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Today my guest is Tenzin Chogkyi, one of our most popular guests, and she’s back to talk about another one of the six perfections that we’ve been talking with other guests about this year. This one is enthusiasm or joyful effort. She talks about not just the Buddhist ideas of enthusiasm, but how to maintain our joy and enthusiasm in life when things are difficult or even when we get too much of a good thing.

So many people I talk to, wonderful people who have dream jobs, complain that there’s too much of a good thing. They’re too busy. They’re stressed out. This episode talks a little bit about that and also the highest ideal of joyful effort: to find enthusiasm in virtue, in doing good in the world. There’s some excellent points that come out of this episode as to what virtue is, how to cultivate it, how to stay enthusiastic, and especially when to take a break, which turns out to be one of the most important points.

If you’ve been listening for a while, you may want to consider joining our Train A Happy Mind community, which you can join for free or by donation at trainahappymind.org. There’s also a book based on the podcast called How to Train A Happy Mind. In fact, the Indian version of the book comes out this week!

Scott Snibbe: Tenzin Chogkyi, it’s a pleasure to have you back on How to Train a Happy Mind. Some of our most popular episodes have been the ones that featured you. Also, you’re now helping to lead meditations in our Train A Happy Mind community, which we also rave reports when you lead them. Thanks for being a part of our community.

Tenzin Chogkyi: Well, thanks so much for the invitation. It’s always such a pleasure to chat with you about all the important things.

What is joyful effort?

Scott Snibbe: We’ve loosely been following a thread in many of the episodes this year of the Six Perfections, which are these practices of bodhisattvas, people who want to live their lives to benefit others. We’ve gone through a number of them so far, including ethics with Dr. Larry Ward recently talking really deeply about race, cause and effect, and karma.

Today we’re on the topic of joyful effort. To start out, can you just tell me a little bit what it is? What is joyful effort?

Tenzin Chogkyi: That’s such a good question. I laugh because I remember one time the translator, Alan Wallace saying, Oh, for crying out loud, please don’t call it effort. Because we have enough of that, striving, pushing mind. He translates it, and I think Stephen Bachelor also, as “enthusiasm,” which is a little bit more light than this idea of joyful effort, which almost sounds like an oxymoron. It’s defined as taking joy in virtue. Instead of taking joy in, just distraction or even, some sort of wrong deeds. It’s actually having our happiness come from our practices of virtue, whether that be meditation practice, serving others in all the ways that we do it, all of our virtuous activities, which to me is so inspiring.

One of the teachings I got about enthusiasm is it’s the fourth of the six perfections or perfecting, one of my teachers said it can be glossed is either perfection and that which perfects us. So the “perfecting” kind of more of ajar, sort of framing of these things. One of my teachers was explaining how the first three, the giving, the ethics, and the patience are the causes for the Buddhist enlightened body. Then the concentration and wisdom, the last two create the causes for the Buddhist enlightened mind. And then enthusiasm informs both the practices that create the body and the practices that create the mind. So they kind of suffuse all of our practices, like taking joy in doing those practices because otherwise it’s not sustainable.

I think a lot of us are sort of survivors of a leftover kind of Protestant work ethic idea that our spiritual practice or religious practice needs to be kind of pushing, striving, and joyless. We’re sort of suspicious of joy. So I love this Buddhist idea that everything is just us by this enthusiasm and this joy and this delight in our practice. Because it really is the thing that makes these practices sustainable.

A lot of us are sort of survivors of a leftover kind of Protestant work ethic idea that our spiritual practice or religious practice needs to be kind of pushing, striving, and joyless. We’re sort of suspicious of joy.

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, that’s a good translation to prepare for this episode. Last night I was reading Shantideva’s chapter on the topic, and I noticed that Stephen Bachelor, translated it as enthusiasm, this thing you say about verbs versus noun or jarons versus nouns. My understanding is that in Sanskrit they don’t even have the nouns. That every noun is actually the verb, that you are in enthus, there isn’t really a way to say even enthusiasm. I think that is probably true to the Sanskrit origins of the Mana practices.

Tenzin Chogkyi: They’re like “that which gets us to that state,” because if we think of perfection, sometimes we can already feel discouraged and feel like, Oh gosh, I’m so far from that. But if we think about these are the practices that actually perfect our abilities to benefit others, then we’re like, Hey, I can do that.

When was the first time you encountered the idea of enthusiasm or joyful effort?

Scott Snibbe: Can you remember when you first encountered this idea of enthusiasm, joyful effort?

