Joy in Anicca
"The great thing about JOY is not that it lasts, but that it always comes around again." --The Universe As I have mentioned, I struggled this time at the ten-day silent meditation retreat I went on last month. One of the things I struggled with, ironically, was the lack of JOY I felt in the discipline and austerity of the program this time. Normally I am very comfortable with this kind of environment. Discipline. Austerity. To-the-minute timekeeping. These are things at which most mid-western-raised adults excel. Not this time. This time I was hungry for joy, for freedom, even a little bit of excess. I knew this flew in the face of the idea of anicca , or impermanence. The whole point of this meditation is to learn not to crave positive feelings and sensations, as well as not to have aversion to negative feelings and sensations, because both have the inherent quality of impermanence, but I couldn't help it. I wanted to feel some JOY. So on my daily post-lunch ...