There are 10,000 Joys and 10,000 Sorrows in Education… Choose Joy!
Balanced Heart Stone, Mitchell’s Cove, Santa Cruz, CA
This past weekend I led my first meditation retreat with the theme “Cultivating Joy.” I choose to do this work alongside TeachWell as a way to enrich my mindfulness practices and feed my spirit. I find myself cautious to keep some boundaries around the mindfulness practices and TeachWell. I want to meet educators where they are, not impose my personal practices on others, and maintain the distinction of mindfulness practices as scientific, brain-based, and secular. And sometimes there exists a tension when I feel the messages from the Insight Meditation practices could enrich the professional practices of educators. So for this article, I want to share some of the teachings for cultivating joy. I believe every teacher touches joy in their teaching practice, can find great joy in the profession, and has the right to experience joy in their work.
Beyond Joy
Let me begin by offering an expansion on the word joy. For some, the word does not resonate. If this is true for you, consider a word to which you can more authentically relate. You can think of joy as well-being, wholeness, ease, happiness, peace, or fulfillment. Find a term that suits you best and throughout your reading, use this word interchangeably. You’ll see that I freely mix these terms throughout my writing and teaching.
Whatever term you choose, understand that we all have access to this state of being. We can experience happiness in a precious moment; we can turn our intentions toward wholeness; we can cultivate fulfillment in our personal work; and we can share peace and ease with others.
Joy manifests in three experiences: joy with cause, cultivated joy without cause, and empathic or vicarious joy through and with others. These experiences feed on each other, but they are not linear. Imagine them more as an infinite flow that feeds the heart. We must also consider that life is not only made up of joy but equally of sorrow. It is an old Taoist saying that life is made of “10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows.” In that infinite flow, there are various experiences of happiness and hardship—for every one of us.
Life is the coexistence of all opposite values. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, up and down, hot and cold, here and there, light and darkness, birth and death. All experience is by contrast, and one would be meaningless without the other. – Deepak Chopra
What do we do with our struggles?
Tightly bound to the human experience, struggle is an essential element of ease. It is, in fact, our challenges that give us a greater capacity to experience fulfillment and wholeness. The goal becomes not to strive toward an illusive state of perpetual joy, but to find the steady and sustainable rhythm of life that feeds our heart and soul, makes us resilient, and allows us to stay close to our purpose and passion for being educators through all the highs and lows.
In any practice to find more ease, joy, or happiness, we have to allow space for our struggles. As they say, what we resist, persists. Walking through life with an unreal mask of happiness does not serve us. It is normal to create resistance to the unpleasant things in life. In most societies and cultures, it is encouraged. Pain is perceived as undesirable and an experience to be overcome. Hardship is to be solved and conquered. A joyful heart allows the heart to feel the depth of suffering in a way that expands our capacity to feel joy. When we accept our struggles as an inevitable part of our lives, we begin to identify more agency and recognize our ability to tolerate the lows without blame of others, shame for our sadness, or guilt for not always being bright and happy.
Complexity emerges when struggles, sorrow, and pain are caused by injustice and institutional inequities. In these moments we need to move at a pace that allows for recovery for our heart and emotions. It is vital to resource oneself through rest, connection with others, healthy relationships, and the practices to cultivate ease. Discerning wise action requires a tremendous amount of support and self-compassion. The capacity for wholeness exists within each one of us. It is our birthright to have peace.
Where do we find joy?
Joy with cause is one most of us can relate to. This is a moment in time, like a celebration. It is a win, a recognition, a beautiful sight, and a meaningful connection. In these moments we must bring our awareness to the experience, fully embrace it, and let it soak into our person. As William Blake says, we must “kiss the joy as it flies.” We do not need to grip or constrain around this joy, just deeply notice and let it pass–a precious moment in time!
Eternity by William Blake
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.
Pause and consider a recent time when you experienced wholeness, happiness, or fulfillment. What was the cause? Who were you with? How did it feel in your body?
These moments of joy create the conditions which give rise to joy without cause. By tuning our awareness into these celebration moments, we begin to assist the brain to recognize the more pleasant and pleasing moments in our lives.
Joy For No Reason by Danna Faulds
I am filled with quiet joy for no reason save the fact that I’m alive. The message I received is clear—there’s no time to lose from loving, no place but here to offer kindness, no day but this to be my true, unfettered self and pass the flame from heart to heart. This is the only moment that exists—so simple, so exquisite, and so real.
Humans are still wired with a negativity bias, which served us greatly hundreds of years ago when our primary objective was to survive. This reptilian part of our brain constantly scans for threats, deficiency, and for what is wrong. Generally, the human primary objective is no longer to survive in that way, in fact, humans now largely strive for happiness. It is important to remember, especially in our engagements with others—that all humans want to have happiness, ease, and comfort. But the negativity bias driven by this reptilian part of our brain means that the negative thoughts are stickier and quicker. They have become a default mode of the human brain.
Here’s the good news . . . Because of what we call neuroplasticity, with practice and intention, we can create new pathways in the brain that more quickly and authentically sort to the positive and over time can become our default mode! This is when joy moves from being a state to a trait.
Meditation teacher and writer, Jonathan Lehmann teaches that dedicated practice helps us minimize self-limiting beliefs and experience a positive mindset more consistently. “Every time we direct our attention toward certain thoughts we are impacting our present moment AND asking our brain to suggest these same thoughts in the future. By consistently focusing our attention on the positive things that regularly happen in our lives we strengthen the feedback loop in our brain and teach it to give us a positive mindset.”
Cultivate Joy
This is a dedicated practice, that overtime will increase our access to joy. It will not eliminate our struggles or suffering, but it will give us more space to find joy alongside our struggles and challenges. This is a choice we all can make, and we must choose it. Below are three simple practices offered by James Baraz, author of the book Awakening Joy:
Be mindful of moments of joy: When you experience a pleasant moment, pause, and let yourself drop into the experience with deep awareness. Pay attention to what is happening and feel the sensations of your body—what are you hearing, seeing, smelling. How does your body feel? Immerse yourself in the moment.
Set an intention toward joy: Each day, set an intention or make a promise to yourself to turn toward joy. Remember that this may be a practice that emerges in a moment of struggle. Keep this simple and accessible. Where is there something beautiful or pleasing to see? When are there moments of connection with others? Can you notice a pleasing smell or taste? Is there a song or poem that inspires you?
Practice gratitude: Reflecting on our experiences with a lens of gratitude is a kind of mental debrief. Even in the most challenging situations, we can identify an internal strength or place of growth, or an external support or kindness. Gratitude practices might be a “Yes, And” practice. Yes, I had a difficult day. And, that engagement with a student was inspiring. Gratitude goes hand in hand with the practice of cultivating joy because it trains the brain to create new neural pathways that turn to the more positive aspects of our lives.
Finding Joy in Another’s Joy
The greatest benefit to choosing joy is the number of opportunities there are in an educator’s day to tune into joy. And, the highest level of this experience is our human ability to feel empathic joy—the happiness we feel when another person is happy, the ease we feel in another’s ease, the peace we feel in another person’s peace. As educators, we must remember that this is reciprocal. When we bring joy to our work, students and parents feel that joy. When students experience fulfillment, we can join in that experience with them! As the great and late Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, “The goal is to be a reservoir of joy, an oasis of peace, a pool of serenity that can ripple out to all those around you.”
I hope these words inspire you. The beauty in this is that this human experience is available to all of us. It is a courageous choice. It is a practice and it is possible. Go easy, be well, and may you find joy in your day!