Tenzin Chogkyi: I think it probably was when I first started doing these 10 day lamrim classes. I started out in Tibetan Buddhism. I was kind of experimenting with different Buddhist traditions. And then in 1991 went to Dharamsala and spent a long time at Tushita Retreat Center and did one 10-day-course after another. But I think it was only later when I realized I sort of was grappling with my conditioning that spiritual practice was about striving and pushing and really looking at my deep kind of wish to transform. Because I didn’t like myself very much, I think, and just how I was pushing against who I was and just exhausting myself.

It was a really good friend at one point who said—like your best friend tells you the thing you don’t want to hear. She was like, Your practice just doesn’t seem very joyful, where’s the joy in practice? That was a couple of years into practice that I realized I had kind of let this idea change could be joyful and taking joy.

Your practice just doesn’t seem very joyful, where’s the joy in practice?

I really started exploring this idea and studying Master Shantideva more in depth and really got a lot of great pointers from that enthusiasm chapter in Master Shantideva about how to get that balance. I realized I was burning myself out, so much by the practices, but about my attitude of, Oh, I need to push even harder and stronger and almost being suspicious of joy. Like when I felt joyful, I must not be pushing enough. I realized how much the Protestant culture of North America had really kind of tainted what could be a joyful Buddhist practice. When you asked me to talk about one of the perfections, that’s why I was enthusiastic about this one, because I’ve really grappled with it and it’s helped me a lot to kind of try and get that balance more with my practice.

I realized how much the Protestant culture of North America had really kind of tainted what could be a joyful Buddhist practice.

How has enthusiasm helped you get through something difficult?

Scott Snibbe: Can you think of a time in your life where this enthusiasm helped you get through something difficult?

Tenzin Chogkyi: Well, I think changing my relationship to where joy comes from a course called Cultivating Emotional Balance. And so that’s based on the work by several psychologists, including Paul Eckman and in the whole field of positive psychology. One of the framings that we talk about in this class that I’ve found helpful is the difference between kind of two flavors of happiness.

One is called hedonia, and we’re all kind of used to that word hedonic or hedonism, which isn’t a bad thing, but it just means the happiness that comes from enjoying pleasures, nice things to eat, nice places to go for a walk, and so forth. And then Aristotle coined, this word eudaimonia, which is sometimes translated as genuine wellbeing. That’s the flavor of happiness that comes from making your life meaningful, really living in accordance with your core values, connection with others, serving others.

It’s kind of a deeper, sense of wellbeing and both are necessary for happy life. But I think it was changing my framing from the framing of Hedonia, which of course, capitalism is highly invested in selling us the idea that we need happiness and it comes from things that we can possess and things that we can be sold. This idea of really checking in my own life, Oh, happiness really comes from my practice and serving others and developing these qualities.

Capitalism is highly invested in selling us the idea that we need happiness and it comes from things that we can possess and things that we can be sold.

Of the six perfections is actually the way to a deeper, more fulfilling kind of happiness. So it’s really about kind of over time changing my framing and overcoming the framing of the worldly idea that happiness comes from gain and fame and possessions and all of that. And just really checking with my own experience.

Often when I’m teaching students, I have them check and I say, when you feel the happiest, take a little notebook with you and write down what just happened. So many people say it comes from feeling like really present in the present moment. There’s a lot of research about how satisfying just that mindfulness of being aware of the present moment can be, and also benefiting others.

Those are the two things that come up much. So, just kind of understanding more deeply the happiness that comes from having a virtuous mind was the big turnaround for me.

Understanding more deeply the happiness that comes from having a virtuous mind was the big turnaround for me.

Scott Snibbe: Earlier you described this effort as finding joy in virtue, and I find the word virtue is one people get hung up on quite quick, both the words, ethics, and virtue. First of all, I had a conversation this weekend with a woman who brought it up independently about ethics and then almost apologetically.

But I understand that’s relative. It means different things to people. I said, I think maybe there are some universally good things actually that we can call out. So when people say, What is virtue? You just described it really nicely. Two forms of virtue that are probably simpler than many people think. One is being present, just being totally present for yourself or for someone else and the other is benefiting others.

Tenzin Chogkyi: I do a lot of interfaith work. I’ve been volunteering for about 10 years for an organization based in the South Bay called the Islamic Networks Group that has these interfaith panels, for education about different religions. Actually, have been on several panels in just the last couple of weeks, and one of the topics for the panels that we do a lot is called shared values among faiths. So much of the values that we talk about and it’s so inspiring to compare in the faith traditions. Because like you say, there is some universality to what all the main religions consider ethics, even though there’s a great difference perhaps in a worldview and what the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is.

Onlyness says this too, in terms of ethics. So much commonality, loving-kindness, compassion, giving, generosity always come up a through line in all the faith traditions. In fact, I had one really moving, experience: we were asked to give a panel for the Parliament of world religions a couple of years ago when it was fully online. One of the prompts for all five of us of the five major traditions was, what’s one value in your faith tradition that inspires you the most? We all chose compassion and we hadn’t decided on it ahead of time, but we all talked about compassion independently and it was just this wonderful unifying moment.

