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Buddhist Happiness

    Transcribed from ShrinkRapRadio.com podcast
 
 Excerpt:  Happiness has quite a specific meaning.  It doesn’t necessarily mean “pleased.”  We often, I think, equate “pleased” with “happy.” Things are going my way.  I feel pleased, that’s good, I’m happy. 

This is the kind of happiness that means the mind and the heart engaged in a warm way with one’s self, with other people, with people we know, with people we don’t know...with the whole world, actually. And I would really – I do, in fact – define happiness as the ability to engage in warm relationship.
 
Introduction:  “Happiness as the ability to engage in warm relationship.”  So says my guest, Dr. Sylvia Boorstein.  Sylvia Boorstein, Ph.D, has been teaching meditation since 1985 and teaches both vipassana and metta meditation. 

She is a founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, California.  She is also a senior teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. 

She writes a regular column for Shambhala Sun and lectures widely.  She’s a psychotherapist, wife, mother, and grandmother who is particularly interested in seeing daily life as practice. 

Her latest book is Happiness Is an Inside Job:  Practicing for a Joyful Life.  Her previous books include It’s Easier than You Think; Don’t Just Do Something; Sit There; That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist; and Pay Attention, for Goodness’ Sake.  Now, here’s the interview.
 
Dr. Dave:     Dr. Sylvia Boorstein, welcome to Shrink Rap Radio.
 
Boorstein:  I’m happy to be here.
 
Dr. Dave:     Well, you’ve been teaching and writing about Buddhist meditation for more than 25 years, and you’re also a psychologist and a psychotherapist.  Were you a psychologist first, before you discovered meditation?
 
Boorstein:  I was, actually, and that’s an interesting part of the story, too.  I began to be a psychotherapist, I guess, in my early thirties.  I think I was 31 when I got my first job after graduate school, and I was 41 when I went on my first Buddhist meditation retreat. 

And one whole other area of exploration – if you want to go that way – that people often ask me, is, did my psychotherapy change as a result of my meditation practice, and if so, how?
 
Dr. Dave:     Well, you’re anticipating a question I have in front of me, but I’d wanted to cover a couple of other things first.  So you were a psychologist first, and actually, you and I spoke offline just a little bit ago.  And you told me that originally, you were a licensed clinical social worker, and then you went on to get a Ph.D in psychology.

Boorstein:  I did, and in fact, I went to social work school because in a surprise turn of my life, because my undergraduate degree is in chemistry and mathematics.  

Dr. Dave:     Oh, my goodness.
 
Boorstein:  That’s really...  And the way I got there, is, I got my degree in chemistry and mathematics.  I was married when I graduated from college.  I had a child soon after that, and then three more children in the next five years.  And during those five years, my husband had finished medical school and he had his psychiatric residency. 

And I got very interested in the kinds of things that he was studying that were no part of my undergraduate experience.  I had very little background in psychology.  So that was one part of how my interest in working with the mind and levels of happiness, clarity, came about. 

And the other part, which is probably more to the point, is that after the birth of my fourth child, I really had a difficult time psychologically myself.  It was a hard time.  I had four young children; my mother had died not long before. 

I was, at that point, 25 years old.  It was a hard time, and that was my first experience with looking for psychotherapy for myself.  And it was so helpful to me that I really wanted to do that and be helpful to other people.
 
Dr. Dave:     Okay.  So then moving down the timeline a bit, tell us about how you first got involved with meditation and what attracted you to it.
 
Boorstein:  Well, again, it was a serendipitous meeting of where I was in my life and the outside times.  I became interested in meditation in the 1970s, when meditation had become really popular in the United States for the first time.

People who are old enough will remember that the first major interest in meditation was interest in TM. And that came about because the Beatles had studied with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and introduced TM. 

And it was introduced into the larger culture as being good for your health, and good for your blood pressure, good for your nerves.  And so large numbers of people were interested in becoming initiated into the practice of meditation, specifically into TM. 

And soon after that, I think that interest broadened into other kinds of meditation, and there was a proliferation of meditation practices that were available.  I used to joke about the fact that my husband, who was, in some ways, far more of a spiritual adventurer than I was, would go off – it seemed to me – every weekend, to get initiated into some other new contemplative form, and often came home and said, “Syl, this is great.  You should try it.” 

And often, I did.  And in truth, I was interested in the things that I tried, but none of them really held my attention, or spoke to me as decisively as mindfulness meditation, which I learned from teachers who have studied with teachers in the Buddhist tradition.

Mindfulness is a central practice that the Buddha taught, and it was, in fact, my husband who had gone off on a retreat, come home, and said, “Syl, this is great, you should try it.”  And I tried that and never left.

Dr. Dave:     Okay, now what is it that distinguishes mindfulness meditation from some of the other Buddhist schools?
 
Boorstein:  Well, I think it was for me, certainly an accessible meditation.  Mindfulness really is, in its own self, non-parochial.  It doesn’t require a belief system or a cosmology.  It didn’t require of me that I become a Buddhist. 

It’s really a mind training practice that, when I define it, I talk about mindfulness as being the balanced, moment-to-moment acknowledgement of one’s experience, both inner and outer. 

What’s going on right now?  What’s going on out here, and what’s on in me as I am aware of whatever is arising in this moment? 

And the fact that it’s meant to be the balanced recognition is already the hint that it’s a practice that aims at equanimity. 

We are all the time, I think, challenged by surprises in our life experience.  It’s not a mistake that life is difficult, actually.

When the Buddha really expounded his understanding of the cause and the end of suffering, he started by saying, “Life is suffering,” which actually is an inaccurate, not exactly correct translation of the Pali. 

Really, it’s meant, “Life is continually challenging,” because it’s always changing and always presenting us with new situations, some of which are really difficult; some of which are a little difficult... considerably difficult, and the balanced recognition of, “Ahh, this is happening. 

What would be a good thing to do now?  This is happening; this is how I feel about it.  What would be a wise response?” is really what mindfulness is about. 

And in some way, the instruction really gives a hint of the goal, which is a mind that’s balanced enough to be able to hold itself in a certain amount of
equanimity and make wise choices.

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Continued - see rest of transcript and listen to podcast #137 at Shrink Rap Radio.

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