Helga’s Heartlines: A Journal

July, 1st, 2001

Toronto, Ontario


Joy is my recommended ‘Life Prescription’, my favorite recipe for Existence. I know what you’re thinking: “How can I focus on joy when there is so much pain and suffering in living?” It’s a valid question. Believe me, I’m as aware of this fact as any one. I have hardly found ultimate fulfillment, myself, or reached my desired destination in the earthly pursuit of happiness. I have a compulsion for joy in spite of life’s obvious distress--Maybe, I’m simply defiant in the face of it.

Yes, it’s true - Pain makes itself apparent. It is most insistent. There’s no way to avoid our daily dose of it, if only a minimal one. We experience it every time we must deal with someone or something disagreeable or frustrating or (life) threatening – even when we are innocent of inviting it. Pain is a lifetime companion to us in little as well as monumental moments. It demands its share of attention.

No, I submit, MORE than its fair share! It wants to rob us, cheat us of our love of life! It wants to convince us “life is a veil of tears” and not much more. Well, we may have to give it due attention, but we absolutely must get beyond it. We must stretch ourselves and our consciousness in the same way that grass forces its way through the cracks and fissures in rock and hardened concrete. The life force within us - and apparent without, in all living things, as evidenced in that tenacious, persistent, wild, grass - is the greatest truth of all and our saving grace.

Thus, I say, the antidote for pain is joy. Half-measures will not do. Indeed, it is not enough merely to be content with reconciling ourselves to the requirements of anguish; it is not enough merely to go along with learning to look back at pain without blinking and making accommodation. If life is filled with grief and sadness, we mustn’t overlook that it also abounds with excuses aplenty for rapture and gladness. These gifts are as surely presented to us on a daily basis as those other unwelcome intrusions, but we seem to be in need of wider perception and greater awareness to appreciate the precious aspects of what is also obviously right in front of us:

~ Enigma ~

Starving for fragrance on the lilied hills,
Hungry for color in a bower of rose,
Grieving for beauty amid daffodils,
Man – the enigma – goes.

He covers his head from suns and grieves at cold;
He walks by silver rivers and has thirst.
When youth is for his asking he grows old:
Man – by himself accurst.

Lord of the overwhelming loveliness,
Of the flung sunlight and the zoning shade!
Forgive us in these prisons of distress
Whose bars ourselves have made.

~ Wilson MacDonald ~ Canadian (1880-1967)

Hang on for dear life to that which is positive – This is life’s imperative! Our survival depends on it. Terrence des Pres wrote in The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps:

“The survivor survived because he had a capacity for life...he found life good. He lived from moment to moment in a state of elemental struggle, focusing upon whatever infinitesimally small item of existence was before him: a helping hand when someone fell...a morning fleck of sunlight upon a spear of grass, glimpsed...a minute’s rest at the side of the road. These were not fancy consolations, nor were they some sort of Survivors’ Zen...They were points of light in a long darkness.”

It seems to be true – imperative - that one needs to know suffering in order to experience joy. I was reminded recently of the intimate though dichotomous association between the two by an armchair writer/philosopher friend of mine. Here are his eloquent words regarding elemental joy, since it is appropriate to cite some dramatic examples in support:

“Joy is an extreme form of pleasure; the best example is the feelings of joy during a sexual climax, after a long absence away from a lover. Another example would be a fine meal given to a starving person; or a large amount of cash given to a person in poverty, or what the ugly guy feels when he gets the beautiful girl.

Joy is the welcome rain after a long drought, the sudden abundance of a long hoped for event after a long period of feeling deprived. Not just any event, but an event that is rewarded by evolution because your body believes you are promoting the survival of your genes when you have good sex and when you help your children.

In the meantime, 'joy' is a huge payment of pleasure that your body gives you as a reward for huge increases in your life-chances. Examples of huge increases in your life-chances: winning the lottery; finding an excellent meal and a warm bed after being lost and starving in the wilderness; or realizing, suddenly, that you will be rewarded with eternal life after death.”