Like you say, Scott, I don’t know that it’s true that ethics are that relative. I think there is some sort of universality to what all the faith traditions and maybe the secular humanism and everything else would call ethics. In Buddhism, the basis is nonharming. The Buddha talked about the bliss of blamelessness, and I know what it’s like when you sit down to meditate and you have so many regrets about the snarky things you said about someone behind their back. It leads to an unpeaceful mind, which is an unhappy mind.

There’s something about behaving ethically that leads to a happy mind because your mind is not filled with remorse and regret, which is so disturbing to the mind. I think it all interconnects really, very much so.

There’s something about behaving ethically that leads to a happy mind because your mind is not filled with remorse and regret, which is so disturbing to the mind.

How do you get to joyful effort?

Scott Snibbe: I think what you say is very important because they’re called perfections. They come in an order and ethics does come before the enthusiasm. What you just pointed out, it is very difficult to be present and happy if you are doing things that harm yourself or harm others.

It is very difficult to be present and happy if you are doing things that harm yourself or harm others.

We’re quite lucky in this Tibetan Buddhist tradition because we have these ways to constantly forgive ourselves and what we call purification, but even little things—I find just a little bit speaking rudely to my wife or something. It does kind of weigh and you need a way to process it and let go. How do we do that?

Joyful effort isn’t something you just turn on. Can you talk more about the on-ramp into it? How do we get there?

Tenzin Chogkyi: Yeah, the first is really noticing that level of happiness, like really noticing how virtue makes us happy. Because we kind of think that virtue is just gonna be a drag and sort of drudgery and this sort of joyless striving. But really noticing, Wow, that moment of happiness that I felt when I listened to that friend who was having a hard time and gave them empathy and they thanked me for understanding. Like just that warm glow, that feeling that we feel and just starting to notice it and sort of validating that, like I say, it goes against kind of the mainstream ideas about where happiness comes from, which is consumerism and all the things, but just noticing for ourselves.

I find for a lot of people who enter a spiritual path, at a certain point they kind of simplify because they realize they’re prioritizing more of that inner happiness rather than the happiness that comes from just being busy all the time, or doing all the things, or getting the latest devices. Often they just notice this natural simplification of kind of attending to where our happiness really comes from.

Then I think the joy is the litmus test. That’s what I love about Master Shantideva’s chapter on enthusiasm. Because he gives us a really easy four step process for maintaining that joyful effort. It’s called the four powers. The first one is aspiration. We have to want to engage in virtue, and that’s a problematic word. But if we think of it just in terms of those beneficial states of mind and actions that are motivated by those beneficial states of mind, we say, Oh, I want that. Then the steadfastness, which says, We don’t give up right away. We just persist in our efforts to benefit beings and so forth.

Then joy is the real litmus test. Like we have to take joy in those practices. If we’re losing our joy, then we rest. The last power is rest or relinquishment. It doesn’t mean giving up, but it means taking a break if we’ve lost our joy. I think that for me is how I’ve been able to keep going for decades.

You asked like, how does joy help me? I think it’s like when I lose my joy and I’m doing the things because I feel like I should and then I start to have this mind of resentment. Oh, I have to go help this person or have to go do this thing. I’m like, girl, just take a break. This is when Master Shantideva said, Do something to rest and get your joy back.

Doing it in a joyless way, it’s not really helpful to others at all, and we’re gonna burn out. That’s where that is losing our joy. Not feeling bad about taking a break when we need to, and using joy as the litmus test. I remember I was living in a retreat center, and I was much younger, so I could teach these 10-day retreats nearly back to back one after another. Like there’s no way I can consider that now. But I remember I’d had this kind of intense teaching period, maybe 15 years ago or so with a bunch of 10-day retreats over and over.

The day after the last retreat finished, I was exhausted and it was winter time and it was when the Harry Potter books were coming out and somebody had just given me the latest Harry Potter. I stayed in my pajamas in bed and read Harry Potter and drank tea all day. I was like, that was fine, I really needed to do that. Then the next day I was fine kind of get back into things, but I really realized in that moment I was exhausted. That’s what I needed to do is just give my mind a break and my body a break and just rest. If I kept pushing and said, No, no, my life is short, my precious human rebirth, like I have to keep pushing.

That’s why I think sometimes in our Buddhist communities we create a culture of pushing, which doesn’t really support people in their joy. I see this, I had a friend who recently was talking about, he had an offer to move to a Buddhist center, but he said, The culture there is nobody ever takes a break. The culture is, you’re benefiting beings, you have to do it 24/7.

