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What does it take to maintain joy through difficult times?

I wish I had the billions that Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Fox News, and yes—even The New York Times—spend to pull your attention away from what’s essential in life. But all I have are my own voice, brilliant and accomplished teachers, and a podcast, website, and YouTube channel trying to spread the message of how to stay constructively engaged with the world, make it better in all the ways each of us can—and remain joyful in the process.

This week’s How to Train a Happy Mind podcast episode is a meditation on joy by the beloved Tenzin Chogkyi. Following up on her interview from a couple of weeks ago, she leads a meditation on how to stay joyful and engaged—not ignoring the world’s problems, but being wise in how we condition our minds to avoid burnout and despair.

Joy is considered one of Mahayana Buddhism’s most treasured “perfections,” right beside love and compassion. Tenzin reminded me of the four powerful steps we learn in Tibetan Buddhism to cultivate and maintain joy every day:

1. Aspiration—not craving or desire, which can be agitating, but the aspiration to achieve the greatest things we can in life, to heal those in pain, to wisely choose thoughts and actions that nurture our own and others’ genuine happiness, and to build a better world.
2. Steadfastness—remaining firmly committed to holding joy through our actions of constructive change, even when it’s hard.
3. Joy itself! Enjoy it, bask in it, take strength from it. Life is beautiful. Maintaining joy can be hard—and hard things are worthwhile, even fun, when you see them that way. What in your life that was worthwhile was easy?
4. Rest—perhaps the most important step. It’s critical to recharge. Whether that means an hour-long nap in the middle of the day, a weekend in the wilderness, a cozy day reading a good book, or a night out dancing with friends, do what you need to recharge and show up with joy for those around you.

Tenzin Chogkyi: I’d love to guide you in a practice that will explore how to access our joy. I’ll invite you first to get into a comfortable posture with your back straight and your shoulders. Even if you’re sitting up in a chair, have your feet planted on the floor so you don’t have to keep adjusting your balance.

If you’re sitting down on a cushion, your legs cross comfortably. Your hands can be resting on your lap or your hands on your knees, and your tongue resting on the roof of your mouth, right behind your front teeth. This keeps you from having to swallow constantly.

After settling into your posture, just taking a moment to sweep your attention through your body. Starting at the crown of the head, just checking for any tightness or tension in your body, deliberately releasing or relaxing. If we have tight tightness in our neck and shoulders, just relax. Tightness in our belly, relax the belly, relax the buttocks.

Breathwork

Then let’s round off this initial settling of the body with three deep diaphragmatic breaths. Breathing all the way down to the diaphragm.

I’ll be guiding you with some prompts, but before we start with the prompts, settling with the sensations of the breath for a few moments to get yourself here in your room, in your body, in the present moment.

Just using the sensations of the breath is the anchor for a few moments to get yourself into the present moment.

What brings you joy?

Right now, in this very moment, I want you to think about an area of your life that brings you joy. It could be something really simple. It could be walking your dog or playing with your cat, or sitting in your backyard, or gardening or dance, walking in nature. Just find the thing.

There’s always one thing that’s going right that brings you happiness. Even if you don’t get to do it very often. That might be love or connection or play, or a sense of wonder, something that brings you joy. As we begin to think about this joy, I want you to feel yourself at that moment.

Draw from your memory, feeling the peace, the opening, because joy is a quality, it’s an open state of mind. We’re opening to joy. We’re open to love and magic.

Imagine that you’re there, remembering that moment when you’re in that joyful moment, and come into a real meditative state that you invoke through memory. Feel how it feels in your body. Feel how it feels in your mind, that openness, that peace.

As you think about this, I invite you to repeat these phrases silently to yourself. May my joy and my happiness increase, feeling a really sincere wish that that joy that we’ve in invoked increase, that it deepen. May my joy and my happiness increase.

As you think about this experience or this aspect of your life think, May my joy and happiness increase in realizing we can be joyful. Even in the midst of awareness of suffering, even in the turmoil around us, there’s a chance that we can still tap in to joy. It’s not being disloyal of our awareness of what’s going on. It will help sustain us. May my joy and my happiness increase.

Then thinking about the definition of enthusiasm. The perfection of enthusiasm, which is taking joy and virtue. Now I invite you to think about some aspect of your spiritual paths. That could be practice, that could be going on retreats. It could be serving others in all the ways that we do that through generosity, through practicing patience, through nonharming, through the qualities of care and love and compassion.

Think about the aspects of your spiritual path that give you joy, that bring you delight, and when you think about aspects of your spiritual path, also feeling into that feeling. This might be more of a quality of that eudaimonia, that deep sense of wellbeing. That calmer feeling of joy, the joy that comes from a life well lived, a life that’s meaningful, a life in accordance with our core values.

Really feeling into that and as you get a felt sense of that enthusiasm, that joy and virtue repeating again to yourself, May my joy and virtue increase. May my enthusiasm for my spiritual path increase.

Empathetic joy

Now I’d like to guide you in another aspect. Another way of expanding our joy, is this is through empathetic joy, one of the Four Immeasurables that really relates to this quality of enthusiasm that we can have joy when others are having joy also. Resourcing to us a way of really supporting our own practice.

I invite you to think about someone that you know in your life who’s having some great experience right now. Bring this person to mind. Maybe they called you and said, Oh, all these great things are happening to me. I’m so happy. Or you saw them and they look joyful. You’re having some great success or some happiness.

Bring this person to mind. We say that this quality is the antidote to jealousy and envy. You bring this person to mind, try to generate a real sense of resonating with their own joy and think, May your joy and happiness increase or I’m happy for your happiness, may it continue. But just challenging that mode of the stinginess and constriction we might feel in the face of another’s happiness.

Allow yourself to resonate with their happiness. Realizing how resourcing it can also be for you. May your joy and happiness increase. We often have an idea that it’s a zero-sum game. There’s not enough joy to go around, but joy is infinite. Happiness is infinite. There’s no end. You keep thinking about this person sending them these loving thoughts. May your joy and happiness increase.

In the final step of the meditation in our Buddhist practice, we’re also encouraged to find joy our own virtue. The empathetic joy also extends to us. Take a moment to reflect about the goodness in yourself. Those acts of kindness, the acts of compassion, the care, whether it’s the thoughts, the actions, or the aspirations to be a kinder person, even if you feel that you fall short of your goals, but you’re trying.

If you’re doing this meditation, it means you’re on the path, and you’re trying to transform. Often we shortchange our own efforts. But really think of your own goodness, your own aspirations, the actions you do to benefit others, and take delight. Think of the goodness you’re bringing to the world.

May my own goodness increase. May I continue to acknowledge and take delight in my goodness.

Remembering as we bring this meditation to a close that joy is infinite. There’s enough for everybody. May your joy and your happiness continue to grow.

Expand and may it resource you and energize you in your spiritual path, enable you to continue practicing the path and bring you benefit infinite beings. Now we’ll bring the meditation to a close. Take a moment to gently relax your posture and open your eyes and come out of meditation.

Thank you.

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