Be Friend You

Who doesn't want to be happy? With an insatiable thirst, we continuously seek it. Happiness, like all feelings (and phenomena) is fleeting. And because we want a more constant dose of it, we either think about we need to do or, what needs to happen in order to achieve it. We sometimes even try to recreate the causes that had led to it prior. This does not always have the desired result. Consider a roller coaster ride you might have loved ridden again on a full stomach.

         There is an unsatisfactoriness to searching for happiness because implicit in that is thinking the time/place to be happy is anytime/where but now/here. Thinking as I sometimes do, "I'll be happy after winter." Or, as I often do, "I'll be happier if I get two scoops of pralines  'n' cream on a wafer cone." Or, conversely, “I’ll be happier if I loose ten pounds.”
         Happiness; I'm  so hardwired to reach for it and to grab on tight. But a lot of times being truly happy means unclenching, letting go - of expectation, of attachment, of "what should be." This is a tough concept to grasp (most things so easy!) and takes a lot of unlearning. And unlearning takes training.
      "Training the mind,” my teacher Ethan Nichtern says, "is like training a muscle." It takes effort, dedication and a sense of humor. Developing "maitri," or " loving kindness" toward yourself and others means learning to be okay with what I think of as the this-ness of now. With the you that you are. With the life that you live. With things as they are. Now. It is moment to moment training in a sense of okay-ness already.
    Pema Chodron says about "maitri" in "Awakening Loving-Kindness," that it "doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still  be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already."
        Ourselves, that's who we friend first when we practice "maitri.” As we practice, we become curious about why what makes us happy makes us happy? And for how long does it stay? We open our hearts to seeing our selves clearer, imperfections and intelligences alike. For that, says Sharon Salzburg, author of "Real Happiness The Power of Meditation", "is the gateway to loving others,"  the source of Real Happiness.