I think sometimes in our Buddhist communities we create a culture of pushing, which doesn’t really support people in their joy.

He said, I’m older and I just can’t do that now. I said, I think you should go there and disrupt that culture, because it’s not really sustainable. Like we all want to be as beneficial as possible, often you can get into a culture if anybody takes a day off or anybody takes a break, really looked down on rather than supporting these four powers that Master Shantideva talks about including the power of rest.

I think we need to change our culture. Those of us that are involved in Buddhist community and really support people in what’s gonna keep them balanced. That’s what it’s about. Because otherwise you see people burnout or they go, I’m never gonna volunteer in another Buddhist center ever again. They just ask too much and judge me if I ever take time off. I think it’s a cultural shift that should happen.

Scott Snibbe: This might be actually the most important lesson for anybody listening to take away, because I, it seems to travel across even people who have been monks and nuns for 30-40 years, it affects everybody. Well, I wanted to mention two things. One is I, when I was working a long time ago in a company in Silicon Valley, and I would have a coffee, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes late morning.

I was just starting to become a Buddhist, and I started to just watch my mind like, when do I go to get a coffee? I was thinking, What’s in my mind when I go to get a coffee? I realized it was because I was trying to get myself to do something I didn’t want to do.

So then I decided, I think I’ll give up coffee and I’ll either not do the things I don’t wanna do (ideally), or take a break, so I started just taking a nap out in the sun. Venerable Renee, he says, if you do a one-week retreat, you need to take a one-week vacation also to go along with it.

Then the last thing I wanted to say is just I interview so many incredible people and a lot of them, I ask in some ways a kind of naive question that almost always gets the same answer. Because I say, Oh, it must be so wonderful to be a scientist studying contemplation or whatever. I almost always get the same answer, which is, it would be if I didn’t have so much of it. I know so many people who have their dream job, whether it’s in a corporation or an artist, a musician, in business, even in Buddhism—actually a number of the really successful Buddhist teachers who, I won’t name their names, it’s the same thing.

They’re like, oh my God, I’m so burnt out. So this may be the most important lesson, in the scriptures, in the ancient scriptures about how to be enthusiastic and get a lot of good things done is to take a break and relax like rest.

Examples of people who are enthusiastic

Tenzin Chogkyi: One of the things that might motivate people too is to realize how do you come across to somebody coming to the center. If you are so stressed and so maxed out, you don’t even have time to greet anyone or they see you running around snapping at people.

They’re gonna be like, If this is what Buddhism does, forget it. I had an experience recently, I went up to visit a friend who’s starting a monastic community outside of Portland. We had one day that we were visiting another friend of mine who lives up there and she told us about this Buddhist Druid retreat center.

The Buddhist and Druid decided to go in together on some land. So my friend and I are like, let’s go visit since we’re in the area. We went to visit and the monk, who was the main teacher and who’d founded the place in his eighties, he’d been ordained for 61 years in the Vietnamese Zen tradition, gave us a three-hour tour.

Whenever we stopped and there was a visitor there that he hadn’t met yet, he’d stopped and in this warm, friendly way, say, “Hi, how did you hear about us?” We stood in the middle of the gravel parking lot with three visitors and did a five minute meta meditation practice.

I guarantee you every single visitor to that place, including us—I want that, because he was spacious, he was warm, he had time, and I know he had 8 million things to do. He is basically running this big place single-handedly. He had such a vibe of spaciousness and welcome and warmth and it really struck me because, again, what kind of an example are we setting for people interested in Buddhism just by the energy we bring to an interaction, if we’re so busy and so maxed out that we can’t even stop and greet somebody in a friendly way?

Unfortunately, I think that’s often the case. So looking at that, looking at the impact, if we really wanna benefit beings, one of the hugest ways we can benefit is just by example and by people seeing us and wanting to emulate whatever it is that they see us manifesting. If it’s stress and overwhelm, then not very inspiring.

If we really wanna benefit beings, one of the hugest ways we can benefit is just by example and by people seeing us and wanting to emulate whatever it is that they see us manifesting.

Scott Snibbe: I think if each of us thinks about the people we most enjoy being with or having met, they’re like that. And they’re not all Buddhists too, obviously.

Tenzin Chogkyi: Totally.

Scott Snibbe: I’ll tell you, one of the best ones I know is actually my realtor. I’ve worked at the same realtor since 1996, in different times in our life when we moved. She’s just an extraordinary person who as soon as she comes in, it’s like she has unlimited time for you and it doesn’t even seem like she wants to help you sell or buy the house, but she’s just really interested in you. My wife would sometimes complain because it’s like sometimes like a three-hour meeting and we’re like two and a half is like just hanging out.

