Responsible Happiness
January 25, 2024

As you focus on the breath, try to find what kind of breathing feels good right now. You can experiment for a bit. Try long breathing; see how the body feels. See how the mind reacts. Then try shorter breathing—heavier, lighter; deeper, more shallow, fast or slow. When you’ve got a rhythm that feels good, stick with it until it no longer feels good, and then you can change again—because the needs of the body will change. If you want the breath to be really gratifying, you have to be on top of what the body really needs, each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. This means you have to be alert and mindful, remembering not to go anywhere else—and being alert to what actually is happening right now, particularly about what you’re doing and what the results are right now.

Then you have to be earnest in doing this well. This is a happiness that can get very intense sometimes, a pleasure that can feel really good deep, down inside. When we think of the breath, it’s not just the air coming in and out through the lungs. It’s the movement of energy throughout the body that allows the air to come in and go out—and allows the body to move. That energy goes down through all your blood arteries, all your veins, all your nerves. So try to be aware of the whole body as you breathe in, the whole body as you breathe out. And see what feels good in that context.

We’re searching for a responsible happiness here. Responsible in the sense that, one, it doesn’t harm anybody else. The happiness of the world dependent on gain, material gain, status or fame, praise, sensual pleasures often creates divisions, because if you gain something, other people have to lose it. If you gain some status, other people lose that status. So on down the line.

But with a happiness that comes from within, you don’t have to take anything away from anyone else at all. It’s entirely an inward happiness.

At the same time, you’re developing good qualities in the mind. You have to be alert. You have to be ardent. You have to be mindful. You have to be discerning as to what’s going on if you want to do this well.

As the Buddha said, you want to train the mind so that it’s not overcome by pain and not overcome by pleasure. And one of the ways of doing that is to get the mind established in the breath like this with a sense of well-being. If you start focusing on the pleasure instead of the breath, you begin to blur out. So you have to train yourself here: The pleasure is going to be there, but you’re not going to make that something you wallow in. You remember you have work to do. That’s one way of making sure you don’t get overcome by pleasure.

As for being overcome by pain, you realize that even though there may be pains in different parts of the body, you can make the breath comfortable in other parts and gain strength from those other parts. Sometimes you can breathe through the pain itself, and it’ll be relieved or lessened. These are good skills to have.

So it’s not just that you’re finding a harmless happiness but you’re also finding one that’s good for the mind, strengthens the mind. So many of the pleasures of the world make us weak. We depend on things being just this way, just that way. And if anything threatens them, we get upset, get fearful, and sometimes can do some very unskillful things.

But happiness that comes from within is safe. It’s totally yours, and you’re becoming a better person for it. So it’s good all around.