Yes, my philosopher friend, it is apparent, then, that pure, undiluted elemental joy is spontaneously and profoundly felt, arises effortlessly in proportion to the degree of compensation realized for deprivation or absence of that which is wished for.

However, to experience it in relation to less sensational circumstances seems to be much more difficult. It requires real effort. Even, knowing this, some of us sometimes look for an easier way. Joy’s reach seems to exceed our grasp, so we seek artificial stimulation or chemical crutches as the solution to try to seize it. But drugs, alcohol, and sexual excess do not satisfy, do not last, but only serve to increase our appetite. We are left with our gnawing hunger.

Well, then, doesn’t it look like we need to tighten our grip and build up our under-used psychological muscle? Joy, that next higher step in the level of our qualitative existence is hard work. “Latent in man are both noble characteristics as well as vicious tendencies. It is strange that the vices latent in man seem almost natural and spontaneous, whereas the dormant virtues have to be brought to the surface with great effort.” – “Mudita” – Eileen Siriwardhana.

Beyond pain - Joy seems to be associated with concentration and effort and spirit(uality):

'Ode to Joy': Ironically, Beethoven wrote his 9th Sympathy, his crowning achievement, The Ode to Joy, during one of the saddest periods of his life. In this decade his hearing loss was dramatic; he could no longer perform as a virtuoso pianist; he heard the chords and chorus only in his mind. In this decade, several of his closest friends and patrons died; he was practically on his own, alone. Increasingly, he turned to God, seeking spiritual solace from inside himself.

“At the final note of the premiere, the audience exploded with thunderous applause. But the composer, standing next to the conductor with his back to the crowd, looked straight ahead, hearing nothing. Fortunately, the solo contralto noticed Beethoven's disorientation, and turned him around so he could see and take a bow before the cheering crowd. Joy!" - Beethoven's ode to joy amid the silence” by Patrick Kavanaugh.

'Joy' perfume by Patou: Rose oil is the most desirable and most expensive oil in the world. It takes approximately 30 roses to make one drop of rose oil and 60,000 roses to make one ounce of rose oil. The exquisite fragrance of rose has been described as intoxicating and aphrodisiac-like. It has also been described as stimulating, and uplifting with the ability to create a sense of well-being.

'Psalm 100 A Psalm of Praise: Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. 2 Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing. 3 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise':

Beyond even these - I believe, and have observed, that the more finely attuned one is to discomfort – others, as much as one’s own - the more readily one encounters bliss. Then one needn’t experience trauma to pay proper attention; one is already sensitized, thus gratefully seizes onto the smallest sign of relief and imparts it freely to others.

Joy. The word for Joy in Sanskrit and Pali is mudita. Mudita is generally construed as being more than just simple pleasure in life, though. As the Bodhisattva Vow commits us to continual effort "until all are enlightened", Joy comes from the pleasure in seeing the success of others. For this reason, Mudita is often translated as "sympathetic joy", "empathetic joy", or appreciative, benevolent, or altruistic joy. Thich Nhat Hanh goes one step further, averring that "We rejoice when we see others happy, but we rejoice in our own well-being as well." We might interpolate and suggest that joy can indeed include happiness at our own good fortunes, but will be incomplete if we cannot be just as happy at seeing the success of others. In this way, we reaffirm our belief in the connectedness of all beings.
- buddhism.about.com - 11/08/98

This enlightened spiritual path may be the ultimate secret revealed, the magic formula, available to all souls seeking a fulfilled, happy existence. Rather than merely existing in fear or ennui, why not strive to live in Joy? Some might say, “Is not love more important”? I say, love, by all means, but, without the capacity to give and receive joy, also, one likely will make a botch of it.

So, here it is, encapsulated: My Life’s Recipe:

Joy.
Whenever I need it
I flee to it.
I actively seek it;
Absorb some of it for myself,
Then---
Pass it on;
I try---
Try---to share the feeling
with somebody else!


~ Helga Marion Ross ~

Copyright 2001