But it’s very nice and the crazy thing, she’s literally the most successful realtor in California. She’s like the Williams of California real estate. She literally is the very best realtor, sells the most houses. When you’re with her, she’s not answering her phone. She’s not text message, anything. Now, I will tell you, it can be very hard to get ahold of her sometimes because you’re trying to call her and she’s having a three hour hangout with somebody else.

Tenzin Chogkyi: I was just thinking about my doctor. They’re only meant to see you for 15 minutes. Mine comes in, has this huge check in just about how I’m doing as a human, and I’m like, who cares about her medical advice? Which is also brilliant, but I’ll never leave her because she like relates to me as a human and has this spacious attitude of making me feel that being with me is the most important thing in that moment. I think it’s that too. It’s not surprising this person is so successful.

Maya Angelou or somebody like that said, it’s not what you tell people, it’s how you make them feel. I think a lot of our impact on people isn’t, I think that as a Buddhist teacher, it’s somebody doesn’t remember the details of the three of this and the 10 of that, but they remember how they feel, so I’m trying to kind of create that presence of warmth and spaciousness. Because then it makes them feel better and validated. Not so much about the detail of what they get from my teaching.

Equanimity and joy

Scott Snibbe: I had this conversation with my family last night because my daughter was asking, she said, Why is the United States falling in the happiness this scale? Because she reads like, this kid’s magazine The Week Junior. Every year she says she sees America falling. My wife and I tried to share our theories, and one of them I said is because people are, we have so much wealth. We’re like the wealthiest country, but we’re also the most, the busiest. We just consume more and work more and we need to relax and don’t take it.

We just consume more and work more and we need to relax and don’t take it.

Tenzin Chogkyi: This guy from Brazil, I remember the first time he came, he was coming every year to study with his Zen master and the first year he came, I’m kind of touring him around and he’s seeing all the unhoused people on the street and I felt like every sentence during his first tour was like, can you please explain? Because I don’t understand.

He was seeing these people and he’s like, wait, I don’t understand, like the richest country. How are there all these people, two blocks away from the McMansions with the security fences and all of that. For him coming from Brazil, where there are a lot of poor people and, there isn’t those disparities the way there is here, and he just didn’t understand at all how both things can be possible within a five block radius of each other.

Scott Snibbe: In myy art studio, I still spend about 25% of my time making art. And my art studio is in a part of town that there’s hundreds of homeless people or unhoused people as you’d say. And there’s also right across from our studio is a sports car restoration company. So there’s literally like a hundred million dollars of car, like 10 cars, and they’re all, it’s worth like a hundred million dollars total right there.

I see this guy every day. It’s this contrast. I saw this guy picking up his car, backing up his Ferrari into the street. And then this homeless guy lives right across the street, comes over and he says, Hey, hey, I wanna tell you something. The guy in his car, he doesn’t drive, he doesn’t like rush away in his Ferrari. He actually looks off, he’s like, Yeah, what? The homeless unhoused person, he says, You are a lucky man. The guy was like, Thanks, and then he drove away. I thought at least he might have given him 20 bucks or something.

Tenzin Chogkyi: A book years and years ago, called The Spirit Level, was about how the countries that did the worst on all of these, data points like child mortality and rates of incarceration and rates of drug addiction ones that had the most income inequality. That was like predictor for teen pregnancy, all of these things, like 15 different things. Then they showed chart after chart after chart that correlated exactly income inequality with these other demographic markers of unhappiness basically. To answer her question, to answer your daughter’s question, it’s the inequality that gives rise to it.

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, there was a great article in the New York Times about Finland, this woman who went to Finland in the winter try to understand why is Finland the happiest country? She went in the winter when it’s dark, 24 hours a day. What she found was kind of what you said, there aren’t the extremes, the people who don’t have homes they’re hanging out in the library and sleeping there, but it’s more like comfortable and people aren’t as uncomfortable with it.

People basically just lived, had simple, happy lives. The library was beautiful and people would do like dancing and exercise and just enjoy each other’s company they had just kind of a simpler expectations for what makes you happy, which is actually the real, the actual things that make you happy are just being present with other people.

Tenzin Chogkyi: That’s right. And lowering the expectations of material riches, making us happy because so much data shows that that’s not true at all. After a certain point, after your basic needs have been met, study after study shows up to about $50,000 of income for the average American, there is a correlation between happiness and income, but we don’t need that excess. What we really are lacking is connection and and making our life meaningful. Those are the two main things that keep coming out in study after study, is the real causes of happiness.

What we really are lacking is connection and and making our life meaningful.

Scott Snibbe: It’s two simple takeaways though. Give people your attention, including yourself. Take a break. I guess it’s three things. Take a break. Give people your attention, including yourself, and do kind things for others, however small. These go a long way towards genuine enthusiasm.

