alive you are?

I am home in the moment.  -  I gratefully smile

When you're ready, within your existence, kindly observe the stability of this moment?

I am home in the moment.  -  I gratefully smile

When you're ready, experience on how you radiate this moment's calmness?

I am home in the moment.  -  I gratefully smile

When you're ready, experience how free I am in this moment?

When you're ready,  Just Be.

Collective observations and reflections

We share and listen.

Exceptions and Citations

* None of this section is included in the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing nor from Thick Nhat Hahn's book, Breathe, You are Alive.  

*1 Mindfulness, Concentration and Insight are not included in either the Buddha's Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing nor in Breathe, You  are Alive! Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing.

This introduction and description was used to establish a foundation to understand ones self.

* 2 Hạnh, N. (2008). Chapter 2: Exploring the Sutra. In Breathe, you are alive! the Sutra on the full awareness of breathing (pp. 21–22). essay, Parallax Press.