‘Cutivating joy' is more about ‘cognition’.
Even when there is anger, impatience, dissatisfaction, some part of me still seeks joy, and finds it.
Joy is independent of ‘pleasure.’ The difference has taken years to trickle down. Joy is a deeper state of mind than pleasure; it is more of a ‘disposition’.
One cant expect to feel joy after killing/stealing/sexual misconduct/intoxication. Such a person, one would say, is not in a state of joy. Joy is bereft of anguish, greed, hatred, or vengeance.
A stainless mind, a fearless mind, a free mind, is joy.
Cultivating joy
It was easy to swap joy for pleasure. Driving back from college with a friend, my favourite song on the radio, I thought to myself- Is this not pleasure? Well, it was an inconstant pleasure, something that wouldn’t last if we were to keep driving and listening to the song for 2 hours, ten hours … there will be a time when it would satiate me and a new desire would come. I’ll need food and that will be pleasure, then sleep, then this, that …endless like a trap! ‘Pleasure’ is certainly not joy, if I look back and answer my own question today. Also, by refuting pleasure as joy, I have more or less sought something deeper at work than a window in time, a meal, a day or a decade of consumerist existence.
To know right direction from wrong is to know joyful states from ones that bring suffering. Craving and aversion bring suffering; equanimity and awareness bring freedom, liberation. One starts appreciating this by experience, and develops morality, calm, compassion, and mindfulness- states akin to ‘joy’.
With constant mindfulness there is a more vigorous feeling of joy, an undercurrent, a more permanent one.