Joy through giving back

Tenzin Chogkyi: I find a variety of things that serve others and experiment works for you. Because a lot of times I’ll have students and they’ll say, Oh, what’s the best thing to do to benefit? Is it people experiencing homelessness, people experiencing incarceration? Is it hospice? Is it children?

I go, Figure out what really, you have a passion for, and then do that thing. It needs to match what your interests are and what your talents are. Then it’ll be sustainable and then it’ll give you joy. Don’t feel like you should do the thing. Because there that’s the most need to do that thing.

There was a civil rights activist and minister called Howard Thurman, and he said don’t ask what the world needs, ask what you need to come alive. Because what the world needs is people who’ve come alive. So I think that’s a recipe for joy too, is getting over thinking that there’s a one size fits all version or the most important thing to do.

What the world needs is people who’ve come alive.

I learned a phrase from somebody recently on an interfaith panel and she kept talking about one size fits one. So there’s the one size that fits us for what makes us come alive. Paying attention to our joy, using that is the litmus test for what we should be engaged in and experimenting around until we find the one thing or the many things.

One of the things that I’ve experimented with recently is in addition to teaching, which I hope benefits beings, that’s certainly my aspiration. I say the things, but it’s kind of hard to see the benefit in the short term. So I’ve started also volunteering at this food pantry because there’s something so satisfying about putting the potatoes and onions and cabbage in a bag that’s gonna be able to use that night to make dinner for their family. It’s like the short-term benefit and the long-term.

For me, kind of mixing it up and just paying attention is I just went yesterday for three hours and we were really short staffed and I was exhausted after my three hour shift to putting the potatoes in the bed. But it felt great too, like my kind of limp out of there and it’s like, oh, I really need lunch now. But it felt so good in that eudamonic way of like, Oh, genuinely I did something that feels, benefiting people even in the short-term.

Because I think sometimes as Buddhist students, we overlook short-term benefit for the long-term. We think, Oh, it’s only about getting people enlightened. That’s the only benefit. And then we overlook the ways that we can make people, help people suffer less in the short-term while we’re working for their ultimate enlightenment. I think that’s something I’ve noticed too, is not to overlook those other ways. Because they also give us a boost and make us feel like we’re really benefiting in the moment as much as our aspirations are for the long term benefit as well.

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, sometimes I think maybe I’m missing something, in our strain, you’re often not even thinking about this life. You’re like, okay, well need to get enlightened in a few more lifetimes, and then I’ll be able to help people. I’m not down with that. I just can’t get on board. Like, there’s 7 billion people and they’re right outside the door.

When I was younger, I remember like on a weekend, you work really hard and then you’re on the weekends. Sometimes there’s this kind of despondency, I feel just like, Oh gosh, what am I doing? What’s the point? What I started to do with something like you is when I really kind of feel down like that, I would go and I’ll buy a chicken, I’d buy a roast chicken, and I’d go find somebody without a home on the street and just give it to them. I was vegetarian. I was vegetarian too, but it seemed like the right thing to give like, Oh, this is nutritious and healthy like a roast chicken. I think people would like that.

I would feel better. I would, after, it would take like an hour to do that and then I’d then I’d be like, Oh, okay. At least I did like one nice thing, help someone eat a healthy meal who couldn’t afford it.

Can we be happy if the Buddha said that life is suffering?

Tenzin Chogkyi: Yeah, I think to do all the levels and I think it’s also a misunderstanding. I know that I had, when I first started studying Buddhism. There’s kind of a mistranslation often of the first noble truth. The Buddhist said, life is suffering. So it makes us suspect of any momentary happiness we have and we think, Oh, it felt good, but I guess it must not have been. What the Buddha really said was, as long as we’re subject to karma and delusions, there’s the potential for suffering.

As long as we’re subject to karma and delusions, there’s the potential for suffering.

But it doesn’t mean to second guess those moments of connection that we have those of feeling good when we serve others: laughing with a friend, connecting with someone, enjoying nature. I think sometimes we go overboard and we won’t even allow ourselves those small pleasures because we think, well, not only is it a waste of time, but it isn’t really happiness, because the Buddhist said life is suffering.

Overcoming that wrong view, which helps us relax—if rest to us means hanging out with friends and just laughing and connecting, or rest for us looks like taking a walk in nature. And then if we’re suspicious of those activities, because we think they’re really in the nature of suffering, because there’s nothing in life that’s happiness at all. Oh my gosh. Then we’re just gonna tie ourself up in knots, not be able to get any balance at all. Yes, the Buddhist said, walking in nature is not the cause of ultimate lasting happiness, only liberation from samsara.

Okay? But it doesn’t mean in that moment it doesn’t feel good or paying attention, or I love going—in Santa Cruz, there’s this beautiful arboretum and I love a break and just going for a walk in the arboretum and looking at all of the beautiful blooming flowers and just kind of being offline for an hour and enjoying nature. There’s nothing about that that’s not temporary leading happiness and it’s good enough.

Scott Snibbe: One of my favorite quotes from this chapter, the Shantideva chapter on enthusiasm, is that for a person practicing enthusiasm proceeds in life from joy to joy.

Tenzin Chogkyi: Isn’t that beautiful?

Scott Snibbe: I think about that all the time, and it’s really, it’s a very good archetype and model for your life. That’s how it should feel if you’re doing these practices right.

Tenzin Chogkyi: Yeah, I love, there’s one verse where he says, when we’re engaging in virtue, we should do it with the same enthusiasm as a elephant on a really hot day plunging into a cold pool. You imagine you’re just as into it like, Oh, I get to go to the food bank and pack potatoes in bags. Yes. Just like an elephant plunging into a cold pool. I love that. But it’s that balance. And if we’re coming from that striving, pushing kind of attitude or trying to make ourselves into someone different.

When we’re engaging in virtue, we should do it with the same enthusiasm as a elephant on a really hot day plunging into a cold pool.

To get back to the last topic we talked about, self-compassion, like just having some self-kindness and self-compassion is what we need for balancing our practice and making it sustainable is if we’re always trying to push to make ourselves somebody different than who we are because we don’t like ourselves. Like what’s behind a lot of it too. I think a lot of that really striving, pushing practice. I know it was, in my case, I feel like I’m a survivor of all the things that I’m warning against.

The first decade at least of my Dharma practice, I had to learn the hard way and luckily I was able to bring some mindfulness to these things and kind of reframe as I think I was really subject to all of the things that I’m talking about.

How do you stay optimistic?

Scott Snibbe: I wanna ask you, do things still get hard for you? Do you have moments when it’s still hard to practice, to keep stay enthusiastic? To stay optimistic? Is it hard for you? And if it is, what do you, what do you do to bring back that enthusiasm?

Tenzin Chogkyi: Yeah, that’s such a great question, and the answer is definitely yes. I think what I’ve learned over the is just some habits, of course correction that come in a little bit sooner, like when I feel like I sort of lose my weight in the beginning. I didn’t really know what to do, and now at least I’ve got like the go-to kind of course corrections.

Like I’m feeling discouraged, I need connection, deep connection with people to have a conversation about meaningful things, and then I’m gonna feel inspired. Or I’m feeling kind of overwhelmed by the news, which happens a lot, and feeling despair. I think I kind of know some things to do to get my hopefulness back and to reconnect with hope and joy.

Not that I go through life 24/7 joyful and inspired all the time, but I think it’s just like through trial and error. I figured out what to do to course-correct. So it comes to mind a little bit more quickly when I’m aware that I feel really out of balance. And affirming the need to go for a walk or connect with friends and do the things that may not feel so meaningful in the moment that they’re benefiting all beings, but it’s that connection and rest that I need to be able to kind of go back and teach a class.

Also, realizing rest is not necessarily just sleeping or lying around and reading a novel. It’s something I’m doing to resource myself, which could mean going to a movie or taking a walk or something. Broadening the idea of rest into more of what a lot of people call resourcing, like what will resource my energy? A lot of times that is going out and doing something that’s different. So maybe instead of necessarily rest, which means like lying in bed and reading Harry Potter, sometimes that’s necessary, but sometimes it is just taking a break for connection or taking a break for nature or taking a break for entertainment doing something. So kind of broadening that too.

Realizing how resourcing connection is for me, because sometimes I think I can’t have one more conversation. But then if I have a meaningful conversation with a good friend, wow, what a boost that is. Sometimes I’m like, I just can’t do one more thing. Then realizing, half an hour of connection with someone that loves me and really sees me and gives me empathy, and we’re talking about something meaningful. Wow. Incredible. What a boost that is. Not short changing even those moments in terms of resourcing to kind of keep going.

Scott Snibbe: You’re reminding me why I keep doing this podcast because the things you mentioned also really recharge me. Especially a deep, meaningful conversation. It’s surprisingly difficult to have such conversations in our culture today, because we’re busy, because conversations tend to be shallow and interrupted.

That’s what this conversation like we’re having right now, at least does for me. Because the effort is very high running this podcast: it’s time-consuming. It’s a lot of work. It’s expensive. But this is what makes it worthwhile is that it’s restorative, it’s connecting, and then it echoes. It seems to echo out for the people who listen to have a similar benefit.

Tenzin Chogkyi: Sometimes we need to kind of meaningful connections like, I was looking forward to this morning because right after we talk, I’m actually meeting with a couple of people that I’ve been working with off and on for a couple of years who run a local organization that deals with the issue of homelessness in Santa Cruz, which is such a big issue. We did an an event in March that we followed with what we called a 30-day Compassion Challenge. I kind of designed this 30-Day Compassion Challenge to follow this big event. Because I said, people come to an event and they hear a bunch of speakers and they’re really inspired. But it would be so great to have them carry the idea of compassion through.

So we did a compassion challenge and then we decided the people that organized the event, we wanna meet every month. So we’re starting a monthly meeting. We’re calling it Compassion and Chai to just keep the conversation going what can we do in our community to uplift the virtue of compassion. And that kind of thing that seems energizing to me and the most meaningful is to get together with like-minded people to talk about how you can continue this work.

So for people listening to this, think about ways that you can do that. If you feel like, oh, my conversations are kind of shallow and not more meaningful, and we talk about like what was on TV last night, or what the news or whatever, sometimes you need to engineer ways to make those connections deeper, and especially kind of on shared core values because that is the thing that’s the most energizing and really keeps us balanced in our work of benefiting others and enacting virtue and yeah, virtue. To circle back to what you said before, Scott, virtue and ethics, they kind of have this taint of fundamentalism those words. ’cause if we think about ethics being based on non harming.

That’s actually thinking about this today before talking to you too. I was thinking about, I think it was back in the eighties, there was a movement called The Moral Majority. It was this fundamentalist movement against gay marriage and all of these things. And then there was another group called Immoral Minority. Most of my friends were part of, reclaim the idea of ethics. That it doesn’t mean oppression and fundamentalism, that it really is about the ethics of non harming and compassion and love and care for all beings. It doesn’t have to have this taint of oppression that it has sometimes gotten in our culture.

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, I really think so. There’s something, there’s something where people do sort of enjoy being naughty, you know, “partying” in our culture. Have you watched The White Lotus at all? The show, the guy who who runs the show is the Tibetan Buddhist and it’s almost the most Buddhist show I’ve ever seen because it really captures what we call, like the suffering of change.

When people are in particular partying, I’ve never quite seen in a television show or movie I. Clearly showing people trying so hard to have a good time, like drugs and sex and everything. Capturing that the way that even as you think you’re doing this thing that’s supposed to be enjoying, you’re absolutely miserable through the whole thing. To find joy in nonviolence, caring for others, kindness .

Tenzin Chogkyi: Something you said earlier too, made me think of often there’ll be this question, when I do the compassion training, how can we have compassion for people who do harmful things or unethical things? To me it’s so easy because they really think it’s the cause of happiness and they’re so confused about why it’s not.

Just that despair and confusion that comes from, wait, this is what everyone told me is the cause of happiness and it doesn’t work even when they’re harming others. Well, not to condone the harm, but how awful would that be to not have any idea about the true causes of happiness, which is care and kindness and caring for others and so forth, not partying and you know, just harming others and becoming rich in all of this. To me think it’s like, that almost the tugs at my heart strings the most, is people who think they’re doing all the right things that should give them happiness and it’s not working at all.

The unhoused person, at least they know why they’re not happy. But like the rich person who’s sitting there in their mansion, miserable, right? They have no idea why not? Because they thought they’ve done everything according to the American dream, so why isn’t it working? So that to me is very sad.

Scott Snibbe: Very sad. Well, you’ve agreed to lead a meditation on this topic. We’ll air it in the episode following this one, but do you wanna say anything about what that is before we say goodbye?

Tenzin Chogkyi: Yeah, so there’s a beautiful meditation that I learned from an insight teacher called Spring Washam. And she led a meditation on Joy at one point. So I’d like to lead that for the group.

I’d also like to close out if I could, with a quote that I love about Joy. This is from Maria Papova, who’s a writer and interviewer. She does this weekly e-news called The Marginalian, which I often will kind of lift things from for different classes that I teach. Because I find her to be a really subtle beautiful teacher and thinker.

And so there’s one quote that I pulled out a while ago from one of her writings about joy, and she says, “Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first, consciously effortfully, against the weight of a world heavy with reason for sorrow, with need for action. Heal the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all until it becomes mindless, automated like gravity pulling the stream down its course until it becomes an inner law of nature. Joy is not a function of a life free of fiction and frustration, but a function of focus, inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice.”

Scott Snibbe: Beautiful way to end our conversation. Thank you. Well, may our conversation help people find very intelligent, wise ways of being enthusiastic and joyful in their lives. Thank you, Tenzin Chogkyi.

Tenzin Chogkyi: Thanks so much, Scott. I feel very joyful that we had this conversation .

Scott Snibbe: Likewise, likewise.

Tenzin Chogkyi: Thank you.

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